Testing facility for SSI sector in Kanpur

Kanpur-based Harcourt Butler Technological Institute (HBTI) and the Indian Industries Association will collaborate with the department of scientific and industrial research (DSIR) to establish a nodal centre for testing facilities for the small-scale industry (SSI) sector. The HBTI is likely to act as the nodal centre once the proposal fructifies.

Machines for testing facilities will be provided by the DSIR and this will take care of the needs of the SSI as voiced by the IIA members in the one day workshop on Technology and R&D intervention for enhancing industry competitiveness, organised by DSIR and HBTI and hosted by IIA.The units can obtain certificates from these centres.

The workshop turned out to be brainstorming session for the SSI and the academia for collaborating to make new products.

Dr.GN Mathur, formerly director of the DRDO laboratory and currently visiting professor at the IIT-Kanpur, said that the research on Nano-technology conducted here has been taken by the Americans and has been successfully used to control the Parkinson's disease.

Examples were given of the Nuclear Biological and Chemical warfare suites, NBC for short, developed by the Directorate of Materials Research and Development establishment, DMSRDE, the local DRDO lab, have been commercialised by the local SSI units, who have been producing various parts of it, saving foreign exchange, providing it at one fifth of the international price.

The DSIR, which is organising these workshop everywhere, this one being fifth, to promote technology consciousness amongst the SSI,offered to give assistance up to Rs.10 lacs as grants to develop products.

Ashwini Gupta of the department said, that today India is not looked upon as a bottomless demand pit but as a global competitor. Therefore the Mark III technologies are not available. What is on offer is Mark II and one ends up buying the Mark one technologies. For India, he said, "Making it together" is a sound approach. Another name for it is the public-private partnership.

This has already started doing wonders. Under Dr. Marshelkar's leadership, the new millennium Indian technological leadership initiative various projects have been initiated, of which 50 are public funded and165 are privately funded. There are 37 participants in them; Rs.250 cr has been expended in last five years. There are two technologies, which are very close to commercialisation. These are TCS, CSIR and IISc, Bangalore, developed Bio-Suite and CDRI has developed molecule for tuberclosis. These are avant-garde products and there is none in the world, which can compete with them. Similar is the innovation in display technology in the Liquid Crystal display where a screen can be seen from all angles. This has been the work of IISc, and CSIR etc. Similarly for technology development, the DSIR had commissioned 150 projects many in automobile and pharmaceuticals and 70 of them have been completed. These are all cutting edge technologies.

He noted with satisfaction that the Indian companies have been considered most innovative amongst the companies of BRIC countries. The Indian patent filing in 1999-2003 in the US was 1018,as against that of Russia 1000, China 980,South Africa 566 and Brazil 525.

Dr. RP Singh, director, HBTI, lamented that the institute has an asset value of Rs.100 cr, and hardly 5% of it is being utilized. He said that this conference should take concrete steps for initiating industry "�academia joint effort to develop products. We should solve Industry's problems and the latter should take us into confidence.

The general feeling amongst the entrepreneurs was that IIT produces scientist's not usable engineers, therefore they welcomed HBTI's initiative as it had more applied disciplines then any other engineering college in the country.

The local small industry is now fairly attuned to take up new challenges and some of them spoke of what they have done to convert research into products.

They pointed out that it may be true that Jugar may not be the answer to the current problems, but till it is replaced by science, there is no other option but to resort to it. The present endeavour may lead to lessening of jugar and introduction of science.EOM.