While India has made ‘solid progress’ in the direction of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets regarding business, infrastructure and innovation, the nation’s investment in research stays unsatisfactory, the UNESCO Science Report has noticed.
The gross home expenditure on research (GERD) has been stagnant at 0.7% of the GDP for years, though, in absolute phrases, research expenditure has elevated, the chapter on India authored by Sunil Mani, director, Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, famous. India has one of many lowest GERD/GDP ratios among the many BRICS nations, in accordance with the report which is printed each 5 years.
“India’s research intensity has been declining since 2014. The Science and Technology Policy of 2003 fixed the threshold of devoting 2% of GDP to research and development (R&D) by 2007. This target date was set back to 2018 in the new Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (2013) then again to 2022 by the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister. In 2020, the task force drafting the country’s new Science and Technology Policy recommended pushing back the target date to a more realistic 2030,” it famous.
Speaking to The Hindu, Dr. Mani stated that in 1990, the density of scientists/engineers engaged in R&D in the nation per 10,000 of the labour drive stood at ten.
“It rose to just 11 in 2018, when it stood at 50 in China, 130 in Japan and 180 in South Korea,” he stated.
R&D in the federal government sector has been in regular decline since 2015, whereas the share of personal enterprise enterprises in it has shot as much as 42%. While in principle it is a constructive pattern, the R&D is targeted primarily in sectors equivalent to prescription drugs, automotive, and data expertise. Even in these industries, it’s concentrated in a small variety of corporations, the report stated. It additional famous that investment in R&D by overseas multinationals is on the rise, accounting for as a lot as 16% of private-sector investment in R&D in 2019.
On the brilliant aspect is the encouraging enhance in scientific publications by Indian researchers on cutting-edge applied sciences. Total publications have risen from 80,458 in 2011 to 1.61 lakh in 2019.
“Indian researchers are publishing between 1.5 and 1.8 times the global average on smart-grid technologies, photovoltaics, biofuels and biomass and wind turbine technologies, complementing the government’s push to expand green energy sources,” the report famous.
But then once more, patenting by home firms, research institutes, universities and people stays low in India. The report famous that almost all of the software-related patents have been being bagged by MNCs working from Indian soil, whereas pharma patents have been obtained largely by home corporations.
The UNESCO Science Report underscores the necessity for ‘policy bridges’ for fostering a simpler interplay between overseas and native research corporations.
“Given the large number of multinational corporations now engaged in R&D, it is imperative that the host economy benefit from this activity,” the report stated.
It additionally referred to as for improved linkages between the start-up ecosystem and producers to push technological growth in sectors the place India enjoys a worldwide presence.
