Bengaluru: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday inaugurated the 107th Indian Science Congress (ISC 2020) in this tech city amid tight security in the presence of a galaxy of top scientists, Nobel Laureates, dignitaries and students from across the country and the world over.
About 15,000 delegates, including two Nobel Laureates and eminent scientists from across India and abroad, are attending the mega 5-day event at the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), which is hosting the annual event.
This is the third time Bengaluru is hosting the science congress after 2002 and 1987. Modi inaugurated the 103rd session at Mysuru in the southern state on January 3, 2016.
As the event is being held at an agriculture university, the focal theme of the congress is "Science and Technology: Rural Development", ostensibly to bridge the gap between urban and rural India and improving the quality of farmers' life through science and technology.
The national jamboree will cover 14 sectors in contemporary science, with concurrent sub-events like Women's Science Congress, Children's Science Congress, Science Communicators; Meet and Farmer's Science Congress.
For the first time, the Farmer's Science Congress on January 6 will provide a forum to ryots across the country to interact, share their experiences, success, failures and showcase their innovative techniques/methods developed and followed by them in farming.
Four public lectures and 26 plenary sessions will be held concurrently. In addition, a science exhibition (Pride of India) will showcase the latest developments in science and technology the world over, leading products and services, path-breaking research and developments (R&D) initiatives, schemes and achievements of the public and private sectors.
(IANS)