Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Speech of Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Annual General Meeting of the Society of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research

Dr. Joshiji, Shri Yashwant Sinha, Dr. Mashelkar, Distinguished Scientists and Friends,

I am happy to be present at this annual general meeting of the Society of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

As President of the Society, I am really impressed by the initiatives taken by CSIR on diverse fronts. My special compliments to you for bringing together India’s strengths in industry, R&D, and academic institutions. This has helped capture for the nation, a leadership position based on technology through the New Millennium Technology Leadership Initiative, which you put together just two years ago.

CSIR has been a pioneer in the domain of Intellectual Property, both nationally and internationally. Its own performance in securing patents has also been creditable. It has done us proud by filing the second highest patents from developing countries, as per the rankings of the Patents Cooperation Treaty, in 2001. I would urge the CSIR to secure the number one position soon.

Every Indian was happy to know about the success of CSIR’s pioneering fight for the protection of India’s traditional knowledge through the famous victory on the turmeric patent granted by USA. This has finally led to the creation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. We must not only protect our knowledge, but also add value to it. I am, therefore, happy to see that a twenty-laboratory networked program in the “Team India” spirit on finding new therapeutics by using our traditional knowledge is yielding good results.

I would specially like to commend Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi for providing the right guidance and leadership to the S&T endeavor in the country.

In the Science Congress held in Pune in January 2000, I had announced that the Government would make every possible effort to raise S&T expenditure to 2 percent of our GDP in comparison to the then figure of less than 1 percent. This was not a mere announcement. We have followed it up with concrete action. This year the allocations for the three major wings of the Ministry of Science & Technology — namely, Department of Science & Technology, Department of Biotechnology, and the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research — have gone up by more than 35 percent. This is the highest ever increase in consecutive years since Independence.

I understand that this has brought joy to the scientific community. I assure you that we will continue to provide growing support to this sector, because I firmly believe that the key to India’s faster economic growth in the future lies in science and technology.

At the same time, I would like everybody in India’s S&T establishment to know that the quantitative increase in financial inputs should be more than matched by the qualitative increase in outputs. We should strive hard to ensure that every R&D rupee brings greater benefits to the nation. This calls for innovative ways of management, collaboration, incentivization, and self-assessment.

Whereas the Government has steadily stepped up its support to R&D, I am disappointed that private industry has not increased its share commensurate with its increased role in the national economy. It is important that we forge new public-private partnerships, which includes mutual sharing of their physical and intellectual infrastructures. The Government will fully support such bold and creative initiatives.

We are the threshold of beginning our Tenth Five Year Plan. The Plan rightly emphasizes the need to further integrate science and technology into all our policies and programs that aim at reducing poverty, creating large-scale productive employment opportunities and increasing the living standards of all our citizens. This centrality of S&T should be reflected in the identification of technology choices, investments, and the active participation of S&T community in every sector of our economy — both modern and traditional.

Your greater focus on agriculture, small industries, rural development and healthcare, etc., will help in bringing science closer to the masses. At the same time, your focus on frontier areas such as information technology, biotechnology, new materials and energy sources, etc., will enable India to obtain a competitive position in the emerging global economy. It will help in increasing India’s share in both technology-led exports and export of technologies.

Which is why, we should make greater efforts to promote technological plurality — traditional, conventional and hi-tech — and enhance the productivity of each of these.

In this context, I return to the theme that is being much discussed in S&T circles in recent years, and which I had expressed earlier this year in my address to the Science Congress in Lucknow. It is our collective concern over the declining interest in science as a career option in our college and university system. This is a serious challenge before the nation. I learn that the ministry has drawn up some schemes to nurture young and talented persons to take up R & D as a career.

I urge CSIR to assume a greater role in this endeavor. For example, each CSIR lab may draw up a specific plan to popularize science in the local community and in promising schools and colleges in the region. Each lab may be judged every year on how much it could do to promote science. The same could also be done by our other premier S&T institutions.

I am sure that CSIR will consider all the valuable suggestions made in today’s meeting in a constructive manner and draw up an action plan to implement them in the right spirit. I would like to see CSIR become a real technology powerhouse, making a greater contribution to nation-building and earning a higher reputation globally.

Thank you.