Where’s the jugaad

Time and again, we are reminded, and rightly so, for being way down in the global innovation sweepstakes. The Global Innovation Index 2017, compiled by Cornell University, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organisation, shows India has moved up six places among 130 nations over the last year, while China, at 22nd place, is the only middle-income country to be in the top 25. Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the US and the UK are the top five innovative countries. That India lags behind, despite its army of scientific and technical manpower, is not surprising. More than policy lacuna, we have overwhelming ecosystem issues, in higher education, government and the corporate world. India offers liberal tax breaks on R&D spends, at well over 100 per cent, yet studies have shown that research has been essentially limited to three sectors: pharma, automobiles and IT. Foreign companies have been at the forefront of R&D spend, leaving India Inc behind. Further, studies also suggest that these innovations do not have positive spillovers for the domestic economy. India Inc needs to introspect on the lack of R&D culture, despite the tightening of intellectual property laws since 2005. It needs to get its act together in a competitive, rapidly changing world.

India does not figure anywhere in the global university rankings either. These studies may have been questioned for their methodology (excessive emphasis on being published in Western journals), but the fact that our universities do not figure in the top 100 tells a story. A focus on churning out half-baked technology graduates, with a poor grounding in basic sciences, seems to have played a role here. India’s R&D scientists, studies point out, number less than 200 per million people, against over 800 in the case of China and over 5,000 in Japan. The Institutes of Science Education and Research have come up rather late in the day. Besides, if the West has stolen a march, it is because of its robust university system. Its universities are not just well endowed, but are also crucibles for inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas, rather than places where fear of authority and thought control prevail. A socio-cultural resistance to encouraging individual excellence is the norm here, in the lab and at the workplace.

While adapting workforce to skill requirements, the Indian economy should take a long term view on its needs — something that’s absent across sectors, from urban governance to agriculture. If government bodies do not put a premium on performance, the private sector is driven by short-termism. A premier agency should work towards dovetailing research with long-term goals.