The live session of Leadership talk by Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of AICTE was conducted on 9^th April 2020.

Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe assured the students that there may be a temporal setback for this Covid crisis and lockdown, but there is no long term loss for students. They should not feel anxious about it. As Dr. Abhay Jere expressed that students were worried about their internships and job offers whether the offers will be honoured by the respective companies, Prof. Sahasrabudhe said that under the current circumstances, companies may delay the joining but students should take this waiting period as an opportunity for learning new technologies and engaging themselves in innovative work. He mentioned that immediately after the start of lockdown period AICTE organized a competition named “Ideathon” inviting innovative ideas from students for providing solutions to  Covid 19 challenges and there was huge response from students community in the competition – around 5500 teams participated in the competition and 20 prizes were awarded to student teams.

AICTE has already launched another competition named “Samadhan” after that. He said due to lockdown students should take up remote internship to work from home on problems provided by industry. This initiative has been already  taken up by AICTE last year as it was found that infrastructure of companies could accommodate only 30% students for internship in the company facility premises (i.e. only 3 lakhs students out of 10 lakhs students could do internship in company premises). Rest of the students worked on bunch of problems provided by industry and was guided and mentored by industry houses. However, he was quite optimistic in saying that internships may start in company premises with some delay in May/June if the Covid 19 curve flattens and lockdown is lifted by Government.  He advised students to use Swayam and Swayam Prabha platforms for learning during this lockdown period. He advised students to prepare themselves to be Entrepreneurs so as to be the job providers rather than job seekers. He also talked about few more initiatives taken up by AICTE in this crisis period as the following :  On-line training of Faculty members on  “Mandatory 3 weeks of students’ induction program for freshers”, online FDP session on Course on Universal Human Value, Faculty training for examination reformation, Atal Academy conducting online FDP sessions on emerging and niche technology areas.