Top leaders of industries interacted with Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and Professor K Vijay Raghavan and DST Secretary Professor Ashutosh Sharma at a high-level Industry consultation roundtable for the formulation of the new Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (STIP) 2020 and discussed ways to make the policy a strong one that would encourage more industry participation in R&D activities.
Chairing the consultation meeting, Professor Raghavan called for discussions about disruptive strategies to boost investment in R&D, ensuring benefits for industry from such investment as well as ways to mitigate investment risk. In his address to the industry leaders, Prof Sharma outlined the importance of investment in R&D and said that industry should not just invest in R&D but benefit more from R&D. He requested industry leaders to identify missing elements that could connect industry to academia so that the gap can be filled in the new policy.
The new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy aims to re-strategise priorities, sectoral focus, and methods of research and technology development for larger socio-economic welfare. The roundtable meeting was held over a virtual platform by the STIP 2020 Secretariat in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Science Policy Forum.
The consultation was focused on inviting suggestions from industry leaders for the upcoming STIP 2020 that will pave the way towards a knowledge-based economy. About 15 industry stalwarts participated on the first day of the roundtable meeting and shared their views and suggestions for the new STIP 2020 and discussed how to create an R&D ecosystem in a sustainable way to solve social problems. Representatives from the life sciences industry included Dr Rajesh Jain, MD, Panacea Biotec; Anu Acharya, CEO, Mapmygenome; Dr Rajiv I Modi, Chairman & MD, Cadila Pharmaceuticals; Dr Suresh Jadhav, Executive Director, Serum Institute of India, and Dr Venkata Ramana, Chief Scientific Officer, Reliance Life Sciences. Many other noted personalities from other industries were also part of this meeting.
Sharing their insights and expectation on the STIP 2020, industry captains stressed on the need for more collaboration between industry and academia and as well as the need to increase investment in R&D as a percentage of GDP. Dr Akhilesh Gupta, Head of STIP 2020 Secretariat & Advisor, DST presented an outline of the STIP 2020 formulation process from Track 1 to Track 4 initiated by STIP 2020 secretariat. He also placed before the industry captains some of the key expectations of the government.
The STIP 2020 Secretariat has been established jointly by the Office of Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) to coordinate and execute the entire STIP 2020 policy-making process.
The Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020) was flagged off jointly by the Office of PSA and DST. The new policy is expected to be released later this year, replacing the existing policy, which was formulated in 2013.
The STIP 2020 formulation process is organised into four highly interlinked tracks, which will reach out to around 15,000 stakeholders for consultation in the policy formulation. Track I involves an extensive public and expert consultation process through Science Policy Forum – a dedicated platform for soliciting inputs from larger public and expert pool during and after the policy drafting process. Track II comprises experts-driven thematic consultations to feed evidence-informed recommendations into the policy drafting process. Twenty-one, focused, thematic groups have been constituted for this purpose. Track III involves consultations with Ministries and States, while Track IV constitutes apex level multi-stakeholder consultation.
The participation of industry in R&D activities in a multi-institutional collaborative mode would provide faster dissemination of basic knowledge into applications. Policies commensurate with easing such a process need to be promoted more at this juncture. Industry-institutional collaboration at university and public-funded institutional level are to be further eased and promoted.
Encouraging.