The Hindu Business Line : `Arresting brain drain vital for growth'

Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Director-General and Secretary, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, addressing Elitex 2004 in the Capital on Monday. — Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi , April 26

THE top one per cent of the population holds 99 per cent of the country's intellectual potential and any brain drain of the best minds has a negative impact on India's potential to emerge as a global research and development (R&D) hub, according to the Director-General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr R.A. Mashelkar.

"We hear that several thousand professionals have returned to the country in the last three years. It is a positive sign, but I feel it is just a trickle. It has to turn into a reverse flow if we have to realise our dream of becoming one of the top three economies of the 21st century," Dr Mashelkar said, in his keynote address at `Elitex 2004,' the annual exhibition and seminar organised by the Ministry of Communication and IT.

He said that the noted economist, Dr Jeffrey Sachs, had projected that India would be the biggest economy in the world by 2050. Others had also predicted that if the steady growth continued, the country had the potential to emerge as one of the three major economies in the world. In order to achieve this, however, the country must tackle five key challenges.

The challenges, according to Dr Mashelkar, were - arresting the brain drain, public-private partnerships, institutional reforms in national labs and educational institutions, creating alternative paths for R&D and finding ways to make technology meaningful to the entire population.

"I believe that India will become a global R&D hub. This can be achieved not just in terms of a cost advantage, it has to be cost-cum-competence. India is not going to remain a poor country and one likes to agree that the 21st century will be ours," he said.

To address brain drain, Dr Mashelkar said that India had to become a land of opportunities.

"Bangalore is said to generate three times more ideas than other cities. But, we cannot just be a land of ideas without being a land of opportunities," he said.

Citing the example of software technology parks, he said there had to be a greater public-private participation.

These parks house nearly 3,500 companies and account for 80 per cent of the country's software exports, he added.

He said the scientific achievements of India, a country whose R&D budget is smaller than that of many top international companies, proved that there was enough potential.

"We spend just $0.5 billion on our space programme and developed a series of satellites and launch vehicles that are projected to capture 30 per cent of the global remote sensing market. Several drug molecules have been developed in India at a fraction of what global pharma giants spend on new molecules. There are several opportunities that need to be explored and R&D efforts that need to be nurtured," he said.

Dr Mashelkar also said that there was a need for three new revolutions in the country.

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