Indian R&D Scenario; A comprehensive coverage

The Potential:
By 2008, forecasts McKinsey, IT services and back-office work in India will swell fivefold, to a $57 billion annual export industry employing 4 million people and accounting for 7% of India's gross domestic product. That growth is inspiring more of the best and brightest to stay home rather than migrate. What India requires today is to analyse the amazing growths achived by countries like China, Vietnam etc and use the huge manpower resources effectively.
(I have given an idea to achieve this utilisation here)

Facts:
For all its R&D labs, India remains visibly Third World. IT service exports employ less than 1% of the workforce. Per-capita income is just $460, and 300 million Indians subsist on $1 a day or less. Lethargic courts can take 20 years to resolve contract disputes. And what pass for highways in Bombay are choked, crumbling roads lined with slums, garbage heaps, and homeless migrants sleeping on bare pavement. More than a third of India's 1 billion citizens are illiterate, and just 60% of homes have electricity. Most bureaucracies are bloated, corrupt, and dysfunctional. The government's 10% budget deficit is alarming. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims always seem poised to explode, and the risk of war with nuclear-armed Pakistan is ever-present.
So it's little wonder that, compared to China with its modern infrastructure and disciplined workforce, India is far behind in exports and as a magnet for foreign investment. While China began reforming in 1979, India only started to emerge from self-imposed economic isolation after a harrowing financial crisis in 1991. China has seen annual growth often exceeding 10%, far better than India's decade-long average of 6%.

Strengths and Weaknesses (India-China):
Still, this deep source of low-cost, high-IQ, English-speaking brainpower may soon have a more far-reaching impact on the U.S. than China. Manufacturing -- China's strength -- accounts for just 14% of U.S. output and 11% of jobs. India's forte is services -- which make up 60% of the U.S. economy and employ two-thirds of its workers. And Indian knowledge workers are making their way up the New Economy food chain, mastering tasks requiring analysis, marketing acumen, and creativity.

Future Vision:
India also is working to assure that it will be able to meet future demand for knowledge workers at home and abroad. India produces 3.1 million college graduates a year, but that's expected to double by 2010. The number of engineering colleges is slated to grow 50%, to nearly 1,600, in four years. Of course, not all are good enough to produce the world-class grads of elite schools like the IITs, which accepted just 3,500 of 178,000 applicants last year. So there's a growing movement to boost faculty salaries and reach more students nationwide through broadcasts. India's rich diaspora population is chipping in, too. Prominent Indian Americans helped found the new Indian School of Business, a tie-up with Wharton School and Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management that lured most of its faculty from the U.S. Meanwhile, the six IIT campuses are tapping alumni for donations and research links with Stanford, Purdue, and other top science universities. "Our mission is to become one of the leading science institutions in the world," says director Ashok Mishra of IIT-Bombay, which has raised $16 million from alumni in the past five years.

If India manages growth well, its huge population could prove an asset. By 2020, 47% of Indians will be between 15 and 59, compared with 35% now. The working-age populations of the U.S. and China are projected to shrink. So India is destined to have the world's largest population of workers and consumers. That's a big reason why Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) thinks India will be able to sustain 7.5% annual growth after 2005.


Source: Businessweek Dec 8,2003

Analysing patenting activity and investment in Science

Analysing patenting activity and investment in Science

Abstract: India has stressed development in Science and Technology (S&T) from the
very beginning of the plan period. The paper highlights the S&T
investment in the country since independence in comparison with a
declining trend in patents obtained by Indians over the period. The paper
analyses this disturbing statistics. It tries to find out the reasons behind
such performance in the Research and Development (R&D) front in spite
of hefty investment. Finally there are some suggestions for formulating a
concrete policy boosting R&D to obtain competitive advantage through
patenting.

-Sabuj Kumar Chaudhuri
Junior Research Fellow (UGC), Department of Library and Information
Science, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32
E-mail: sabuj_c@yahoo.co.uk
Barnali Sengupta
Revenue Officer (WBCS), Block Land & Land Reforms Office, English
Bazar, Malda-732101
E-mail: barnachaudhuri@yahoo.co.in

Link to the complete research paper

India will take 163 years to match China's R&D

12 Feb 2007, 1216 hrs IST,PTINEW DELHI: India will take 163 years to match the scientific workforce of China if it continues to add researchers at the current rate, a mathematician has claimed. According to the 2002-03 figures, China had 8.5 lakh workers in the research and development sector as against 1.15 lakh in India. "Just to catch up with what China is today: 7,35,000 scientists to be added at 4,500 per year, it will take us 163 years," Gangan Prathap, scientist-in-charge of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore said in the latest issue of journal Current Science . The statistics state that India annually produces some 4,500 doctorates as against 40,000 PhDs in China every year. Prathap said his calculations were on the assumption that China does not add any scientists to its R&D workforce and India continues to add at the rate of 4,500 a year. India spent $3.7 billion on science as against China's $15.5 billion R&D budget for 2002-03. Chinese scientists produced 50,000 research papers that were cited by peers in their studies as against 19,500 by India. The Ministry of Science and Technology is seeking a five-fold increase in budget allocation in the 11th Five Year Plan. It has also unveiled a Rs 1,350-crore plan to attract students to science.

read more | digg story

Need of more R&D (Research and Development ) Activities in India

The article states the present condition of Student Research Activities in India and compares them to that of other countries. It also delves into the growing concerns over the dismal state of higher education in educational institutions and strives to provide some workable and permanent solution.

read more | digg story