Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Address by Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of CSIR , Vigyan Bhavan

Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, Shri Bachi Singh Rawat,

Dr. Mashelkar, distinguished scientists, ladies and gentlemen,

~This is the third time during this year that I am attending a CSIR function. Each time I do so, I feel proud of being associated with CSIR as its President. But on this occasion, my happiness is enhanced by the fact that we have gathered here to celebrate the Council’s Diamond Jubilee.

They say life begins at sixty. For CSIR, it began six decades ago. It was a life of much accomplishment and glory. Today, the Council embarks on a new journey. And, I have no doubt that it will be a journey of grander achievement and greater glory than before.

On an occasion like this, it is natural for us to pay tributes to all those who built and nurtured the Council over the decades. I recall the words of Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, your founder and one of the outstanding personalities in Indian science.

~We can see today the dim lights of a new dawn in the distant horizon of India’s progress. These faint radiations are not the vanishing streaks of our glorious past; rather, they are the sure signs of a new birth full of promise and glory for the future. This dawn represents the birth of the industrial movement in India~.

The dim lights and faint radiations that Dr. Bhatnagar saw way back in 1938 are no more dim or faint. India has dazzled in many areas of development. We are a self-confident and steadily progressing nation, with a growing stature in the international arena.

A good part of India’s global reputation is rooted in our strong scientific and industrial base, which we have built with a firm commitment to self-reliance. Successive governments since Independence have shown immense faith in the power of science and technology to propel our national development and strengthen our national security.

Proof of this lies in the many fine R&D institutions we have created in agriculture, industry, healthcare and, of course, defence. Another proud evidence of this is the fact that CSIR is now the largest publicly funded industrial R&D system in the world.

As you are well aware, our Government has substantially stepped up support to the country’s Science & Technology establishment in the past four and a half years. I assure you that this support will continue.

In this context, I applaud the birth of the ~Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology~ that Dr. Joshi alluded to. This shows CSIR’s response to the emerging challenges and the opportunities that arise in a science that unravels the alphabets of life and has written the first draft of the human genome sequence.

Friends, occasions like the Diamond Jubilee are a time both to look back and to look forward – for both celebration and soul-searching. Your achievements so far are no doubt impressive. I came to know about one of the interesting achievements in the advertisement in today’s newspapers – the Indelible Ink that every Indian voter proudly sports after casting the ballot. This shows that CSIR has served the cause of not only India’s development, but also of India’s democracy. Congratulations!

I am sure that you will not rest on your past laurels. Your past achievements encourage you to do better in the future. They also invite you to review what you have not been able to achieve and why. Needless to say, you are best suited to do this self-evaluation and also to take necessary corrective measures. Wherever the Government’s assistance is needed for this purpose, it will certainly be forthcoming.

Any organization is built on the strength of its leadership. During the 1998 Bhatnagar Prize Ceremony, I had commended the role played by Dr. Mashelkar in giving a new vision to CSIR. We felicitate him today for completing 25 years of distinguished service to CSIR. Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, as Vice-President of CSIR, has provided an excellent leadership not only to CSIR, but to the entire scientific community. I congratulate both of them heartily.

Distinguished scientists, the mandate of CSIR requires you to pursue scientific research and its industrial application in tandem. This is best achieved through an active partnership between Indian science and Indian industry. I am happy to see that, over the years, your partnership with industry has both widened and deepened. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to further enlarge public-private partnership in priority areas of research and development.

This is no doubt because of the many unfulfilled tasks in our national development. But it is also necessitated by the several new challenges that liberalisation and globalisation are continually throwing up before Indian industry.

We have a large and diversified industrial base. All its constituents – whether they are in big, medium or small sectors – are facing the challenges of competition, local as well as global. The fast-changing business environment is also throwing up new opportunities for them, both nationally and globally.

Our industry and services have by now realised one thing. And that is: to survive and to win in this Battle of Competition, they have to use Knowledge – figuratively speaking -- both as a Shield and a Sword.

