Dear Distinguished Geotechnical Colleagues,

I would like to express my sincere thanks to one and all for your support and belief in me to  serve as the President of the Indian Geotechnical Society, for the term 2023-2024. I am immensely grateful to the Indian Geotechnical family who generously contributed their time and effort for the election campaign. I assure you all that I will try my level best for the growth of IGS. With many of your physical presence and blessings, I took over the responsibility of the President of the prestigious Indian Geotechnical Society in the Annual General Body meeting of the Society held on December 15th during Indian Geotechnical Conference, IGC 2022 organized by Kochi Chapter. As the organising secretary of IGC 2022, I express my sincere thanks for all the support given by IGS fraternity for the successful conduct of the conference. We had 794 delegates and totally more than 1000 participants for the conference and the feedback from the participants is that the conference has set new bench marks. I am grateful to my mentor and guru Dr Babu T Jose and our pillar of strength Er. M.D. Nair for all the guidance and support given in my career. I would like to acknowledge the immense contribution given by Immediate Past President, Prof. N.K Samadhiya, Immediate Past Hon. Secretary Prof. J.T Shahu and NEC members for the development of the Society during their tenure. I would like to welcome Dr. A.P Singh as the new Hon. Secretary of the Society and would like to congratulate the newly elected NEC members. As you are aware, the Society is going to celebrate its Diamond Jubilee in 2023 by completing it's 75 years of splendid journey. I would like to place on record my gratitude to all the Indian Geo Legends, who contributed to the growth of our organization. I would like to share my vision for the future growth of IGS.

Increasing the visibility of IGS in the National level and making IGS a key player in the Committee for code revisions and building revision implementation, Increase the membership of IGS to reach up to 10,000 in the near future.

• Registration of professional Foundation Engineers in various Local and State government bodies.
• Implementation of mandatory geotechnical investigation for building projects exceeding 3000 sq.ft and for all major infrastructure projects with preference for IGS members in executing the task.
• Developing a team in IGS office for making a data bank of soil profile in various parts of the country where our centres are active.
• Promoting Academy-Industry-Bureaucracy interaction to ensure the importance of foundation engineering in creating safe built environment.
• To encourage women participation in IGS by promoting IGS Women forum.
• Make IGS presence significant in ISSMGE through promoting various technical committee and improving the membership of Indian engineers in ISSMGE and to conduct various international Technical Committee Conferences in India to get our engineers abreast with the state of art of practice in the world.
• Improve the collaboration with US Society of ISSMGE, Korean Geotechnical Society, Japan Geotechnical Society, etc. and to make new tie up with geotechnical societies in Srilanka, Nepal, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, Philippines, Kazakhstan,etc. for sharing of knowledge and promoting networking among the geotechnical fraternity in the world.
• To promote the activities of IGS and NABL to improve the standard of various geotechnical laboratories in the country.
• To tie up with National Skill development forum to have better technical and supervisory team for geotechnical investigation and to bring Indian geotechnical investigation standards in par with international level.
• To enhance the activities of IGS students chapter and promote young geotechnical engineering events to enhance the networking of young engineers and to give exposure for first-hand experience in the field.
• Enhance co-ordination of IGS along with sister organization such as DFI, IEI, ICI, ACCEI, ISET, ISEG, ISRM, etc.
• To increase the number of local chapters to 60 in India and to have inter chapter activities promotion in various states and for putting effort to make inactive chapters active.
• Preparation of design manuals and special publications for professionals to promote geotechnical engineering.

I am very much excited to lead the society in this historical period and dreams for taking IGS to greater heights. It reminds me of the quote of Shri APJ Abdul Kalam, “A Dream is not that which you see while sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep”.
With the new team we will try to make the dream a reality and I believe that ‘Together We Can and We Will’.

With best regards
Dr. Anil Joseph
E-mail: aniljoseph01@gmail.com
Mobile :+91 9388 8683 27