Jan 15, 2015 | Age Correspondent | Mumbai
The government can incentivise Indian scientific institutions to focus on affordable excellence in the context of the Prime Minister’s various sche-mes like ‘Make in India’ , said Dr R. Mashelkar, National Research Professor, CSIR-National Che-mical Laboratory.
Going forward also, “it is important that the government launches a Digital Inclusive Innovation initiative so that digital India become truly inclusive”, he added.
Speaking to this newspaper from Pune, Dr Mashelkar said, “When he was director general of CSIR, they had instituted the New Millennium Ind-ian Technology Leaders-hip Initiative (NMITLI), which was a public private partnership directed exc-lusively towards affordable excellence that beca-me a game-changer”.
“We need to launch national grand challenges for vaccines to therapeutics to tablets. We did make the $35 Akash tablet, after all,” he added.
Dr Mashelkar who heads the Prime Minister’s Swaach Bharat Technical Expert Committee, said the government can create special drivers for digital inclusive innovation by targeted funding for digital inclusion based R&D (like NMITLI).
It can also suitably design incentivisation (including fiscal) for all stakeholders participating in digital inclusion; give government procurement and price preference on products meeting the inclusive innovation’ mandate like the low cost Aakash tablet; and have a conducive policy frameworks to promote ‘digital inclusive innovation’.
Dr Mashelkar said Indian scientists can harness truly sophisticated science or technology to achieve high quality goods and services that are affordable to many, and not just a privileged few.
Digital India, he said will impact everything as there will be universal mobile access to online government services and basic delivery services.
