NRTI New Academic Programmes and Plasto-fuel Research Centre launched

V K Yadav, CEO, Railway Board and Chancellor, NRTI launched the New Academic Year Programmes of the National Rail and Transportation Institute (NRTI) and inaugurated the Plasto-Fuel Research Centre at Vadodara recently, on virtual platform.

He was joined by Naresh Chalecha, Member Finance, SPS Chauhan, Director General, National Academy of Indian Railways, Dr Anand S Khati, Director General, HR, Railway Board, the DRM Vadodara division and the Vice Chancellor, Alka A Misra through online platform.

NRTI is India’s first university focused on transport-related education, multidisciplinary research and training and is a Deemed to be University under the De Novo category, situated at Vadodara. This Institute started its Academic activities in the year 2018 and has been running BSc and BBA programmes in Transportation and logistics domain.

The inaugural of the Plasto-fuel complex at Vadodara was also online. This research project is financed by Dept of Science & Technology and is undertaken by Dr V Chintala, Faculty of NRTI as the Principal Investigator.

During his address, Yadav welcomed the new batch of students to the Academic Year 2020. Transport industry consist of about 6.3% of GDP of the country and transport sector is known as engine of growth for industry. So, if the economy has to grow, the transport industry has to grow.

Process has already been initiated to convert NRTI into a Central University of National Importance. This institute though is under the Ministry of Railways, it is in collaboration with all other ministries viz., Roads and Highways, Civil Aviation, Shipping etc.

The students will have the unique advantage to have acquaintance with all installations of Railways, Min of Shipping, Roads and Highways and Civil Aviation and will have internship possibilities. The Ministry can depute experienced officers to teach in addition to the regular faculty.

Some arrangements have been done for placement of the passing out students next year and the industry response has been very good. The transportation ecosystem is dynamic and requires lot of construction activities, infrastructure development and technological upgradations.

Indian Railway already formulated the National Railway Plan 2030 in such a way that all the traffic requirements till 2050 are met with by that time. The roads and highways, civil aviation sector, the waterways and railways are catching up with the infrastructural built-up for the next era and the highspeed project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai at 350km/hr is fast progressing and a high value contract of 85000 crores has already been awarded.

Feasibility study for the 4000km freight corridor has been initiated. A 10000km dedicated passenger corridor to be completed in 7 stretches is identified which will be served by high speed or very high speed depending on the traffic requirements based on feasibility studies.

There is a national infrastructure pipeline of which the major investment of around 30 lakh crore will be in the railway sector. So, in the next 10-15 years there will be a high demand of professionals in transportation management and that is what NRTI will roll out.

He congratulated all the students for joining the unique Instituteand reassured of the demand for qualified professionals in the sector of transportation and logistics which the students can take advantage.