NE NEWS SERVICE
KOLKATA, APRIL 30
Mondretti Sridhar, Director-General of Geological Survey of India (GSI) retired on Thursday after completing over 3 decades of service. He reached the zenith from a humble beginning and learnt a lot from both successes and failures as he climbed the hierarchical ladder, a GSI release said.
Sridhar had the privilege of interacting with many geoscientists both inside and outside this organisation which had enriched his vision and helped him to serve GSI better in various capacities from a Geologist to the Head of the Organisation as Director-General.
In his farewell address, Sridhar talked about how GSI is helping in the nation-building through specialised branches of the organisation. According to him, GSI plays a critical role in every aspect of Mother Earth. The airborne and marine surveys are unparalleled, says the out-going Director-General. He also mentioned the work is done by GSI in the toughest glaciers in the Himalaya and the exploits in the Gondwana coal fields, contributions in public good geosciences like engineering geology, environmental geology, landslide studies, seismic and geodynamic studies, climate change and Polar studies for decades as noteworthy.
Sridhar also addressed the major endeavours before the organisation that needs GSI’s focus & attention, like to search for the concealed and deep-seated minerals through Project ‘Uncover’, identify newer vistas through Regional Mineral Targeting (RMT) and National Aero-Geophysical Mapping Programme (NAGMP)/surveys, the research on landslide studies and developing models for landslide Early Warning System (EWS) and disaster management in the events of earthquake, tsunami, flood etc., venturing into the diversified geoscientific avenues like urban geology, medical geology, space geology, geo-statistics, geo-archaeology, geo-tourism and other branches to address the issues related to public good geosciences, dealing with the scenario after the postponement of 36th IGC and reorganising our efforts to conduct it successfully and to re-evaluate our strategy to fight during and post-COVID-19 global pandemic, which, crippled India’s economy and it is time for all of us to raise the bar of achievement during the coming field season of 2020-21 to fulfil all the loses.
It is time to take stock of the present scenario especially because of the increased expectations of the Government in terms of quality and speed of deliverables. GSI will be facing major challenges of various kinds and magnitudes. On one hand, the increasing need for making the organisation more relevant by diversifying the activities and adapting global best practices, on the other hand saving its pride by ensuring self-governance. To effectively tackle these challenges, the organisation must enrich the knowledge, enhance quality of output and be able to sell which essentially require all the staff members of GSI to work in unison, said Sridhar.
