Dr Srivaric Chandrasekhar Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, and Ambassador Jan Thesleff, Embassy of Sweden in India spoke about ways to enhance the S&T Cooperation between the two countries while addressing a delegation from Sweden along with young startups which visited India.
Secretary, DST mentioned that India and Sweden have had longstanding close relations based on common values; strong business, investment and R&D linkages and our partnership aims to increase the impact of bilateral cooperation in innovation, science and technology. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has agreed to deepen the collaboration through the Joint Declaration on Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future during his visit to Sweden in 2018.
“Both countries have similar approaches to meeting global challenges and innovation is an important component of our new relationship. India’s ranking in innovation is improving globally. Besides, India’s Carbon emission is only 4 per cent when we are sharing 15 per cent population of the world,” he added.
Ambassador Jan Thesleff also agreed that India and Sweden are long-term partners. “Co-creation and innovation link us together. The visit of approximately 40 Indian delegations at the Ministerial/ Senior Officials levels to Sweden demonstrated our strong relations with India,” he added highlighting how DST, DBT and Vinnova collaboration is supporting researchers for more than a dozen years through joint calls, knowledge exchange as well as strategic dialogues and programmes. He emphasized People-to-people bridges and encouraged mobility between researchers and innovators from India to Sweden and vice-versa.
Both of them underlined the enthusiastic response of researchers against the current ‘Indo-Sweden call on the Circular Economy’. There are altogether seven funding agencies from both countries involved in this call. Both parties acknowledged that the evaluation is underway and the final result will be announced in early 2023. A new DST-Vinnova and DBT-Vinnova call will be announced in early 2023. The Indo-Sweden Joint Committee Meeting has also been planned for April next year.
