Innovation Must Promote Inclusive Growth: President Mukherjee

New Delhi: India's innovation strategy should focus on generating ideas that promote inclusive growth and benefit those who are at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Wednesday.

Addressing a conference on "Mentoring Grassroots Entrepreneurs in Smart Grams for Inclusive Growth" at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mukherjee said with 68 per cent of population still living in rural areas, smart development can take place only if villages and villagers become smart.

"I have always held that India will grow when the whole of India grows," he said.

On Rashtrapati Bhavan's initiative to turn five villages of Gurugram into smart villages, he said the villages have round-the-clock access to electricity, common service centers, training centers, medical clinics and wellness centers with more than 30 organisations joining the smartgram consortium.

"Encouraged by our early successes, we expanded the project from 5 to 50 villages in the region in February this year. I am confident of expanding this project to 100 villages by the end of May," he said.

The President said a smart village is "essentially three 'H'- Humane, Hi-tech and Happy", which ensures an enhanced quality of life that contributes to harmony, happiness and well-being of our village dwellers.

"It must have the required basic physical and social infrastructure with a layer of smart information and communication embedded in the infrastructure to improve governance and delivery of services, livelihood and economic opportunities," he said.

Mukherjee said roughly 12 million youth enter the labour market every year and 65 per cent of are under the age of 35.

"Imparting skill and providing gainful employment is essential for meeting the demographic challenge and for harnessing the enthusiasm, energy and ambition of our youth to contribute to economic development," he said.

He said India has a huge domestic market and it is an advantage for enterprises that use local material and technologies to produce low cost but good quality products for the market.