India’s need to catch up in research and innovation

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee voiced his concerns about Indian Universities not being listed among the top 200 institutes globally. He said that India was still lagging behind many other countries like China and needed to take action and expand research and innovation activities.

Despite India’s successful handling of the economic crisis the country needed to raise the standards of higher education to a level befitting its growing economic power status, the President said. The President’s aim was to be amongst the top ten or at least top fifty in the world. But innovation still lags behind. In 2010 the total number of patent applications filed by Indians was around 6,000, which corresponds to only 0.30 per cent of the total applications filed in the world according to Pranab Mukherjee.

A background article on the state of research or the lack of it on the website of Bimtech Birla Institute of Management Technology says that the desolate state of innovation and research goes back to the British period of India. The British rulers did not encourage research and did not give financial support. Innovation was left to individual efforts of scientists, who went abroad for higher studies, claims the Institute’s website.

(02.2013) Sources: The Economics Times, Bimtech