Rs 5,000 crore every year for innovation

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s aspiration on making India an innovation hub would mean a dedicated allocation of over Rs. 5,000 crore every year, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 12, 2012, 20:44:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s aspiration on making India an innovation hub would mean a dedicated allocation of over Rs. 5,000 crore every year.

On directions of the Prime Minister’s Office, the planning commission has decided to allocate one percent of the gross budgetary support (GBS) for innovation in the 12th five year plan.

Going by GBS of Rs. 5,21,000 crore for 2012-13, it translates to over Rs. 5,000 crore per annum.

Planning commissiondeputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia told HT said the proposal was in the "advance stage" of discussion and decision will be taken soon.

Indicating that the innovation road map has been decided, a senior planning commission official said an announcement is expected in the PM Independence day speech.

Singh in November 2011 wanted innovation to address the issues of problems of poverty, health and environment rather than focusing on the needs of the rich.

"Innovation can be a game changer to move from incremental change to radical change," he said.

The government is set to make his words turn into reality with the National Innovation Council headed by Sam Pitroda drawing a national innovation road map.

The HRD ministry will provide 2000 fellowships every year at the school level (class 11th and 12th) for innovation and will set up Meta Universities, a virtual university offering several disciplines, in Delhi and Pune.

The council has asked the ministry to leverage the National Knowledge Network for Meta Universities.

The government has also agreed to set aside a corpus of Rs. 500 crore for the India Inclusive Innovation Fund to help entrepreneurs start business based on their innovations.

"There will soon be a national innovation and entrepreneur policy to promote innovation," a senior official of the council said.

The council is also working on innovative cluster initiative with a target to increase the clusters to over 100 by end of this financial year and 500 by end of next financial year from present 10.

Each cluster would support innovation in a unique sector such as information technology, renewables and textiles and will cater to local industry needs, the official said.

The India innovation plan also includes showcasing the innovations in science museums across the country with the help of National Council of Science Museums.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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