India enjoys advantage of high return on Science Citation Index publications: Dr Ramasami

Chandigarh, February 16, 2015:  Former Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India Padma Bhushan Dr T Ramasami today said that India enjoys advantage of high return on SCI (Science Citation Index) publications per dollar invested into Research and Development. It is 2.5 times higher than China and 3.5 times higher than USA.

Ramasami was delivering a public lecture on “Profiling Indian Science Technology and Innovation (STI) Landscape” at Physics Auditorium of Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh today. PU Vice Chancellor Prof Arun Kumar Grover, large number of research scholars, students and teachers also attended the lecture.

Ramasami said that Indian STI landscape remained under nourished for a period of time. Some sincere efforts have been made to enhance the profile of Indian STI landscape to meet global bench marks, which are showing positive results, he added.

He said that in a knowledge sector like STI, phase differences between investment and outputs as well as effort and effect is only natural. He expressed hope that the profile of Indian STI landscape would improve. “How much improvement would happen would be decided by the way Indian institutions perform. Best is yet to come. Hope that it will”,  Ramasami added.

Ramasami said that public investments in India matches global bench marks but the private investments are far less. Our institutions excepting in some strategic areas like space and atomic energy are not globally competitive and India ranks poorly in innovation indices, he added.

Ramasami said that performance of a country in a knowledge sector like STI is dependent upon the strength and performance of institutions and ecosystems prevailing in organizations for global competitiveness. The National performance is a synthesis and not just an addition or subtraction.

Earlier, at PU Geology Department,  Ramasami interacted with the INSPIRE (Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research) Faculty members working at PU. He described it as a special day in his life that he was meeting the actual beneficiaries of the INSPIRE scheme and termed it as ‘happy assessment’.

It may be recalled that Dr Ramasami ha initiated the INSPIRE Programme when he was the DST Secretary at Government of India. He thanked PU for ‘trusting the Spirit of the Scheme’ and appreciated that eight of the fourteen INSPIRE Faculty members have been selected as the permanent teaching faculty members at the PU. He described it as a strong message to the community and the country.

(SK Vyas/Jalandhar)