Top leaders of industries interacted with Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and Professor K VijayRaghavan and DST Secretary Professor Ashutosh Sharma at the 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.

 

While chairing the consultation meeting, Professor K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India 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 Ashutosh 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 gap can be filled in the new policy.

 

In his welcome address, Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII highlighted that the aspiration should be to enhance India’s GDP in R&D with matching contribution from Industry and we need to bring in disruptive change in policy making and structural change in implementation of the policy. Incremental changes will not take us where we as a nation aspired to be.

 

This is the first-ever high-level industry consultation for the formulation of a Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, which by way of its decentralized, bottom-up, and inclusive design process, aims to re-strategize 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, who are CII members participated in 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.

 

Top leaders from industry like Dr. Naushad Forbes, Co-chairman, Forbes Marshall Private Limited; Mr. S Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys Limited and Chairman Axilor Ventures; Mr. C P Gurnani, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director Tech Mahindra Limited; Mr. R Mukundan, Managing Director, Tata Chemicals Limited; Dr. Ramesh Datla, Chairman & Managing Director, ELICO Limited; Dr. Rajesh Jain, Managing Director, Panacea Biotec Limited; Ms. Anu Acharya, CEO, Mapmygenome; Dr. Rajiv I Modi, Chairman & Managing Director, Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited; Mr. Sumant Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, ReNew Power Limited; Dr. Gopichand Katragadda, Founder & CEO, Myelin Foundry; Mr Kishor Nair, COO, Avaada Energy; Dr. Debashish Bhattacharjee, Vice President, Technology & New Materials Business, Tata Steel Limited; Dr. Suresh Jadhav, Executive Director, Serum Institute of Indian Pvt. Ltd; Dr. Venkata Ramana, Chief Scientific Officer, Reliance Life Sciences; and Dr. R Mukhopadhyay, Director, R&D, JK Tyre, shared their insights and expectation on the STIP 2020.

 

The industry captains stressed on the need for more collaboration between industry & academia and also need to increase the investment in R&D as a percentage of GDP. Head of STIP 2020 Secretariat & Advisor, DST, Dr. Akhilesh Gupta, presented an outline of the STIP2020 formulation process from Track 1 to Track 4 initiated by STIP 2020 secretariat. He also placed before the industry captains some of key expectations of government.

 

The STIP 2020 Secretariat has been established jointly by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) to coordinate and execute the entire STIP 2020 policy-making process.

 

In early nineties, Dr. Kalam while chairing CII’s first National Committee on Technology, motivated industry by stating “Invest in technology today – to sustain in the future”, which has been the mantra and mission of CII since then. During last three decades, CII has heavily invested in carrying forward this mission through plethora of initiatives on its own and in partnership with the Government.

And today’s forum, in one such step in this direction involving the key stakeholders to target the achievable, plan out an agenda and act with the firm resolve to reach the aspirational level within a foreseeable time.

 

The Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020) was flagged off jointly by the (Office of PSA), and DST as India and the world reorient in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. 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 4 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 (21) 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.