MANTHAN TOPIC: BRAIN GAIN

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before.” - President Barack Obama, April 27,

2009

Promotion of Research and Innovation in India

Team Details: Mritunjay Prasad, Khitish Kumar Sahu, Dinesh Sain,

Pankaj Goyal, Prahlad Das

DISTURBING TREND OF R&D IN INDIA

Trend Of IIT Bombay

students in jobs: R&D vs.

Others

Total publications country

wise for the year 2011

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13

% students placed

% R&D

% non-R&D

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

Number of research

papers published

USA

China

Italy

Japan

UK

India

DIMINISHING ORIENTATION TOWARDS RESEARCH

IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Challenges For Government Research Companies

Challenges faced while accepting government R&D internships / jobs

Higher Salary: Prime factor in setting up the mind of young and innovative students

Security of On-Campus placements: Students get only one chance to sit in placements

in their campus, which they will surely not risk waiting for PSUs

Brainwashing using Glamour and Money: Jobs with not so brain stimulating and

challenging work is made exciting by glamorizing lifestyles

Sparse Knowledge of High Quality Research Being Carried out in the Country

Cash Crunch / Idle Money

Challenges For Private Research Companies

Result – Fund Cycle

Companies: First result then funds, University: First fund then results,

Lack of mindset to carry out R&D; insufficient resource base,

Lack of IPR protection, lack of incentives to carry out R&D,

No enabling environment to foster collaboration with academia

3-PRONGED APPROACH TO PROMOTE RESEARCH

& INNOVATION

Prong 1:

Increasing Government presence in universities

• Providing internships

• Modifying job hiring pattern

• Increasing awareness of high end projects being undertaken in the country by PSUs

Prong 2:

Significant increase in funding supported majorly by the government

Prong 3:

Generating and winning the support of private sector

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (INTERNSHIPS)

We propose the following pattern to provide internships which

will expose the students to brain stimulating work being carried

out.

Area of Interest

+

Number of Students

Internship Cell at each PSU

(HRs and Directors)

Internship Cell of each College

(consists of Professors and Student Bodies)

Students

Scientists

Decision

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (INTERNSHIPS)

Funds required for the implementation of the Internship scheme:

Pilot target PSUs (strategic areas), with internship duration of 2 months in summer:

Total Money: INR 1.12 crores (for 2 months), excluding money paid to internship cells of PSUs.

PSU No. of Labs No. of

Students

(6 each)

Money

(10,000

p.m.)

DRDO 50 300 30,00,000

ISRO 19 114 11,40,000

NAL 16 96 9,60,000

HAL 9 54 5,40,000

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (JOBS)

To remove the risk of job insecurity among students sitting in their campus placements, the following steps are necessary: A directive should be sent by GoI to all universities to match their

Academic Calendar

Recently, Supreme Court of India banned on-campus placements. To overcome this, a nation wide examination for entry in PSUs should be scheduled such that its result announcements matches with placement time in universities

Increasing work efficiency in PSUs:

o Bonuses should be distributed in the following way:

Tier I: International Publications, Patents

Tier II: National Publications

Tier III: Number of successful internships offered

o Promotions not based on experience but on performance, which in turn will be measured by publications and outstanding work done by the employees

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 2

Allotment of more percentage of GDP to research and innovation to be used for following purposes:

Demonstration projects

Develop pipeline and coordination of demonstration projects available with central and state research institutions e.g. DST

Supporting global demonstration programmes e.g. large scale interdisciplinary programmes like Smart Grid, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Concentrated Solar Plants (CSP)

Laboratory to market movement

Commercialization of research

Facilitate the removal of barriers in basic and applied joint research between India and other countries

Support the launch of products from joint research in the Indian market

Support the incubation of joint research spinoffs in the Indian market

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 2

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

IPR helpdesk: activities include information services, IP

filing facilitation centre in India, IP services, and

technology commercialization

Coordinating with industry bodies for providing strategic

inputs related to IP laws

Research reports related to IP in coordination with EU

partners

Joint workshops on IPR with Indian partners

IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 3

Prove Reliability of universities:

Building an yearly exhaustive university database, specifying

field wise publications, research funds and products delivered

to ensure credibility.

To catalyze private investments, pilot projects involving the

government and university professors should be launched.

On the lines of US Department of Defense’s DARPA, GoI

should launch its own agency and spearhead the research and

innovation in India by making the universities compete with

each other at a massive scale.

IMPACT

Prong 1:

Internships: 500+ students will benefit from this program, which will instill them with confidence and enthusiasm to work in core areas.

Jobs: Students from elite universities will join these PSUs, enabling a competitive work environment and increasing their output efficiency.

o Prong 2:

Currently, Indian GDP is 1.2 Trillion Dollars. Increasing from current allotment of 2.9% to a reasonable 7%, the cash available for research will increase to $ 84 billion

o Prong 3:

Will increase participation from private sector in R&D to new heights.

REFERENCES

http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Internshi

p_Report_2012-13.pdf

http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Report_2

011-12.pdf

http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Report_2

010-11.pdf

http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/PlacementReport.pdf