<span style="color: #222222;">The Pondicherry University celebrated its 36 th foundation day yesterday. Dr. Ramanan Ramanathan, Director, Atal Innovation Mission and  Additional secretary, NITI Aayog participated and delivered distinguished lecture on the topic "Innovation: The Driver for Transforming Higher Educational Institutions"<br />'' <br />'' Dr Ramanan pointed out that Innovation has a key role in empowering India's demographic dividend to pursue entrepreneurship, and nation building. He said that India is improving its position in the global innovation ranking and elaborated the impact of the activities that Atal Innovation Mission has launched to promote the culture of innovation among the students. Besides, he also spoke on the 5 pillars of Atma Nirbhar Bharat such as economy, infrastructure, system, demography and demand to create self-reliant India and how higher educational institutions can promote innovation culture to become self- reliant and sustainable in the light of National Educational Policy 2020 .<br />'' <br />'' Prof. Gurmeet Singh, Vice Chancellor of Pondicherry University in his address  highlighted the need for introducing innovative and multidisciplinary programmes and enhancing digital infrastructure to embrace NEP 2020 by all the Higher Educational Institutions.<br />'' <br />''The event was conducted online by Google Meet and  broadcasted live on YouTube. It was  attended by a large audience including directors, deans, HODs, faculty, scholars, students, alumni and administrative staff of the Pondicherry University.</span><br />