Answer: As India celebrates 75 years of Independence, it is apt to imagine what the next 75 years will look like.
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Our nation aspire to make the next 75 years an enviable era with a higher standard of living for every citizen. Provided there is a shift in focus to science and technology.
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Need for focusing on Science and Technology:
India spends a meagre 0.7% of its GDP on research and development (R&D).
It needs to make some fundamental policy changes to facilitate the transition. These include increasing the R&D budget to 4% of the nation’s GDP, ensuring that individual institutions implement processes to accommodate the large budget, encouraging individual entrepreneurs and linking science with society.
Spending 4% of the national GDP on R&D is required to drive science and innovation. Israel and South Korea are prime examples that drive their respective economies by spending nearly 5% of their GDP on R&D.
A first-class infrastructure must be accompanied by well-trained, globally competitive institutional administrators and processes.
Before any policy changes take effect, individual institutions must implement processes to accommodate the large budget.
A robust system to link the labs with the entrepreneurs to funnel innovative ideas, products, and solutions to our society needs to be in place.
Thus, an increase in the science budget to innovate must precede appropriate macro-level policy changes on how and where the money needs to be spent.
