India is a mineral-rich country and produces over 85 minerals including coal, lignite, bauxite, chromite, copper ore and iron ore, lead and zinc concentrates, manganese ore, silver, diamond, limestone, phosphorite etc. India is also the second-largest producer and importer of coal in the world.
The mining sector is expected to contribute to the GDP and economic development of the country. The present contribution of Indian mining sector is around 2.5% GDP of India. The mining sector also provides an opportunity for employment, infrastructure development, earning of foreign exchange, and supply of materials for green technologies. The mining sector is going through various challenges and disruptions that hamper its growth. There are many environmental aspects related to mining activities that create challenges in the expansion of mining. The issues of land use management, huge waste generation with accommodation in limited space, groundwater depletion, and pollution of air and water are some of the major factors that create concerns on the national level. There are also probable health impacts of mining on the population. The social and cultural issues also sometimes create challenges in the execution of mining activities smoothly. Much of the country’s mineral reserves are located in forest-covered areas and mining raise concerns due to environmental, social, and economic impacts generated in those areas.
In view of the above, mining industry endeavours to mitigate the environmental damage by proper planning, design, construction, operation, management of mining operations, scientific planning of waste rock / soil dumping in limited space, top soil management, planning of water treatment facilities, and monitoring and maintenance over all mine-life phases, including mine closure.

In today’s era Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays an important role in our daily life. Since from the inception of this new technology at around 1950, different key inventions like ANN, Bigdata, Deep Learning, Chatbot, GPT, Evolutionary Computation, Expert Systems, NLP, Robotics, etc. make it more popular among users and developers perspective. AI technology uses computer algorithms to mimic the human ability to learn, understand, interpret patterns and make predictions or take decisions. Today's AI systems might demonstrate some traits of human intelligence, including learning, problem-solving, perception, and even a limited spectrum of creativity and social intelligence.
AI also comes in different flavour like Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) that have become widely available in everyday life. The smart speakers with Alexa or Google voice assistant built-in are great examples of GPT which uses an understanding of natural language processing. Other good examples are popular AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, the new Bing Chat, and Google Bard. GPT-3 has been created by OpenAI, a research business co-founded by Elon Musk and has been described as the most important and useful advance in AI for years. ChatGPT is a prototype dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of understanding natural human language and generating impressively detailed human-like written text using machine-learning algorithms.
Another great contribution of AI is in the field of robotics. AI robots are controlled by AI programs and use different AI technologies, such as Machine learning, computer vision, RL learning, etc. AI robots are not only able to perform the complex repetitive work, rather it can intelligently solve a problem and tackle tricky situations. Robotics has the speciality of amalgamating different branches of engineering like Computer Science, Electrical, Electronics and Mechanical. The advancement of robotics has a great impact on industrial revolution. Intelligent robotics are now in heavy demand in almost all the sectors like automobile industry, medical devices, heavy engineering sectors, mining sectors and so on.

Sustainable water security goals require an integrated effort towards water harvesting, mitigating water quality, maintaining water resources, reusing and recycling practices to provide sufficient and safe water access to the world. This requires water quality monitoring, developing efficient materials and treatment techniques, developing sensors and devices to detect contaminants and purify water, process safe and affordable water from domestic ‘point to use’ level to industrial scales with the strategies of Engineering water.
The challenge lies in different types of water qualities, emerging contaminants, water supply and distribution, predictive modeling approaches to understanding water systems from rainwater harvesting to ground water aquifers, drainage patterns, marine water desalination to river water clarification, domestic and industrial effluents treatment, urban water supplies to compliance of zero liquid discharge norms for industries at affordable price and through sustainable practices.
This theme brings together the experts from all the domains, right from monitoring and mitigating water quality, scientists developing novel materials at lab scale and their usage in industrial water supplies, ecological perspectives like saving the rivers to technology alternatives for rural areas conforming to the objectives of ‘National water mission’. This interface is going to provide knowledge, develop skills and give new insights to bridge the gap from academia to industry, government bodies to NGOs, students to experts, lab scale to field trials and all the socio economic aspects involved in Water technology development from independence till the recent times to identify the challenges, develop strategies and finding ways and means to provide potable water at global standards

Engineering education has undergone a transformation in recent times owing to the needs during COVID-19 pandemic and availability of many enablers in the form of technologies. It certainly disrupted the conventional order of teaching and learning to a highly technology dependent process. There is no dearth of information on any topic thanks to the high-speed internet and communication technologies and smartphones. However, unreliable and scattered information could adversely affect students’ learning process. Therefore, robust pedagogical approaches and classroom learning practices facilitated through technology-based learning activities can significantly cope with these contemporary challenges. The technological interventions in an evolving engineering education are the need of the hour. By integrating state-of-art technologies with engineering education the following objectives can be achieved:
• Better access to data and content for the educator
• It empowers educator to efficiently customize the delivery of information and knowledge
• It prepares students for the 21st century workforce with technology skills and competencies.
• Helps teachers create blended learning environments that make learning a pleasant journey and relevant to students’ lives.
• Provides teachers access to real-time feedback
Technologies such as AR/VR, AI, adaptive and personalized learning technologies, cloud computing, Chatbots, virtual assistants, IoT, Makerspace, MOOC, Mobile Apps, simulators and digital twins, remote and virtual labs, etc. are going to bring a sea-change in engineering education and will certainly make it more alluring for the learners