Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday called for a “complete overhaul” of the state education sector to produce the manpower required to “absorb” the investment that would be pumped into the state’s infrastructure after the Advantage Assam 2.0 investment summit.

Sarma made the call at the summit held in the city.

He said, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi backing Assam’s efforts to secure investment “everybody wants to come to Assam”.

Sarma said, “Somebody wants to set up a data centre, some AI data centre but (the question now is) whether we will be able to give (them) that manpower. Manpower will not come from learning (in school) the powers of chief minister, prime minister and president. If we go on learning these things, we will not be able to work in AI-driven data centres.”

“So this conference calls for an immediate overhaul of our education sector. If we have to mitigate our unemployment, we have to overhaul our education sector completely and we have to work dedicatedly for that,” the chief minister said.

He revealed that the Indian government committed “almost ₹1 lakh crore infrastructure assurance” in sectors such as waterways, highways and railways at the summit. All these are new projects and the state is also spending ₹25,000 crore annually in capital formation. Central and private projects dealing with data and communications have also been promised.

In a post on X, he said since the state has “secured infrastructure investment commitment” of over ₹1 lakh crores, the state “needs to now invest in our manpower to ensure Assam can absorb such investment”.

Sources said if the state does not have adequate and skilled manpower, it will pose a major challenge to utilise the huge investment in an effective and time-bound manner, especially in sectors such as data science and technology sectors, among others.

Prime Minister Modi had inaugurated the two-day session on Tuesday and had assured to stand by those contributing to India’s development journey.