'Bio, nanotechnology to be key manufacturing drivers in India'

Biotechnology and nanotechnology are among five key technologies that have the maximum potential to stimulate growth in Indian manufacturing and also serve national security priorities, a new study said today.
Micro and nanoelectronics, photonics, and advanced materials are the other three areas identified by the new study, which expressed concern over the "abysmal" participation of the private sector in research and development.
'Make in India: How could we be strategic?', the study by Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a green think tank, identified "five key technologies as having the maximum potential to stimulate growth in Indian manufacturing -- biotechnology, nanotechnology, micro and nanoelectronics, photonics, and advanced materials".

The report has been released days after the introduction of the National Capital Goods Policy during the Make in India Week programme in Mumbai recently.
"These five knowledge-intensive technology areas have wide -ranging applications across various industrial sectors with the potential to meet national security priorities and social development imperatives and also stimulate economic growth," it said.
Noting that the policy includes a provision for a Technology Development Fund and other commitments such as increasing skill availability and ensuring mandatory standards, CEEW said that the study identifies how to deploy the fund most effectively.

The existing innovation support system to help translate research efforts across these identified technologies is in its "nascent" stage in India, it said, adding that one of the key hurdles towards the country becoming an innovation hub is the "abysmal" participation of the private sector in research and development.

"The private sector contributes to less than one-third of the overall R&D spending in the country due to the associated risks in investment and technology failure.
"Importing components and licensing of intellectual property (from overseas) is the current approach across the strategic sectors. In the long run, this presents the biggest threat to innovation in India," it said.
The study recommended that the public sector don the role of 'risk capital' provider and move away from granting soft- loans for research to a royalty based system that allows for revenues to flow back to the public corpus.
"Our analysis finds that a large share of the total manufacturing output (calculated in terms of gross value addition) can be impacted by the identified technologies:

As a solution, the study also showcased the design of a
centralised one-stop technology information portal that provides a range of information, including open funding opportunities, status of existing grants, outcomes, partner opportunities, and others.
It said that such an extensive database could aid the identification of emerging areas of research, reduce duplication of efforts and assess the impact of R&D investments.
Pointing towards another key challenge, CEEW said that "inefficient and understaffed" Indian Patents Office (IPO) has an ever-increasing backlog of unexamined patents and trademark applications.
"In 2012, there were 1,23,255 pending patent applications, which have further increased to 2,46,495 (in addition to the 5,32,682 pending trademark applications) in 2015.

"IPO staff in India experience the highest per capita workload (20 applications a month, as compared with seven in Europe and China, eight in the United States) at the lowest pay. However, 490 patent personnel have been recently recruited to improve the efficiency of the Indian Patent Office," it said.
The study suggested that capacity expansion of the IPO (both funding and manpower) and outsourcing 'prior-art' searches to third-party service providers will "significantly" improve the efficiency of the patent filing and approval process.
"In addition, fast-track IP courts for patent infringements and a patent prosecution highway would accelerate patent prosecution procedures," it said.

"For a competitive manufacturing driven economy, we have to focus on three transitions -- from resource vulnerability to securing resources, from acquiring technology from overseas (for domestic use) to developing high technology domestically, and from education and skills to R&D and innovation.
"A slew of reforms identified in the study are necessary to set the innovation ecosystem in India right. Creating this sustaining eco-system must be made an important objective of the Make-in India campaign," said Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, CEEW.