Changing Indian STI Landscape

Opportunities for Stronger S&T Bilateral Relationships

Dr. T. RamasamiSecretary, Department of Science and Technology

Government of India

Context Defines the Content for Indian STI sector

• Indian economy registers robust growth ~8.5+0.5% for significantly long periods

• Developmental choices to people are on the increase– ~400 million enjoy good purchasing power

• Inclusiveness of growth in a rapidly growing economy is a challenge– Faster and Inclusive growth remains the stated

policy paradigm. It is a challenge• India mainstreams STI sector into the

developmental strategy– STI sector needs to respond to the call of people

Research and Development:

In Nation Building

Scholarship driven

Competition driven

Innovation

ScienceTechnology

Market driven

Creation of jobs Creation of knowledge

Creation of value

Advanced knowledge

Leadership in usable knowledge

Gainful and useful knowledge

National prosperity

Knowledge Seekers

Decade of Innovations 2010-20: Stated Plan

• The Government has committed through a presidential address declared that 2010-20 period as a “Decade of Innovations”.

• Designing and developing a National Innovation Ecosystem accorded highest priority

• Policy instruments to stimulate the engagement of the private sector into R& D in public and social good areas including clean energy

• International S&T cooperation is a part of the National strategy of the plan for Decade of Innovations

Changing Contexts of Social Challenges of India

Between 1950-90 era • Economic realities; Food

shortage; Wide spread poverty; Social inequities; Low rates of employment; Weak export trade and lack of technology culture; Weak industrial enterprise

• Science delivered solutions for food and milk shortages, technology denials and enabled self reliance

Between 1990-2030 era• Energy-, Environment-,

water- and inland- security, affordable human health care, climate change are social challenges seeking science derived solutions

• Competitive and world economy and trade impact the fundamentals of scientific solutions

• Flow of Solution science is global and wide reaching

Current Focus of Indian Science, Technology and Innovation

• Preparing for an India of 2030

– With reduced disparities of per-capita income

• Challenge for Indian Science, Technology and Innovation system

– to balance between the discovery science through competitive

excellence and solution science through collaborative excellence

• International S&T cooperation is a tool being more actively explored

than earlier

– Reciprocity and parity form the adopted principle

• Public Private Partnership for R&D and Clean Energy is a stated

policy direction

– New relationship model is being examined

Current Status of Eight-part Indian STI System

• Mission mode Agencies: Focused on self reliance, under transition in the era of techno-globalism

• Government Agencies: Focused on the balancing in the art of funding and developmental roles in scholarship focused science, market driven technology and competition linked innovation system

• Academic sector: Challenged by need to expand many fold without dilutions of excellence and loss of focus on research

• Socio economic ministries seeking solutions from science: Challenged by mis-matched rates of scientific development and societal absorption of global solutions

Anatomy of Indian Science, Technology and Innovation system

R&D in NGO groups

R&D by MNCs

Industrial R&D systems

Mission mode Non strategic R&D

bodies

Academic/Sector

Focused on education

GovernmentFunding

& developmental agencies

Mission modeStrategic Agencies

Indian STI system

Socio economic Ministries as users of S&T outputs

Some what thinly spread but rooted in all dimensions of STI system

• Mission mode R&D in non strategic sector: Transition from command economy models to dynamic global competition in a weak technology demand status• Industrial R&D systems: Lower levels of private sector investment into R&D and challenges of enhancing value addition to raw materials through innovation driven manufacturing• R&D by MNCs: Taking advantage of low expertise costs for IP generation for global use• R&D by NGOs: Sustaining high manpower costs and R&D infrastructure in a largely public funded R&D landscape

Current Status of Eight-part Indian STI System

Some Key Steps in Education Sector since 2004

• Establishment of large number of new institutions of excellence: 8 new IITs, 5 IISERs (equivalents IISc), 14 new national universities….

• Allocation of 19.8% of Gross Budgetary Support to Education and providing a 9 fold increase of funds for tertiary education

• Expanding the educational infrastructure at all levels for increasing the Gross Enrollment Ratio

• Enunciation of “Right to Education Bill” and many more

Some key Steps in R&D sector since 2004

• Mounting of a program for attraction of talent to science: Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE)

• Strengthening doctoral research programs and steps for rejuvenation of research in universities

• Increasing of Gross Budgetary Support to R&D by 30% over the previous 5-year plan

• Stepping up International S&T cooperation on the principle of reciprocity and parity with matched investments by India for bilateral programs

Change initiated

Some Initial Indications for Evidence gathering

Doubling Public Investments into R&D

total investment

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Annual Growth of about 20-25% has been maintained over 11th plan period

Some Tools of Change designed and implemented since 2006

• Talent Supply Chain management– Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired

Research (INSPIRE); JC Bose (top-up provisions), Ramanujan, Ramalingaswamy, Ramanna, Wellcome-DBT Fellowships, revitalizing women component and young scientist’s programmes, CSIR initiatives etc. PPP programmes are planned.

