Eye Opener

To be or not to be, “idiots” do better research? Here I mean the “Three idiots” who applied their mind out of box to see good application of water conducting electricity or vacuum cleaners for pulling baby from womb! These are only funny impractical ways to find application of innovation and research but at the same time show how mind could be applied for finding better results. After all what is innovation and research? It is probably the outcome of necessity, combined with frustration and urge to find out the remedies. Not necessarily, it always happens in laboratory of repute. Newton never sat in laboratory to innovate that there is gravitational force! Probably it requires dedication and thinking process. There is no two opinion that presently students are not exposed to research from early age and so are faculties. There is no career path for innovation because there is lot of pressure to choose stable career somewhere else. Therefore, school and college education level must imbibe the scientific spirit in our children instead of system of notebook-homework type of learning.

In spite of all time emphasis on it, unfortunately, Research and Development (R&D) has become just an ivory tower today for chanting mantra from top, giving best speeches, arranging visit of dignitaries to R&D labs and of course taking large benefits of tax - discounts. The result is that even after so many decades, we still depend upon import of technology and look outside even to smaller countries. Obviously something is wrong somewhere and R&D today needs to be relooked and reformed in our country.

The first step would be conducting total audit of R&D expenditures through independent auditors and evaluate them with respect to technology developed. All ritualistic approach on R&D should be taken away. Institutionalised and sector-wise R&D with dedicated R&D efforts need to be taken in the field of technology, healthcare & medicine, management and energy etc. Adoption of technology should be discouraged, instead, indigenous technological advancement be made for self-reliance. Intellectual right protection and incentivised regulation should be introduced. Law enforcement agencies, scientists, corporates, ministries and general public must be educated to change the mindset towards innovation and research.

It is unfortunate that industry has not converted the incentives given by Government for becoming self-reliant in technology, be it public or private sector. Statistics with expenditures and number of laboratories set-up have remained only for the purpose of good show in documentation centres. Mushroom growth of R&D Centres for the purpose of taking financial benefits should be stopped. Application of shop floor research must be tested at pilot plant level to convert them to commercial plants.

Disinvestment of public sector enterprises will provide good opportunity to utilise the part of proceed for development of R&D. Sector wise innovation and R&D through institutionalisation would give better results. Corporates, both public and private must allocate certain percentage of their profit for R&D. A mandatory provision to this effect combined with audit and feedback mechanism for evaluation of R&D centres would yield better result.