Mangaluru: Ratan P Watal, principal adviser (social sector), NITI Aayog and also member secretary, economic advisory council to prime minister (EAC-PM); B N Satpathy, senior consultant, EAC-PM, NITI Aayog; K Rajeshwar Rao, representative, NITI Aayog along with Prof B S Nagendra Prakash, registrar and Dr B H Shekar from Mangalore University visited Sahyadri College and interacted with the management and faculty.

Ratan P Watal, a retired IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre was a former finance secretary. While addressing the gathering, Watal gave a glimpse of the main office, the chairperson, its members, the functions and role of NITI, Aayog. He expressed his intensions to outreach to universities and students thereby taking forward the whole agenda of cashless economy. He learnt of the rich tradition of banking in Mangaluru and proposes that the banking institutions, academic institutions along with their students must get to the field, find out the problems and also get to the solutions to the problems related to cashless economy. Before closing his speech, he narrated a story which brought out the essence of ‘Attitude’ that makes a lot of difference in the way we view things/challenges. He urged the gathering to inspire self to find solutions to the downtrodden people that in return give a sense of accomplishment.

B N Satpathy while speaking to the gathering quoted the words of Barack Obama giving all credits to him and stated that we are living in times of uncertainty, we never know what is hitting us tomorrow hence we should always be alert. He also said that the job market these days is tough; however, there is enough scope for innovation which shall overcome this challenge. He appreciated Sahyadri for the amazing work it has put in for its uniqueness and was sure that Sahyadri would soon gain lot of prominence in the years to come.

Prof B S Nagendra Prakash expressed how comfortable he felt as at home visiting Sahyadri since he is from an engineering background. He also mentioned his association with Dr Manjappa Sarathi, director-research and consultancy of Sahyadri. He said that the world is no more a far off place as there is more accessibility and availability of information. He appreciated the management of Sahyadri for its involvement in the in-house mechanism for individuality and very few institutions do that. He said that within the framework of Mangalore University, Sahyadri and the mentorship of NITI Aayog we can make a difference to society by working on time bound initiatives. He also expressed his support to forming the state-of-the-art research facility in Sahyadri Campus and strengthen the bondage by modulating research programmes and activities in our campus.

Chairman, Manjunath Bhandary while speaking said that he believes in interaction with people rather than reading about them hence invited such renowned people to the campus so that his team could interact and learn from them.