• Rejuvenation of University Research– Promotion of University Research and Scientific

Excellence (PURSE), Consolidation of University Research, Innovation and Excellence (CURIE) for women-only universities, Special packages for some states, Revising of parameters for Fund for Infrastructure Strengthening (FIST)

Indian Growth Trends: Publications and Patents

Growth Trends of SCI publications 1998- 2007: Global Research Report Oct, 2009

Patents Filed (Number)

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Patents Filed(Number)

2006-09 growth rate 12% p.a.

Ranking of India in publications moves from 15th in 2003 to 9th in 2010

Several initiatives are being proposed

Indian enrolment into Higher education ramping up with high demand for faculty positionsInnovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research

Science and Innovation Scholarship to more than Million people

Investment into Demographic Dividend

19.8% of Gross Budgetary Support to Education

20-25% CAGR in public expend into R&D since 2004

INSPIRE Internships50,000 per year

Top 1% in class X criterion75000 participated

10,000 ScholarshipsRs 80,000/yrfor 5 years

INSPIRE Awards200,000 per Year; Rs. 5,000 per award

Cover every high school in India0.52 million awards released

1,000 Fellowships

1,000 Faculty positions

Age 10-15

Age 16-18

Age 17-22, BSc/MSc levels

7500 based on Top 1% students in class X and XII Board Exams 2500 based on

performance in national level examinations

Age 22-27, PhD levelTop ranker in any science, engineering, medical, agriculture and veterinary related faculty in Indian universities

Age 27-32

National level selection based on merit and INSPIRE attachment without break

Assured Career Opportunity in Research

INSPIRE Program: At a Glance

15,000 students enrolled so far

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Evidence based policy building for R&D funding

14 universities had qualified for an award in 2008.

Now 44 have qualified

Share of publications increased from 15 to 31%

Some Milestones of value

• Establishment of Science and Engineering Research Board through an act of Parliament as a body similar to National Science Foundation

• Science Express mounted as a joint initiative of India with Germany for promoting awakening of youth in science has been visited by 6.7 million people

• Australia-India Strategic Research Fund at AUS $ 100 million is the single largest bilateral engagement for both countries mutually

• 30 million US$ Indo-US Endowment fund and US $100 million for clean Energy Research and Development are indicators of global S&T engagement of India

Addressing the call for Decade of Innovations: Work in Progress

World is pursuing the Innovation Agenda. Is there a unique opportunity for an Indian model for Designing an innovation landscape?

Comparisons and Contrasts of Innovation systems

• Most developed countries invest about 2% of GDP into R&D with a share of 0.7:1.3 from public and private sector, respectively. In such economies, competition among the private sector drives the innovation for gaining leadership in the market space. Therefore the process of innovation is the focus of the design in their innovation system for “Quality Innovations” for global competitiveness

• In India, investments into R&D are at about 0.95% of GDP with shares of 0.7: 0.25% from public and private sector, respectively. Under such conditions, public and social goods priorities could drive the purpose of innovations and focus on “Affordable Innovations” for inclusive growth agenda of the country.

Designing Science, Technology and Innovation ecosystem

• To meet the challenges of faster and more inclusive growth by balancing between Open Source and Competitive innovations

Four part Approach to Innovations

• New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative: PPP model for global referencing

• Venture fund support system: Technology Development Board equity participation model

• Grass Root Innovation: National Innovation Foundation involving 2,50,000 grass root innovators

• National Innovation Council: For global bench marking and alliances

Cotton Stripper from grass root innovation

Health care products from formal innovation system

Some recent and good examples from Indian innovation system

Nano Car: 2500 US $ car

from Tatas for providing

an opportunity for middle

income familiesHepatitis Vaccines: 40 cents a dose product giving health care access to large number of people with low purchasing power

Jaipur foot: Affordable

prosthetics @ US $ 28

Jaipur Foot: A case of disruptive affordable innovation from India

Available, Affordable, Accessible Innovation

Current priorities of Indian STI system

• Inclusion of Innovation in national S&T policy

• Attraction of talent for careers with research

• Right sizing of Science, Technology and Innovation system

• Optimally designed national Innovation eco system with risk capital for the industry

• Alignment of R&D systems to address global competitiveness and solution science to solve socially relevant problems

• Building national and international alliances in R&D and innovation-led development

Seeking Solutions from Science: A New Indian Trend

• Supreme Court of India orders that Secretary Science and Technology will solve the water problem of India through R&D solutions and the Government will make available all resources needed.– This is in some sense an expression of trust in R&D-led

solutions for water problems– A Technology Mission on Winning, Augmentation and

Renovation (WAR) for water is mounted and ongoing for demonstrating convergent technology solutions for 26 different types of water challenges in different locations in the country

First StepSelection of water challenges for research

Second StepSelection of ~25 locations with a

population of 10,000

Collection and analysis of data for site selection

Third StepInviting Technology solution providers through

tender

Collection of site specific conditions for technical evaluation

Fourth StepResearch on available technical solutions

Technical evaluation and assessment of global solutions

Fifth StepSelection of solutions for each water challenge

Selection of sire specific solutions based on technical merit and transparent criteria

