India’s innovation potential and initiatives

What is the realistic potential of India’s Innovation ecosystem?

• The Indian innovation system is very multifaceted in terms of user segments and income gaps. However, central government is trying to boost innovation in the country through several schemes.
• Innovation in India is being planned around the triangle of collaboration, facilitation and responsible regulation. It is advanced by cross-disciplinary collaboration.
• India is the fastest growing country in terms of Internet usage, with over 700 million users and the number projected to rise to 974 million by 2025.
• The JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) trinity has 404 million Jan Dhan bank accounts with 1.2 billion Aadhaar and 1.2 billion mobile subscribers.
• There is a potential to add over $957 billion to India’s GDP by 2035 with artificial intelligence (AI).
• The realistic potential of technology for India echoes in the ‘Amara law’ named after Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist, who said that “People tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.”

What are the Initiatives of Government of India to boost innovation?

Recently, Indian government organised two events to boost innovation:

• Vaishvik Bharatiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) summit:Numerous overseas Indian-origin academicians and Indians participated to form ideas on innovative solutions to several challenges.
• Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) 2020 summit: It grants a course to efficiently use AI for social empowerment, inclusion, and transformation in key sectors such as health care, agriculture, finance, education and smart mobility.
• Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scholarships:Attract youth talent to the study of science at an early age and thus build the required critical human resource pool for Science & Technology system.
• Ramanujan Fellowship:It is meant for brilliant Indian scientists from outside India to take up scientific research positions in India.
• Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme: Providing avenues to women scientists and technologists for capacity building.
• Smart India Hackathons (SIH):To provide students a platform to solve some of pressing problems of society.
• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM):To promote innovation and entrepreneurship across India.
• Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme: Largest early stage biotech funding programme in India. Aims to encourage researchers to take bio-technology closer to market through a start up.
• Future Skills PRIME(Programme for Reskilling/Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability) capacity building platform
• Triad of Scheme for Transformational and Advanced Research in Sciences(STARS), Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) and Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS): Common objective is to boost India specific research in social and pure sciences.
• National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems:Aims to catalyse translational research across Al, IoT or the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data Analytics, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Data Science.
• The Reserve Bank of India, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India allow for regulatory sandboxes for channelling new ideas.
• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently introduced recommendations for regulating cloud services in India, suggesting a light-touch regulation in collaboration with industry, balancing commercial freedom and principles adherence.

What are the steps to be taken?

• Increase R&D spending: Government should frame a policy with the aim of increasing total GERD (Gross domestic expenditure on R&D) to 2% of India’s GDP.
• Global partnerships in innovation: Global innovation partnerships need to be strengthened by enhancing public-private partnership mechanisms and increased public funds should be earmarked for joint industrial R&D projects.
• Idea-to-market challenge:  Government needs to create a special fundto help Indian innovations to advance their start-ups during difficult times.

Way forward

• Innovation has the potential to build a future where AI will transform education and health care, clean energy will drive economy, gene-editing would help us bring back extinct species and virtual reality will change the way we interact with the physical world.
• India must make the right institutional, industrial, and policy reforms.