They are looking to our scientists and technologists for innovative and cost-effective solutions to the problems in energy saving, material saving, constant quality enhancement, customer care, and introduction of new products and services on a regular basis.

They also need practical solutions to the problems in environmental protection, which we in India have not paid sufficient attention to. And we are paying a huge price for this neglect.

I have just returned from a visit to Maldives. I was struck by the meticulous care with which they have preserved their extremely fragile environment – and yet succeeded in promoting a vibrant tourism industry. No doubt, they are assisted in this by technologies that help in water desalination, waste disposal and transport management.

I am giving this example just to illustrate that it is indeed possible to balance development and environmental protection. The problems in India are, no doubt, more complex and varied. But we can tackle them -- indeed, we have to tackle them -- with scientific and technological knowledge, gained through focused R&D.

There is another challenge before India’s S&T establishment. I have spoken about it before, but it is necessary to restate it on today’s occasion. It is the challenge of transforming our large S&T base into a dynamic force capable of occupying leadership positions in global R&D.

In this context, I commend the ‘New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative’ launched by CSIR two years ago, aimed at capturing global leadership in certain select technologies. I am told that CSIR has catalyzed 14 large networked projects involving as many as 110 R&D academic institutions and 45 industry partners.

I congratulate industries in our private sector for participating enthusiastically in this largest Indian knowledge network. The projects, I understand, are truly path breaking and set new technology directions.

Even as this initiative seeks to position Indian R&D on a par with the best in developed countries, I also urge you to simultaneously strengthen your focus on the needs of developing countries. These countries admire our self-reliant progress in science and technology. They also know that India has the potential to provide more appropriate technology solutions to the problems of the developing world – solutions that are often vastly cheaper than those offered by others.

When we see the problems of the poor in India and in other developing countries -- whether it is drugs to control diseases of the poor such as Malaria, or nutrition for the poor, or providing gainful employment for the poor in their local habitats – it is clear that no research will be done in the western world to tackle these problems. CSIR and institutions such as ICAR, ICMR and others have done a lot to fill this gap. They can do a lot more.

I am reminded here of what the leader of an important African country told me earlier this month, when I was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly session. He said how much Africa admired India’s successes in agriculture, which have helped us not only in achieving food security for our large population but also in becoming an exporter of foodgrains. He then sought greater cooperation with India in improving his country’s agriculture sector.

While in Maldives, we offered them cooperation in hydrography, digital mapping, telemedicine and IT connectivity to improve postal services in their far-flung islands. I am giving these examples just to illustrate the range of S&T solutions that India can offer to all our friends in the developing world both in traditional and modern areas.

Finally, let me reiterate one more challenge before our S&T establishment. It is the challenge of bridging the awareness gap between the people and your establishment. Take the case of CSIR itself. It has contributed a lot to the nation building process and, specifically, to improving the life of the common man. But are these contributions sufficiently known to our people? I don’t think so.

Today, when a farmer uses a Sonalika tractor; or when two lakh women take Saheli as a once-in-a-week non-steroidal family planning pill; or when a doctor prescribes E-Mal for a patient suffering from cerebral malaria; or when a villager uses a Mark-II hand pump, how many of them know that these are all CSIR products?

I would like CSIR and all other S&T institutions to reach out to the common man and tell them how we in India are progressing with our own efforts, while cooperating with the rest of the world. They should also be assisted to develop their own rich traditional knowledge base to meet their needs as far as possible. Of course, this is a task in which you have to work closely with the media and the media will have to work close with you.

Before I conclude, my kudos to all the scientists, technical staff and employees of CSIR once again. You have proved that yours is a dynamic and living organization, one which continuously responds to change, one which in recent years has taken a quantum jump in ambition. What CSIR should now do is to transform its ambition into achievement during its journey from Diamond Jubilee to Platinum Jubilee.

Thank you~.