By IANS
Hyderabad : Vice-President Hamid Ansari Thursday called for embracing and harnessing biotechnology as it enables to address people’s problems and is more inclusive than information technology.
Stating that biotechnology was critical to economy, health, food and biodiversity, Ansari called for international collaboration for expanding the knowledge base and developing new expertise and capabilities to augment and leverage ongoing research in India.
He was delivering inaugural address at the fifth edition of the Global Bio-business Forum – BioAsia 2008.
Ansari noted that India is one of the very few among developing countries which recognised the importance of biotechnology as an instrument for advancing agricultural and industrial growth.
“We have set for ourselves a national objective of building a knowledge society, an inclusive society, a humane society. The most daunting task for our leaders is the human development of our people. The infant and maternal mortality rates, children who are malnourished, access to sanitation and safe water – these indeed are some of the critical issues of today.”
“Any technology that can enable us to address these problems of our citizens needs to be embraced and harnessed. It is in this context that one must view the efforts of the government to support the development of the biotechnology sector.”
The vice-president said biotechnology represents the new wave of technology that could be more transformative in its impact than information technology.
“In some ways, its impact is more immediate and humane as it seeks to find solutions to the problems of human suffering and human want. Furthermore, biotechnology is more inclusive in its impact than IT, as its beneficiaries include farmers, poor persons needing public health interventions and the like.”
Noting that the growth rate in the agriculture sector was a mere 2.7 percent in the last financial year despite the fact that more than half of the population directly depended on this sector, he said that biotechnology is a key tool in improving productivity of agriculture and ensuring a higher growth rate.
“Such technologies must be advanced and directed towards resource-poor farmers and under-developed regions. We will have to get used to an increasing role for this knowledge industry in agricultural production and ensure both its vertical and horizontal dispersion across the country,” he said.
“With a population of over one billion and significant disparities in the level of human development across regions and groups, the Indian interest in biotechnology is understandable. Producing cheaper vaccines, innovative drugs, new therapies such as those using stem cells, bio-engineering, human genetics and genome analysis have been areas of focus.”
He said developing biotechnology was the best means to leverage the immense biodiversity of India. “The vision of the government is to use powerful tools of biotechnology to help convert the country’s diverse biological resources to useful products and processes that are accessible to its masses for economic development and employment generation.”
He pointed out that biotechnology brings together entrepreneurship, innovation, business and industry, state support, private and venture capital funding. “It is an excellent example of public-private partnership, thus in a sweet spot that has led to significant growth – the industry grew at 40 percent during the last five years and the turnover during 2005-06 was over $1.5 billion. It is estimated that the annual turnover by 2010 would be $10 billion.”
Ansari presented this year’s Genome Valley excellence award to Nobel laureate Sir Martin J. Evan, who later spoke on “Embryonic stem cells” at the inaugural session.
The government of Andhra Pradesh is organizing BioAsia 2008 with the assistance of Federation of Asian Biotech Associations (FABA) and the University of Hyderabad.
Over 20 internationally renowned scientists will deliver talks on topics related to stem cells and tissue engineering, nano-technologies, translational research, biopharmaceuticals, food biotechnology, and biofuels from GM crops at the three-day conference.
Delegations form Australia, Germany, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Spain, Britain and the US are attending the conference.