India's Changing Innovation System Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities for Cooperation: Report of a Symposium (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Panel III: Growing the Science and Technology, Research, and Innovation Infrastructure
Panel III: Growing the Science and Technology, Research, and Innovation Infrastructure
Pages 88-108
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From page 88... ...
, the largest chain of publicly funded industrial research and development (R&D) institutions in the world.
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From page 89... ...
As an example, he cited the Global Research Alliance, which comprises chains of national laboratories: CSIR India, CSIR South Africa, CSIRO Australia, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Germany, VTT Finland, DTI Denmark, TNO Netherlands, Battelle U.S., and SIRIM Malaysia. In line with the diversity of their home countries, these labs serve different purposes, and they had changed over time as well.
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From page 90... ...
• Leading scientists. In his 2003 book The Scientific Edge, the famous Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar placed CSIR's transformation among India's top 10 achievements of the 20th century, in a league with the Green Revolution and the work of the country's Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear power.
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From page 91... ...
Noting that national labs are often judged harshly when the criteria used are revenues, patents, or publications, Dr. Mashelkar projected a photo of young children whose burns had been treated with CLRI's collagen dressings and suggested attributing value instead based on the smiles covering their faces.
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From page 92... ...
As part of an industrial technology development program whose first phase started in 1991, marketing teams were created in each laboratory, decision making was devolved, specialized business development consultants were brought in, members of the CSIR staff were allowed to serve on boards of directors in the private sector, awards were given for marketing and business development, and knowledge was used as equity. At the same time, CSIR created financial incentives, linking performance to budget allocations, offering incentives to scientists, and establishing laboratory reserve funds.
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From page 93... ...
To underline his contention that the context decides the content, Dr. Mashelkar turned from the transformation of CSIR India to that of CSIR South Africa, which had been restructured into business units in 1987 and undergone reviews in 1997 and 2002, the more recent of which he had chaired.
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From page 94... ...
Dr. Mashelkar concluded with a list of those issues he believed to be key in renewing a national laboratory: • strategy may change from country to country and from time to time; • continuous repositioning is essential; • local relevance and global excellence must be kept in balance; • "directed" science has to be achieved; and • creating a "golden triangle" uniting national labs, universities, and industry is crucial.
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Unlike today, Dr. Indiresan noted tartly, those who at that time studied abroad returned to India, and it was the recipients of those scholarships who upon their return completely rebuilt Indian science and technology.
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From page 96... ...
While Dr. Indiresan likened this reservation policy to America's affirmative action in that it is intended to help people who are being left behind, he pointed to what he called a "slight difference": Under affirmative action a person who is not competitive but is competent is admitted, whereas under the reservation policy, he claimed, those who were competitive would be admitted even if they were not competent.
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From page 97... ...
Of 250 faculty members who appeared worthy of consideration, only one was from outside the IIT system -- and this in a country with 1,560 engineering colleges. Similar evidence emerged, he said, when the Department of Microtechnology offered to provide funding that was substantial by Indian standards to institutions that would start postgraduate courses.
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From page 98... ...
India was also "very good" and had done extremely well. The country was a world leader in space technology, and, owing to the Green Revolution that began in 1973, it had gone from dependence on agricultural imports to food surplus within 10–12 years and was now the world's leading producer of milk.
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From page 99... ...
advice on organizing technical education had in the mid-20th century, this time both through helping the country establish science and technology parks and through teaching Indians how to hold talented people just right. Unable, it seems, to resist a humorous story, he used one to present a "warning" regarding the need to keep relations between the two countries in equilibrium.
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From page 100... ...
To get started, he projected a statement that the NSF's director, Arden Bement, had made at the Materials World Network Symposium in Cancun, Mexico, in August 2005: "Global collaboration -- among scientists, engineers, educators, industry, and governments -- can speed the transformation of new knowledge into new products, processes, and services, and in their wake produce new jobs, create wealth, and improve the standard of living and quality of life worldwide." As was evident, Dr. Bement felt very strongly about the importance of collaboration and the obligation of the United States to promote it.
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From page 101... ...
Before India became self-sufficient in food production and before the rupee was made convertible, the United States India Fund was set up to fund Indian agencies in rupees.
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From page 102... ...
In the latest Materials World Network competition, one of the nine proposals involving Indian participation to be submitted had come up a winner. As the overall success rate of proposals submitted to NSF's Materials Research Division stands at about 20 percent, and in light of the statistics of small numbers, one in nine is "not that bad," judged Dr.
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From page 103... ...
• Bottom-up versus top-down selection: In contrast to agencies that specify the amount of money they are willing to spend in a particular area, an approach he called "top down," NSF typically took a "bottom up" approach, examining proposals that came in over the transom and funding those it considered promising. • Distributed versus centralized funding: Typically, OISE did not receive research proposals directly; rather, its program directors were contacted by NSF research divisions to which proposals with an international component had come in.
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From page 104... ...
Wendy Cieslak of Sandia National Laboratories, describing CSIR's renewal as "amazing" and "impressive," speculated that its scientists must love working in such a vibrant research environment and contributing to industrial and national competitiveness. Piquing her curiosity was the fact that the turnaround chronicled by Dr.
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From page 105... ...
" This meant, had it been done in the United States or in Europe? His response was to reconceptualize the challenge before the lab: NCL would become an international chemical laboratory whose ultimate product, knowledge, could be sold anywhere.
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From page 106... ...
Dr. Mashelkar had started a program known as the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative, the idea of which to move away from reverse engineering and to work in areas where technologies and markets were not yet established.
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From page 107... ...
In the aftermath of his making a case for giving the regional engineering colleges "a place in the sun," which he had in 1999, they were converted into National Institutes of Technology that received their funding from the central government rather than the states, and their governance structure was changed completely. In addition, the government engineering colleges and hundreds of other colleges are being lifted up, thanks in part to World Bank support.
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From page 108... ...
Dr. Borlaug, if he understood the story correctly, had assumed risk in conducting research based on his own commitment to doing something rather revolutionary, something that might make a dramatic change.
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