FORGING A CULTURE OF INNOVATION
Why has this issue cropped up ?
There is no Indian university in the top hundred and only 47 thousand patents were filed in India in 2016 (China filed over a million patents).
The hurdles to innovation
- India’s R&D spending, as a percentage of GDP, still lags significantly, at 0.69% in 2015 — this share has been stagnating for the last decade.
- Over 90% of Indian start-ups face a risk of failure in their initial failure, partially due to a lack of access to financing. Access to such financing streams, to public and private players needs to be improved significantly, with a reduction in institutional barriers.
- The translation of R&D spend into patents can be affected by institutional constraints as well. Only 28% of patents registered for applications are eventually filed.
- Patent pendency times in India are among the highest in the major economies, with a patent taking about 6-7 years between a request for examination and a final office action. In comparison, South Korea and China have pendency timings of 16 and 22 months, respectively.
- The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), which filed over 13,000 patents (2014-2017), shut down its commercializing arm, CSIR-Tech, due to lack of funding.
- Lack of transformative innovation across industries is a cause of concern.
- India lacks unique business models or new technologies.
- R&D, as a professional function, fails to attract top talent.
- 35% of publications in “bogus journals” comes from India.
Way forward
- We need to push beyond metrics, papers and patents to focus on providing solutions to development and economic challenges.
- A focus on building an innovation culture is necessary, particularly giving the transformative shifts under way in sectors critical to India’s economy — from electric cars in automobiles to in-sourcing in IT services, the economy is exposed to significant job losses and a fall in exports over the coming decade.
- Our innovation policy has to shift beyond a focus on increasing R&D spending to inculcating a mindset of “out-of-the-box” thinking in our universities, start-ups and corporate.
- India’s educational policies need to be redesigned, with a focus on building cognitive abilities, beyond rote learning and focus on quantitative subjects.
- The Atal Innovation Mission is an encouraging start, focusing on facilitating school-level financial grants to help nurture an initial layer of innovation. But we need to move beyond this to focus on taking advantage of the data analytics boom, improving educational qualities beyond our existing islands of excellence to the whole university system.
- The impact of R&D spending on shifting a nation’s trajectory from a commodity-based growth to one based on capital and IP is well-noted; South Korea increased its GDP 12 times over the past 45 years, while R&D spend rose from 0.26% of GDP in 1965 to well over 4.04% in 2011
Conclusion
For a nation whose public debate is often given to recalling innovations in our historical and mythological past, the future state of India’s R&D activities demands significant attention.
Relevance : GS 3
