Tirupati: Just as we have Corporate Social Responsibility, the concept of Scientific Social Responsibility needs to be inculcated to connect leading institutions to all stakeholders, including schools and colleges, Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed in his speech inaugurating the 104th Indian Science Congress in Tirupati on Tuesday.
“National laboratories should connect with schools and colleges to develop appropriate training programmes. Laboratories, research institutions and universities in each major city/region should be interlinked to function on a hub and spoke model. The hubs will share major infrastructure, drive our national science missions and be the engines that link discovery to application.
“The Ministry of Science & Technology is initiating a programme focused on students of Classes 6 to 10. The programme will scout, mentor, reward and showcase 10 lakh top innovative ideas focused on local needs from 5 lakh schools.”
He said the SCOPUS database (the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature from science, technology, medicine) indicates that India is now ranked sixth in the world with respect to scientific publications, growing at a rate of about 14 per cent as against the world average growth rate of about four per cent.
He asked institutions to involve foreign and NRI PhD students in post-doctoral research and establishing professionally managed regional centres in public-private partnership mode.
He said, “We equally need to keep an eye on the rise of disruptive technologies (that disrupt existing technologies or markets) and be prepared to leverage them for growth.”
One important area that needs to be addressed, he said, is the rapid global rise of Cyber-Physical Systems. “We can turn it into a huge opportunity by research, training and skilling in robotics, artificial intelligence, digital manufacturing, big data analysis, deep learning, quantum communication and Internet-of-Things. We need to develop an Inter-Ministerial National Mission in the Cyber-Physical Systems to secure our future by creation of basic R&D infrastructure, manpower and skills.
“Recently, we approved the LIGO project with USA to construct a state-of-the-art detector system in India.”
