March 28, 2002

    The Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee has said that the Government will continue to provide growing support to science & technology as it firmly believes that this sector is the key to India’s faster economic growth in future. Keeping this in view, the Budget allocation for three major departments of the Ministry of Science & Technology, i.e., Department of Science & Technology, Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has been hiked by more than 35 per cent for the next fiscal. This is the highest ever increase in consecutive years since Independence. Presiding over the Annual General Meeting of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research here, Shri Vajpayee reiterated the Government’s decision to increase the investment in research and development to 2 per cent of GDP.

    Shri Vajpayee, who is the President of the CSIR, also said that considering the importance of science and technology in the growth of the nation, the tenth plan rightly emphasises the need to further integrate science and technology into all Government policies and programmes that aim at reducing poverty, creating large scale productive employment opportunities and increasing the living standards of our people. This centrality of S&T should be reflected in the identification of technology choices, investments and the active participation of the scientific community in every sector of the economy both modern and traditional. He told the scientists that greater focus on agriculture, small industries, rural development and health care will help in bringing science closer to the masses, while at the same time, attention to frontier areas such as information technology, biotechnology, advanced materials and energy sources will enable India to obtain a competitive position in the emerging global economy. It will also help in increasing India’s share both in technology-led exports and export of technologies. Which is why we should make greater efforts to promote technological plurality, traditional, conventional and high-tech so as to enhance productivity in each of these sectors, the Prime Minister averred.

    Shri Vajpayee also called for forging new public-private partnerships in Research and Development which includes mutual sharing of physical and intellectual infrastructure.. The Government will fully support such bold and creative initiatives. He wanted everybody in India’s S&T establishment to note that the quantitative increase in financial inputs should be more than matched by qualitative increase in outputs. We should see that every R&D rupee brings greater benefits to the nation, the Prime Minister added.