SANJAY THAPA
India needs to invest 5 times more in its innovation spending from current 0.3 per cent to achieve global average of 1.5 per cent of GDP, even as India’s contribution in innovation was recognised as it notched jumped 5 ranks to get to 52 position in the index in the current year from number 57 in 2018.
It was also for the first time that WIPO had held the launch in a developing world –India — even as Switzerland continued to remain the top in the list. This was historic as the GII event was being held in developing world – in India – for the first time in the developing world and it recognised the potential of innovation of India as per Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry and Railways. Under PM Modi’s leadership India has been highly motivated to get into the top 50 rank in the coming years and push India towards a vibrant innovative economies by 2022. Out of top 50 ranks in GII, the top 40 was always ruled by the rich countries, and it was India’s dream to break this ceiling reterieted Goyal.
He said that India’s contribution to the world in innovation needs to be seen in terms of Aryabhatt’s invention of zero. Without which all out science and mathematical innovations would not have been what is is today, Goyal said. He said that from Atal Innovation Labs to harness the innovation skills of young minds to Mangal yaan and the recent launch of Chandrayan on 22 July and the startup India were landmark events for this country to progress in innovations.
WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said that India has consistently outperformed as its contribution to GDP, India had consistently being ranked in top ten innovative countries in parameters like information and communications technology services, economy wide investments, number of graduates in science and engineering. Even though India had a contribution in terms of public spending in education –at about 0.04 per cent of the GDP, this needed to be hiked to 0.4 per cent of the GDP. The problem was where this money was going — it has been found that it was was going towards autonomous labs.Gurry also said that there was new phenomeon of de-globalisation emerging in the world market. This was a recent trend with increase in protectionism and it was leading to decrease in FDI flows across the world.
