Investment in science and technology is the basis to growth of any country. During the leadership of Dr T Ramasami (TR) as secretary to Department of Science and Technology, the focus shifted to skill building and today we enjoy the fruits of a much-advanced research and innovation climate in the country. He saved the Tamil Nadu leather industry that was in the brink of a close down and turned it into a sustainable green sector. Under his term, CLRI grew to become a research lab that undertook need oriented research. His views on how India should further its innovation approach…
IE: The beginning of focus on science and technology…
In 2013, we rewrote the science and technology policy to include innovation. As research was happening in silos, we set a goal called, SRISHTI, Science Research Innovation System for High Technology. Apart from investment in system, we stressed the need to invest in people. We increased salary structure of scientists to match OECD benchmarks that helped to retain and motivate brightest talents.
We knew that this fleet needed to be replenished, and soon mounted a program called INSPIRE. It focused on bringing young scientists into the process at an early stage. Our aim was to right size the Full Time Equivalents of R&D professionals to meet the needs of 1.5 billion people in 10 years. The best were chosen at district level and around 10 per cent were brought to state level and then the top 5 per cent to the national level. Out of this, 210 patent applications came out and mainly it excited kids about science. The programme was launched on 13th December 2008 and it has reached about 21 lakh students so far. We put about 4 lakh students in the age group of 16-17 in camps and made them to interact with the best of science brains and enthused them to pursue further.
I did a simple research on top 1 per cent of same cohort of students in class 10 and class 12. I found 63 per cent were from small towns. We provided Rs 80,000 scholarship per year for 5 years. Around 16,000 went ahead to complete PhD in our country. This is the way a system has to be built through time and it cannot be created overnight.
Yet another initiative was Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence (PURSE). The main purpose was to strengthen the research capacity of performing Indian Universities and provide support for nurturing and strengthening the research ecosystem. This helped in regenerating the research scope of the universities in India.
IE: India’s investment in science is said to be low when compared to developed economies..
TR: India invests 40 per cent more than Britain per scientist. Scientists cannot grow overnight and today it has become fashionable for people to talk on low investment in science. No nation is able to invest more than 2 per cent of GDP unless the number of Full Time Equivalents in R&D professionals is more than 1200 per million population. India is the fourth largest investor and the R&D outputs of India are more affordable.
IE: What does India need to further this?
TR: India has had three science and technology policy in the 21st century. These have laid foundation and now it is time to build a super structure on top of it. The future science policy should focus on creating a social connect between people and science, impacting industrial landscape to create more jobs and at the same time it should be responsible. Collaborative research would be the key and it must be linked to a national goal. We need to break silos, trigger and scale private sector R&D. Innovations must be democratised and informal innovation supply chain must be empowered. They are the birth place for cost-effective solutions and by evaluating and grading them, we can offer solutions to unserved and underserved markets of the world. This should take us to the next level.
Hope, harmony and humanity must be our outlines for development. – JR
