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By

Vinay KumarSahil Wadhwa

Science, Technology and

Innovation Policy

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Timeline

1958 Indias first Scientific Policy Resolution.

1983New policy. focused on the need to attain

technological competence and self reliance.

2003

This new policy wanted to Bring science and

technology together Bring higher investment into

R&D to address national problems.

2013Yet another science-tech policy. (made by

Department of Science and Technology).

2010-20 India has declared this as decade of innovation

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SRISHTI

Goal of new Science, Technology and InnovationPolicy (STI) policy = SRISHTI.

SRISHTI= Science, Research and innovationsystem for High technology led path for India.

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STI 2013 POLICY

Released in the Indian Science Congress at Kolkata.

use STI for faster, sustainable and more inclusivegrowth

focus on both STI for people and people for STI.

Position India among the top five global scientificpowers by 2020

Release more research papers.

Encourage private sector to invest in Research andDevelopment (R&D)

Achieve gender parity in S&T. (meaning bring morefemale scientists)

Global cooperation, science diplomacy.

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Key features of STI policy

Cash power Average global investment in Sci-tech-innovation = >1

trillion dollar (2009)

While India barely spends around 1% of its GDP in

research, Development, innovation. Therefore, Policy says, well increase the spending in

sci-tech-innovation to 2% in next five years.

HOW?= via private sector participation, PPP.

To increase the private sector investment in R&D,well create a conductive environment (meaning wellincrease FDI, well give private cos tax reliefs, wellreform the IPR regulations and so on).

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MANPOWER

Promote the spread of scientific temper amongst all sections ofsociety.

Try to attract talented and bright minds towards careers inscience, research and innovation.

Increase the number of R&D personnel by 66% in next fiveyears.

Create environment for women to enter in R&D field.

Setup inter university centers= bringing together differentdisciplines of humanities and science together.

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BUSINESS

Identify 10 sectors of high potential and put more resourcesinto it for S&T.

Indias share in high tech products is around 8% globally. Wewant to double this.

Increase R&D intensity in Service sector, small and mediumscale enterprises.

The investment in S&T is risky. So, We (Government) will

share the risk with private sector, this will increase theirconfidence.

Provide new financing mechanisms for entrepreneurs(=loans at cheaper interest rate) so they can venture in R&D

without the fear of failure.

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CLIMATE CHANGE

Already Development National Action plan forClimate Change (NAPCC). The STI policy will

play active role in this.

PPP Setup a National science, Technology and innovation

foundation. This will help investing in S&T projects via

PPP.

Setup large scale R&D facilities via PPP mode. When it comes to giving public funds, well treat

private sector R&D institutions at par with public

sector institutions.

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IPR

Well modify the Intellectual property rights(IPR)for social goods, IPR generated under PPP.

Well launch Technology business incubators(TBIs) and science-led entrepreneurship.

Well provide incentives for green manufacturing.

For sharing IPRs between Investors and

inventors, well setup regulatory and legal

framework.

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Participation

Inclusion Well increase accessibility, availability and

affordability of innovations, especially for women,differently-abled and disadvantaged sections ofsociety.

NGOs Well give NGOs pivotal role for delivery science-tech-

innovation outputs especially related with rural /

grassroot level. Lot of new grassroot innovations are taking place, but

they donot transform into commercial applications,well try to bridge this gap.

Various ministries associated with socio-economic

sectors, are already running schemes for R&D in theirsector. Under new STI policy, well try to leverage and

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State Government State Governments are important stakeholders, so well

setup state specific plans under new STI policy and wellalso strengthen the Sci-Tech councils / boards in theStates.

Centrally developed plans for investments are rigid. Wellprovide flexible approach, to fine-tune Five year planschemes in response to rapid changes in S&T.

International Well forge strategic partnerships and alliances with other

nations through both bilateral and multilateral cooperationin science, technology and innovation.

Modern science requires truckload of resources. So wellsetup some international consortia with other countries tocreate high cost global infrastructure.

Science diplomacy, technology synergy with othercountries.

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Public Awareness

People must be made aware of the implicationsof particular science-tech-R&D initiatives- be it

ethical, social or economic. (so that Jholachhap

NGOs funded by Videshi Taaqat(foreign

powers), cannot use them as cannon fodderduring protests against BT brijnal, Nuke powers

etc.)

Release white papers on new science projects to

generate awareness.

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Criticism

1: private sector =no social good On one hand, STI policy wants inclusive Development

and social goods. But on the other hand, it says theinvestment in R&D sector is very low and well bring

more investment from private sector. Here comes the problem: When private sector invests

in R&D, their aim is always profitability.

Theyre not much interested in delivery of social

goods. For example a drug company would rather prefer to

do research on new diabetes related drug /supplement rather than some new product to combatmalnutrition. Same way, iphone6 vs. clean energy /

water recycling.

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In this policy, Government says additional R&D investmentwill come from private sector = indirectly theyre hinting thatwe (the State) are not interested in R&D investment

because we want to control fiscal deficit. But history tells usthat no country, has developed without massive Stateinvestment in R&D.

2: Indian private sector is lazy in

research Government is already giving many tax reliefs to Indian

corporates so they can invest more in research, buying /import necessary machinery without hassle etc. yet they

donot invest that much in R&D compared to their Americancounterparts.

We take pride in our IT sector. But our IT sector is mostlyinvolved in the back-office tasks and software coding for

international giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple. Wedont have an Indian brand of our own that can com ete

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ResearchDevelopment has long gestation period.Indian businessmen are more concerned with short term

gains. Therefore, Government is over-confident when itexpects that Indian private sector to invest lot of moneyin R&D.

3: No lesson from past The new STI policy doesnt provide any analysis / reason

why the last three policies failed. And what precautionswill they take to make sure this new policy wont beanother #EPICFAIL.

For example, It says India is not investing much in R&Dsector, there is need to attract more manpowertowards science-research field.all these things have

been repeated thousands of times in previous speechesof Presidents and rime ministers and olicies.

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4: No structural / fundamental

reforms To break the stalemate in researchdevelopment,

Government needs to fundamentally reform the highereducation, the funding and autonomy of universities, IITs,IIMs etc.

No amount of private sector investment can compensatethe loss through brain drain. (and the Nobel prizes lost

because of it). But the STI policy is not much concernedwith this angle.

5: Conflicting Goals And Policies

Policy document repeatedly emphasizes that botheconomic growth and social good will be pursued throughSTI. But there are two sets of problems here,

Can private sector funded R&D directly deliver socialgoods?

Can science really tackle the social sector problems(gender parity inclusiveness) on its own without the