Standards are the Foundation of Domestic Trade and Exports, Fostering Innovation and Efficiency to Drive National Growth,” Says Piyush Goyal
The Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Textiles and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal addressed the onboarding workshop for Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) technical committee members at National Institute for Training in Standardization (NITS) today. In his address, Shri Goyal emphasised on the importance of standards as a cornerstone of domestic trade and export, facilitator of innovation and efficiency thereby contributing to national growth. He stressed that high quality standards will help Bharat in achieving the One Nation One Ambition of becoming a developed economy by 2047.
He urged the participants that as members of technical committees formulating Indian Standards, they have an enormous responsibility on their shoulders to ensure that standards embed the principles of sustainability, facilitate fight against counterfeit goods and support MSME & Startups to become more competitive. He further stressed that standards must support creating robust enforcement ecosystem and that they are developed after extensive consultation with all stakeholder groups. Each member must ensure that Indian Standards reflect the latest technological advancements in the country and that the Indian Standards are at par with international standards. Only then, will India be able to achieve its vision of being the manufacturing hub of the world and realise the ambition of becoming Atmanirbhar Bharat.
As the National Standards Body (NSB) of India, BIS develops Indian Standards through a consultative mechanism in technical committees which bring together all relevant stakeholders like industry, consumers, academicians, R&D Institutes, technologists and Ministries/regulators. The standards are thus developed after taking into account all stakeholder viewpoints through a process of wide consultation and consensus building. The process of standard development in BIS follows accepted international best practices based on principles of openness, transparency, impartiality and consensus.
There are around 400 standing technical committees in BIS carrying out standardization work in 16 broad technology areas/sectors covering both core technology areas as well as new and emerging areas such as Geospatial Information, Artificial Intelligence, Block chain, E-mobility, Space Research, Smart manufacturing, Smart Farming etc.
Technical committee members play a big part in making sure the standardization process works well. Their contributions and collaboration are essential for creating high-quality standards that meet national and international needs. It is therefore important that Technical Committees are dynamic in nature and new members are added regularly to address the subject areas on which standards are being developed. BIS thus, regularly reviews its technical committees and in the year 2023-24 itself more than 500 new members have joined various technical committees
While these new technical committee members are domain area experts in their field, they are required to be attuned to the vision, programmes, priorities and processes of national standardization. For this, BIS has taken the initiative of organising onboarding workshops to have a formal dialogue with the new members of the Technical Committees and sensitize them on their Roles and expectations as a Committee member and also train them on BIS Standardization procedures. Four such physical onboarding workshops are being organised at BIS’s National Institute for Training in Standardization in September and October 2023. Henceforth, such onboarding workshops will be held for all new members as and when they join BIS Technical Committees.