Sixth StepPilot trials for the best revenue model for

sustainability

Proving the technical viability at 10,000 population scale

Seventh StepScaling successful solutions for 100000

population in the contiguous area

Socio economic impact assessment study and research

Eighth Step Replication of viable solutions in a non-

contiguous area

Research on scalability, site neutrality and replication value

Submission of Final Research Report

Mission Implementation Strategy

Affordable Innovations for Public and Social good under PPP

• Agriculture for food and nutrition security– Water and land saving agriculture; Avoiding food wastes

• Affordable human health care– Extremely low cost solutions to human health care challenges;

Diseases suffered by people with low purchasing power• Technologies for clean energy

– Renewable energy systems; Enhancing energy efficiency in use; high focus on solar energy

• Innovations for sustainable environment– Zero emission in industrial production; Atom and Energy

efficient manufacture• Innovative deployment of technologies for water

security– Technology agnostic approaches for sustainable solutions

Strategic Alliances and Partnerships: In Innovation Agenda

• Global Technology and Innovation Alliance (GITA) is the planned step forward for building strategic alliances and partnerships where India’s strength in cost optimization while partners strength in quality of innovations could provide a win-win formula

• PAN India initiative based on Pubic-Private-People-Partnership (PPPP) model involving carefully developed strategic alliances for affordable quality innovations under S&T partnerships

Favorable Contexts for STI Collaboration between two nations

Science, Technology and Innovation sector has gained entry into the main stream national developmental agendas in some what similar time spaceBoth Governments seem to want to invest into shared priorities for R&D engagements

Per-capita Research output advantages

• Australia enjoys advantage of high output per FTE

• India enjoys advantage of high return on SCI publications per dollar invested into R&D– 2.5 times higher than

China– 3.5 times higher than

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Australia-India similarities

• Our economy sizes are similar but with (somewhat) dis-similar population sizes!

• Australian and Indian science sectors with respect to publications have remained somewhat similar

• Australia enjoys high per-capita outputs from R&D; second in the world

• India enjoys advantage of R&D output/ $

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Indo Australian complementarities in STI

• Similarities– Size of R&D outputs, especially in discovery

science– Similarities of challenges for solution science

• Agricultural economy, water, energy needs,

environmental considerations, health care

requirements, transportation, etc

• Dis-similarities– Per-capita availability of natural resources in

favor of Australia– Market sizes for technology-led manufactured

products in favor of India

Advantage of collaborative excellence in STI sector

1. World faces threat of climate change and focus on adaptation and mitigation call for new technologies and life style adjustments Global bad can not be fought by countries through competitive

excellence models alone. Collaboration for global good is without choice.

2. With weather extremes and natural disasters challenging the world, new tools and forewarning systems with global collaboration seem necessary Earth and atmosphere being common, science for global health

monitoring and natural disaster mitigation call for collaborative excellence

3. Affordable human health care is a global priority “Not-Reaching the un-reached” is not an option for human health

care. STI has to deliver values for affordable health care

Some lead recent Bilateral R&D Initiatives

1. Indo US Joint Centers for Clean Energy Research and Development Four way Partnership DoE/ US, MoST/India, US Industry,

Indian Industry

2. Indo-UK partnerships for Solar Energy, Fuel Cells, Next generation telecom networks etc EPSRC with various arms of the Indian Government is

engaged in a partnership with an investment of 80 million UK pounds each

3. Indo-EU engagement in STI 5 million Euro/ year on computational materials science,

solar energy and water technologies

4. Australia-India Strategic Research Fund An ongoing engagement with large enthusiasm

Bilateral ties in STI: For cogeneration of Values

India offers Advantages of social mind set for cost and input optimization,

lower Expertise costs, high return on dollar invested and some residual idealism among youth for leveraging them in creation of affordable innovations

Australia offers Advantages of a social mind set for maximizing outputs,

developed STI infrastructure, high per capita outputs in R&D and global competitiveness in quality of innovations

Could the bilateral STI cooperation leverage the advantages of input and cost optimization of India with Australian strength globally competitive quality of innovations and create new values for the world?

Summary

Ladies and Gentlemen, I tried to communicate some aspects of changing Indian STI landscape which opens up new opportunities for stepped up R&D cooperation between our two countries with shared objectives and preparedness for co-investments into STI sector. I foresee opportunities for co-generation of values for both countries. The challenge ahead is in identification of such areas where our shared goals and collaboration could benefit the people of both countries. Let me end with a hope that our shared paths will yield most desired outcomes and benefits for all.

Challenge Aheadmotivating scientists to

discover solutions

Discovery priority of scientists

Solution priority of people and states

High Solution Low Discovery

Low Solution Low Discovery

High Solution High Discovery

Low Solution High Discovery

Solution priority of people

Thank you