This document proposes a 3-pronged approach to promote research and innovation in India: 1) Increase government presence in universities through internships and job opportunities to expose students to research, 2) Significantly increase funding for research from the current 2.9% of GDP to 7%, and 3) Generate private sector support for research by demonstrating the reliability of universities. The approach aims to counter declining student interest in research careers and boost the number of research papers and patents in India.

1. MANTHAN TOPIC: BRAIN GAIN
“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our
health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has
ever been before.” - President Barack Obama, April 27,
2009
Promotion of Research and Innovation in India
Team Details:
Mritunjay Prasad, Khitish Kumar Sahu, Dinesh Sain,
Pankaj Goyal, Prahlad Das

2. DISTURBING TREND OF R&D IN INDIA
Trend Of IIT Bombay
students in jobs: R&D vs.
Others
Total publications country
wise for the year 2011
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13
% students placed
% R&D
% non-R&D
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
350,000
Number of research
papers published
USA
China
Italy
Japan
UK
India

3. DIMINISHING ORIENTATION TOWARDS RESEARCH
IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Challenges For Government Research Companies
 Challenges faced while accepting government R&D internships / jobs
 Higher Salary: Prime factor in setting up the mind of young and innovative students
 Security of On-Campus placements: Students get only one chance to sit in placements
in their campus, which they will surely not risk waiting for PSUs
 Brainwashing using Glamour and Money: Jobs with not so brain stimulating and
challenging work is made exciting by glamorizing lifestyles
 Sparse Knowledge of High Quality Research Being Carried out in the Country
 Cash Crunch / Idle Money
Challenges For Private Research Companies
 Result – Fund Cycle
Companies: First result then funds, University: First fund then results,
 Lack of mindset to carry out R&D; insufficient resource base,
 Lack of IPR protection, lack of incentives to carry out R&D,
 No enabling environment to foster collaboration with academia

4. 3-PRONGED APPROACH TO PROMOTE RESEARCH
& INNOVATION
 Prong 1:
Increasing Government presence in universities
• Providing internships
• Modifying job hiring pattern
• Increasing awareness of high end projects being
undertaken in the country by PSUs
 Prong 2:
Significant increase in funding supported majorly by the
government
 Prong 3:
Generating and winning the support of private sector

5. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (INTERNSHIPS)
 We propose the following pattern to provide internships which
will expose the students to brain stimulating work being carried
out.
Area of Interest
+
Number of Students
Internship Cell at each PSU
(HRs and Directors)
Internship Cell of each College
(consists of Professors and Student Bodies)
Students
Scientists
Decision

6. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (INTERNSHIPS)
 Funds required for the implementation of the Internship
scheme:
Pilot target PSUs (strategic areas), with internship
duration of 2 months in summer:
Total Money: INR 1.12 crores (for 2 months), excluding money
paid to internship cells of PSUs.
PSU No. of Labs No. of
Students
(6 each)
Money
(10,000
p.m.)
DRDO 50 300 30,00,000
ISRO 19 114 11,40,000
NAL 16 96 9,60,000
HAL 9 54 5,40,000

7. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 1 (JOBS)
To remove the risk of job insecurity among students
sitting in their campus placements, the following steps
are necessary:
 A directive should be sent by GoI to all universities to match their
Academic Calendar
 Recently, Supreme Court of India banned on-campus placements. To
overcome this, a nation wide examination for entry in PSUs should be
scheduled such that its result announcements matches with placement
time in universities
Increasing work efficiency in PSUs:
o Bonuses should be distributed in the following way:
Tier I: International Publications, Patents
Tier II: National Publications
Tier III: Number of successful internships offered
o Promotions not based on experience but on performance, which
in turn will be measured by publications and outstanding work
done by the employees

8. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 2
Allotment of more percentage of GDP to research and innovation to
be used for following purposes:
 Demonstration projects
 Develop pipeline and coordination of demonstration projects
available with central and state research institutions e.g. DST
 Supporting global demonstration programmes e.g. large scale
interdisciplinary programmes like Smart Grid, Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS) and Concentrated Solar Plants
(CSP)
 Laboratory to market movement
 Commercialization of research
 Facilitate the removal of barriers in basic and applied joint
research between India and other countries
 Support the launch of products from joint research in the
Indian market
 Support the incubation of joint research spinoffs in the Indian
market

9. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 2
 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
 IPR helpdesk: activities include information services, IP
filing facilitation centre in India, IP services, and
technology commercialization
 Coordinating with industry bodies for providing strategic
inputs related to IP laws
 Research reports related to IP in coordination with EU
partners
 Joint workshops on IPR with Indian partners

10. IMPLEMENTATION: PRONG 3
 Prove Reliability of universities:
 Building an yearly exhaustive university database, specifying
field wise publications, research funds and products delivered
to ensure credibility.
 To catalyze private investments, pilot projects involving the
government and university professors should be launched.
 On the lines of US Department of Defense’s DARPA, GoI
should launch its own agency and spearhead the research and
innovation in India by making the universities compete with
each other at a massive scale.

11. IMPACT
 Prong 1:
 Internships: 500+ students will benefit from this
program, which will instill them with confidence and
enthusiasm to work in core areas.
 Jobs: Students from elite universities will join these
PSUs, enabling a competitive work environment and
increasing their output efficiency.
o Prong 2:
 Currently, Indian GDP is 1.2 Trillion Dollars. Increasing
from current allotment of 2.9% to a reasonable 7%, the
cash available for research will increase to $ 84 billion
o Prong 3:
 Will increase participation from private sector in R&D to
new heights.

12. REFERENCES
 http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Internshi
p_Report_2012-13.pdf
 http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Report_2
011-12.pdf
 http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/IITB_Placement_Report_2
010-11.pdf
 http://placements.iitb.ac.in/files/PlacementReport.pdf