Annual expenditure on Science

Mumbai, Oct 6: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh today said the government is committed to increase the annual expenditure on science and technology from less than one percent of the GDP to two per cent in the next five years.

Speaking at the platinum jubilee celebrations of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) organised at IIT Powai here, Dr Singh said, ''The country is on the threshhold of exciting new opportunities in the field of science and technology and, therefore we must mobilise all the potential for exercise of intellectual creativity, spirit of education and enterprise that exist among our people''.

India has to remain in the forefront of scientific research to achieve its developmental ambitions, he said addding that there was widespread concern about the decline in the standards of research work in universities and even in the IITs. ''A more fundamental challenge is to attract more and better students, both boys and girls, to the sciences at the school and college level,'' he added.

Therefore, teaching of the sciences and mathematics in our schools and colleges must be sufficiently interesting for the pupils, he added.

''I make specific reference to the girl students as they are performing very well in the sciences at the 10+2 stage. Our challenge is to encourage the students particularly the girls to pursue a career in science, teaching and research,'' he added.

Overall economic incentives and rewards have to be so oriented that more and more bright students opt for sciences, he added.

The Prime Minister further pointed out that in the recent month, he had expressed concern about the growing concern among Indian scientists that China had overtaken India in the field of sciences. ''If this is true, then we must ask ourselves why is it so and what can we do about it?,'' Dr Singh added. ''For hundred years, we had only one advanced institute in the reasearch of sciences and now in the last six months, our government has launched three such new institutions,'' he informed.

''I am confident that this quantum leap in high quality science education will herald a new era in the development of modern sciences in India,'' he said.

Dr Singh said the challenge before the country was to find out new pathways to sustain adequate incentives for the generation of new knowledge and simultaneously to make the fruits of this knowledge available and affordable to the poorer countries in the world.

Many of the brilliant students who had gone abroad are now returning home and taking up work assignments, he said and added that this reverse brain drain must be encouraged.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said science and technology will have to play a major role in making India a superpower by 2020 and NASI will help in this task.

UNI