By IANS,
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday called for greater private investment in science and technology to raise India’s share of research and development (R&D) output in the world and economic growth.
“As a nation, we have not succeeded in mobilizing enough private investment in science to raise our investment in scientific research to two percent of GDP,” said the prime minister in his address at the CSIR foundation day function here.
India’s R&D investments is currently under 1 percent of the GDP.
“Last week, while inaugurating a new campus of the Council’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, I was impressed by the power and potential of public-private partnership in scientific research,” he said.
Reminding the audience that development of modern industry is also dependent on factors like innovation, technology and culture, he said: “We need to recognize that excellence has not percolated across all our research and academic institutions. We have not been able to make an impact on a world scale commensurate with our large scientific manpower pool.”
Singh said CSIR had an invaluable role in India’s growth over the years. “I am told that across CSIR laboratories, new ecosystems like Innovation Complexes are being created to foster innovation through partnership with industry, academia and other R and D institutions.”
He referred to the Academy of Scientific and innovative Research, which has been recently set up by it to train young scientists and engineers in trans-disciplinary skills.
“This is a good initiative and I look forward to early results.”
The prime minister said that mechanisms had been put in place to identify needs of industries and to tap bright ideas of the CSIR’s young talent.
“The Council has announced policies to encourage scientists to create spin offs and new ventures. It is also partnering with the National Innovation Council to provide focused technology assistance to small and medium enterprises.”
CSIR has set up a company, CSIT Tech Private Ltd, in Pune to help micro, small and medium enterprises start spin-off companies using technologies developed by its chain of 37 laboratories.