President Pranab Mukherjee today asked bright minds in the country to create smart solutions to alleviate poverty, create employment and make society happier.
While acknowledging that India had the potential to be at the forefront of innovation, the President said "the encouraging steps in this direction notwithstanding, our country lags behind many others."
"India is ranked 76th in the Global Innovation Index 2014, much below China which is at the 29th position. Even Russia, at the 49th place and Brazil at 61, performed better than us," he said after inaugurating a week-long 'Festival of Innovations' at Rashtrapati Bhavan here.
The President, while talking to some of the chosen bright minds here, called upon the innovators to "continue generating ingenious solutions to overcome poverty, create employment and make the society healthier, happier and harmonious."
He said innovation is the "key to progress and prosperity."
"The process of innovation converts knowledge into social good and economic wealth. It encourages the engagement of talent with the society to improve the quality of life. India always has had a strong tradition of knowledge.
"Our knowledge system offer tremendous scope for research involving land-to-lab investigation and lab-to-land transfer of technology. It is important that the vast repository of indigenous knowledge is protected, documented and preserved in active collaboration with prominent practitioners of traditional knowledge," he said.
Mukherjee said building viable linkages between formal and informal sectors also call for deepening the involvement of the leaders of technological, financial and educational sectors with the creativity of common people and young students.
"A festival of innovation has been started at the Rashtrapati Bhavan this year. It will help to provide a platform to bring different stakeholders together and make these entities active partners in inclusive innovation. The innovators participating in this programme have come from various parts of our country. I hope that an empathetic value chain for disseminating good ideas can be built upon this initiative," he said.
During the event, Mukherjee gave away national biennial awards for 'grassroots innovations' and he also interacted with a new batch of innovation scholars in-residence and writers in-residence at the Presidential Estate.
