The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : More people opting for DRDO thanks to slowdown

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Thursday, Mar 05, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

More people opting for DRDO thanks to slowdown

Staff Reporter

Sixth Pay Commission also a catalyst, says official

— Photo: S. R. Raghunathan

REGISTERING GROWth: (From left) R. Jayakumar, Associate Director, Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, DRDO; P. Mannar Jawahar, Vice-Chancellor, Anna University-Chennai, V. Prabhakar, General Manager (Marketing), BSNL–Chennai Telephones, at the inauguration of Vision 2009, in Chennai on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: More people want to join the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), thanks to the economic slowdown, R. Jayakumar, Associate Director, Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, DRDO, said on Wednesday.

“Especially after the Sixth Pay Commission, the interest [in joining] has increased,” he said, speaking on the sidelines at the inauguration of Vision 2009, a technical symposium, organised by the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, College of Engineering, Anna University-Chennai.

Addressing the students, Mr. Jayakumar talked about various areas where new electronic applications were being developed. In agriculture, electronics were being used to increase yield through precision farming, he said. With the help of technology such as Global Positioning System, applications were being developed to identify small areas where appropriate crops could be developed to maximise benefits.

Vice-Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar said the consumer electronics industry continued to grow despite the downturn.

“The primary revenue driver in the industry continues to be digital TV, representing 50 per cent of the total industry.” Consumers were also looking at high definition content through Blu-ray players, gaming devices and home audio systems.

Mr. Jawahar said the gaming industry too offered various opportunities. “Gaming software revenues are expected to grow 18 per cent [world over] to nearly $15 billion.”

In medical electronics, miniaturisation to obtain ingestible devices was the foremost challenge, Mr. Jawahar said.

Reducing power consumption also posed a significant challenge, since in battery-powered devices, the battery itself was likely to be the largest component.

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