Patenting research

For all its vaunted technical prowess in areas like computer software and pharmaceuticals, India's research and development (R&D) work has seldom placed it among the world's fore-runners. This has been corroborated by the recent World Bank report on "Unleashing India's Innovation "" towards Sustainable and Inclusive Growth". The report points out, without mincing words, that in the field of R&D India is still at an early innovation stage, and well behind countries like China, Brazil, South Korea and even Mexico in terms of researchers per million people. However, it is also a fact "" and this too is mentioned in the report "" that India scores over Brazil and Russia in the number of patents it has got approved by the US Patent Office. In 2004, as many as 376 patents were granted to India, against 161 to Brazil and 173 to Russia. Though this contradiction may not be easy to explain, it may just be that India has become better organised when it comes to filing patents.

It is worth pointing out, though, that the prime constraint for Indian researchers is the paucity of budgets, after which must come the shortage of research centres that provide an intellectually stimulating environment as well as the facilities for creative work. A third constraint, pointed out last week by Microsoft's India chief, is the shortage of people with PhD degrees. So while companies like General Electric, SAP, Intel and Honeywell have located important research centres in India, the slow-moving and indeed hide-bound education system has not responded by churning out more research scholars.

Part of the problem is that research in India has been dominated by public sector bodies. Some of them have good reputations, like the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, but many others have little to commend themselves "" though they account for about 75 per cent of the national research budget, which is less than 1 per cent of GDP and well short of the 2 per cent target set for 2007. Much of the money in any case goes to space, atomic energy and defence, which have limited commercial interface and therefore very little spread effect. This may change as Indian companies acquire global scale and feel the need more than before to develop their own technologies "" as some of the pharmaceutical and automobile firms are beginning to do. But it is fair to say that most of the leading companies in fields like petrochemicals and telecommunications spend precious little money on research. Even the software companies tend to focus on software services and have not made much headway in developing new products.

What is heartening is the new focus in the publicly-funded laboratories on commercialising research outcomes. There is a perceptible shift in the research priorities of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) towards market-driven and internationally competitive R&D. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), too, is encouraging its institutes to take up need-based and problem-solving sponsored research and consultation projects so as to generate resources that help support farmer-oriented R&D. What the country needs are more such initiatives, so that overall R&D activity gets a boost.