Global Innovation Index

India has jumped five places to rank 52 in the Global Innovation Index 2019, up from the 57 it had in last year’s rankings.

Key Findings of Global Innovation Index 2019:

  • Public R&D expenditures, particularly in some high-income countries, are growing slowly or not at all.
  • Global landscape of science, innovation, and technology has undergone important shifts over the last decades.
  • Asian economies especially middle-income one, are rapidly contributing to global research and development (R&D) and international patenting rates via WIPO’s International Patent System.

Need for innovation in India:

  • Key drivers of economic performance and social well-being.
  • It is important to inculcate scientific temper among masses in order to fight superstitions, distorted truth and religious fanaticism that has been crippling India
  • Innovation and technological improvement has become essential to combat and adapt to climate change and promote sustainable development,
  • It is imperative for combating national security threats ranging from cyber ware to autonomous military systems such as drones.
  • Investing in research and providing adequate incentives leads to creation of jobs, especially for the pool of engineers and researchers in the society. Under the ‘Make in India’ program, the government has targeted to create 100 million jobs from the manufacturing sector by 2022.

Key areas that need emphasis:

  1. Funding:
    • Researchers depend upon Government funding which has been very low.
    • Abysmal Private Funding in India, whereas there is only transfer of innovations from their home countries.
    • FDI in India has focused on setting up back-end offices for R & D centers in developed countries.
  2. Poor R&D:
    • Insufficient scientific research in India’s private sector. The large pharmaceutical sector, for example, remains dominated by the fabrication of generic products rather than original formulations.
    • As per UNESCO Institute of Statistics data, India spends 0.8% in GDP on R&D, which is notably less than China’s 2% or the 2.7% of the US 0r 4.2% of Israel.
    • Lack of enabling infrastructure.
  3. Policies :
    • Weak industry-academia linkage: Unlike western countries, there is disconnect between industry needs and academics creating a vacuum in research and innovation.
    • Intellectual Property rights (IPR) issues: Weak enforcement of IPR rules prevent the development of innovation ecosystem in the nation.
    • Backlogs and high rate of pendency for domestic patent applications. According to reports there is a backlog of almost 2 lakh patents pending examination due to manpower shortages.
  4. Bureaucratic inefficiencies:
    • Large number of procedures to be followed and clearances to be obtained to start and operate a business.
    • These procedures consume inordinately large amount of time.
  5. Weak Education System:
    • Indian education system is very weak especially when it comes to educating about entrepreneurship.
    • Finding a team with right approach could be challenging for entrepreneurs especially when they are looking for people of non-tech skills.
    • Today, Israel spends 7 per cent of its GDP on education.
  6. Corruption:
    • Rampant in many government departments.
    • The urge to make illegal money, immense misuse of power, frivolous publications and patents, faulty promotion policies, victimization for speaking against wrong or corrupt practices in the management, sycophancy, and brain drain
  7. Labour:
    • Low productivity of labour is also a big factor.
    • Stringent labour laws governing lay-off of employees make it very difficult to fire workers in case of non-performance or during times of financial distress.
  8. Ecosystem Limited to Big Cities:
    • The startup ecosystem in India is limited to big cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai etc.
    • There are very few resources that are actually working toward strengthening the startup ecosystem.

Government Efforts:

  1. Various schemes have been introduced to improve the quality of research institutes, for the promotion of technology business incubators (Atal Incubation Centres) and research parks that promote innovative ideas until they become commercial ventures.
  2. PM fellowship scheme aimed at encouraging young, talented, enthusiastic and result-oriented scholars to take up industry-relevant research.
  3. Ucchatar Avishkar Yojana: It aims to promote industry-specific need-based research so as to keep up the competitiveness of the Indian industry in the global market.
  4. Atal Tinkering Labs ensure that dedicated workspaces are created for students to innovate and develop ideas that will go on to transform India.
  5. Platforms like “Innovate India” promote and recognise innovations happening across the nation by enabling citizens to share their innovation.
  6. Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0 to help bring transformational change in rural development processes by leveraging knowledge institutions to help build the architecture of an Inclusive India.
  7. IMPRINT India is aimed at adopting engineering and technology as the vehicle to addressing the societal needs and achieving national prosperity
  8. Inter-country collaborations: Forging technology and innovation partnerships with other nations like India-Israel Innovation Bridge will act as link between start-ups of India and Israel.
  9. PRISM (Promoting Innovations in Individuals, Start-ups and MSMEs): It is a scheme launched by DSIR (Department of Science & Industrial Research) to support individual innovators with financial grants.
  10. Various enabling policies like 
    • Science, Technology & Innovation Policy 2013,
    • National Intellectual Property Rights Policy,
    • Technology Vision Document 2035
    • Space Vision India 2025

Way forward:

  1. The Economic Survey recommends doubling national expenditures on R&D with most of the increase coming from the private sector and universities.
  2. Improve math and cognitive skills at school level
  3. There is a need to encourage investor-led research.
    • In this direction, the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) has already been established. It is a promising start that needs to expand with more resources and creative governance structures.
  4. R & D should focus on technology and extension services that is directly related to common people
  5. Engage private sector, state government and Indian Diaspora.
  6. The private sector should be incentivised to undertake and support R&D through CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds.
  7. Reverse Brain Drain: Attract back scientific Indian Diaspora.
    • Ramanujan Fellowship Scheme,
    • Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) Faculty scheme
    • Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship,
    • Visiting Advanced Joint Research Faculty Scheme (VAJRA)

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