The Quality Council of India (QCI) is completing 25 years of its existence this year and a special event will be held on Thursday (October 6) to celebrate its Silver Jubilee. The QCI has also launched a campaign, ‘Gunvatta Se Atmanirbharta: India’s Quality Movement’, to celebrate India’s quality hubs, create awareness about India’s landmark achievements and inform people about initiatives to enhance the quality of life of all citizens.
“India ventured into unshackling its economy in the year 1991 and became a part of globalisation. As a country, India needed to put in place a robust system of quality infrastructure which included an accreditation system for ensuring conformity assessment as per the international benchmark of quality. Accordingly, an expert group was constituted and after studying the best available models in the world, it was decided by the government to create the Quality Council of India as an independent autonomous organisation to become the national accreditation body,” the QCI said in a statement.
The Council, which was set up in 1997 jointly by the government, Assocham, CII and FICCI, had Ratan Tata as its first chairman.
Speaking about the journey of QCI in the past 25 years, QCI Chairperson Adil Zainulbhai said, “QCI is proud to have played a part in making this happen through its various accreditation boards and through its assessment and measurement of services delivered to the citizens of India, enabling them to lead quality lives.”
Since its establishment, the QCI has played a pivotal role in India’s economic growth and it hopes to play an even bigger role in the growth of India by leading it to become a developed economy by 2047, the statement said.
“Over the past 25 years, the QCI has created various boards viz- NABL, NABH, NABCB, NABET and NBQP to take over the functions of accreditation and quality promotion. As per the mandate given to it by the government, QCI started venturing out into the global scenario and established memberships with forums and organisations that decided about how the business and trade was to be conducted in a globalised environment,” the statement said.
It added that the QCI and NABL became members of IAF (International Accreditation Forum) and ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation), respectively, and subsequently to the regional bodies like APAC and APLAC. This ensured global equivalence of outcomes of quality assurance-related economic activities in India.
Many government departments have now created regulations that provide for testing, inspection, and certification to be done by NABL and NABCB-accredited organisations.
To commemorate QCI’s Silver Jubilee, a special event will be held on Thursday (October 6) at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi to share India’s journey of growth accelerated by the enhancement of quality. It will be chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal as the chief guest.
Other eminent personalities will include former commerce & industry minister Suresh Prabhu, India’s Sherpa to G20 Amitabh Kant, DPIIT Secretary Anurag Jain, India Trade Promotion Organisation CMD B V R Subrahmanyam, and NITI Aayog CEO Parameswaran Iyer, among others.
It will also be attended by National Health Authority CEO Ram Sewak Sharma, PM-Economic Advisory Council member Sanjeev Sanyal, Ashok Leyland and JCB India former MD & CEO Vipin Sondhi, AIIMS former Director Randeep Guleria and International Accreditation Forum Chair Emanuele Riva. They also include UK Accreditation Services CEO Matt Gantley, UN Industrial Development Organization Representative and Head (Regional Office-India) Rene Van Berkel, and UNCTAD’s Siti Rubiah Lambert.
R P Singh, secretary-general of QCI, said, “We take pride in the character that we have fostered here at QCI – of fearlessness, of vision, of leadership and of making a difference for a better tomorrow. We have inculcated technology in our work for faster, higher and better credibility. We want to remove the distinction between national and international quality, and make India a forerunner in quality.”
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