Chennai, July 26 (IANS) External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee Saturday opened the third centre of excellence of the Indian Statistical Institute here. The two other centres are in Bangalore and New Delhi, with the main institute being in Kolkata.

Mukherjee paid rich tributes to Prasanta Mahalanobis, the father of statistical studies in modern India, and his “vision of statistic as a key technology and as an important tool to solve scientific and practical problems”.

Mahalanobis had this vision as long ago as in 1931 and it has given the basic strength to India’s economy making it versatile and resilient, said Mukherjee.

“They believed in human resource planning and invested in IITs, IIMs whose output may not have been adequate in the early years, but it is this planning that has given India our vast reservoir of experts and technologically solid foundation,” he said.

He pointed out that India was today “the third largest economy from the purchasing power parity point of view”.

Expressing confidence that India would continue to grow at nine percent, he said: “The reason for my confidence is this that we find a new India (which has) shaken off old baggages, does not seek protection and is a vibrant new nation.”

Pronab Sen, secretary ministry of statistics and programme implementation, said that statistics had been neglected in the ’80s and ’90s and the Chennai centre was being opened 30 years after the New Delhi and Bangalore centres.

Sen said: “There is tremendous shortage of statisticians in the country.”