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In a move that would give strong indigenous technology development, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today signed a memorandum of understanding for the commercialisation of technical know-how available with the premier industrial research agency.
The agreement will allow members of the CII to tap technologies available with 38 constituent laboratories of the CSIR and develop them towards commercial products and processes. The CSIR has recently reckoned that there are more than 640 technology products and processes available with its labs across the country for commercial exploitation.
“This is the coming together of the best of industry and the best of science and technology in the country,” said CSIR Director General Girish K Sahni after the signing of the MoU.
While the CSIR has the mandate to develop technologies for the industry, the CII has been putting a major emphasis on how to increase Indian industry’s technology depth so that it can become globally competitive, said CII Director General Chandrakant Banerjee.
“For the last few years, we have been extremely concerned that the Indian industry’s contribution to the Research and development (R&D) at 0.3 per cent of the GDP was abysmally low as compared to 1.5 per cent globally,” Banerjee said. This collaboration is an attempt to move he needle in the right direction so that the industry’s share in the R&D is increased, he said.
The CII has always been recommending to the government to abolish R&D tax incentives currently given to the industry and replace this incentive with risk sharing-cum- investment model, Banerjee said. CII, he said, has been instrumental in attracting the industry’s R&D investment to a unique PPP joint venture company that we have with the Department of Science and Technology, called Global Innovation and Technology Alliance. “The CSIR-CII partnership I think will be exactly in this direction,” he said.
If takes off well, the partnership will be a major boost for the research agency as it has been struggling to take technologies on its self to the market. The government has recently mandated CSIR labs to earn at least 20 per cent of their annual budget from external sources by the end of next financial year and increase it further to 40 per cent over next few years.
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