Emphasising that India could not emerge as a global leader in science and technology without the participation of, and contribution from, the private sector, Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, said the government was preparing an ecosystem that would incentivise greater involvement of the industry in research and development activities. In an interview with The Indian Express, Karandikar, the former director of IIT Kanpur, said some of the recent government interventions, including the launch of Quantum Mission and the mission on artificial intelligence, had the potential to transform India’s science and technology sector, and energise research activities. “The fact is that the government cannot do it alone. Look at the countries that are considered leaders in science and technology. Each of them have a thriving private sector participation. In the countries that spend more than two per cent of their GDP on R&D activities, 70 to 80 per cent of the contribution comes from private industry. In our case, private sector contribution is just about 35 per cent,” Karandikar said. India’s expenditure on R&D is less than 0.7 per cent of its GDP, way below the global average of 1.8 per cent. For more than two decades, the official objective has been to raise this to at least 2 per cent of the GDP, but even as the research expenditure has increased in absolute terms, it has never approached anywhere close to even one per cent of the GDP. About 40 countries spend more than one per cent of their GDP on R&D. Karandikar said for India to become a global leader in science and technology, it needs to allocate 3 to 4 per cent of its GDP for R&D. “It can’t be done with government resources alone. Private sector has to participate,” he said. “Industry is more in tune with the market requirements. Its participation ensures greater innovation, product development and quicker deployment of technologies. The benefits of technology reach the common person much more quickly. That is what has been happening in developed countries,” he said. Karandikar said along with funds, human resource was also a big challenge. “We have a fairly large talent pool. But it is not enough for a country the size of India. We need more human resources in science, particularly in cutting edge research. The NRF (National Research Foundation, set up last year) is meant to address that by exposing people in universities and colleges to research. But it is a challenge. We don’t just need more students graduating in science, engineering and mathematics, we also need a large number of faculties to train them in required numbers,” he said. Karandikar said India had the ability to become a global leader in some of the advanced technologies that are still under development, like artificial intelligence or quantum technologies. “Take the case of quantum technologies, for example. We launched a Quantum mission last year. There are four major areas here — computing, communications, sensors and devices and materials. If you look at the status of research happening in India in these areas, we have a very realistic chance of emerging as world leaders in at least communications and sensing. We have to develop capabilities in computing as well, but there we have a little bit of catching to do. In communications and sensing, however, we are almost at the cutting edge. If we do things right, we can be globally competitive in the next four to five years,” he said. Karandikar said the Quantum Mission, along with similar initiatives in the field of semiconductors, artificial intelligence and cyber-security, could prove to be transformative for Indian science. “These are also areas in which we have some start-ups already doing amazing work. We are trying to support these in whatever way we can. In this context, the budget announcement about the Rs one lakh crore corpus is very significant. Private companies can avail long-term loans from this corpus and fund their R&D activities. It will energise R&D in the private sector,” he said.
