By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 06, 2020: ABOUT 30 industry stalwarts, who are CII members participated in the two-day roundtable meeting and shared their views and suggestions for the new STIP 2020 and discussed how to create an R&D ecosystem in a sustainable way to solve social problems. The industry captains stressed on the need for more collaboration between industry & academia and also need to increase the investment in R&D as a percentage of GDP.
 
The deliberations focused on the need for more incentives and recognition to encourage industry to fund R&D and ways to leverage the use of CSR funds for the purpose. In the meeting, the industry leaders also discussed on the ways to use CSR funds to create a culture in industry, academia, and government for indigenous technology development and move towards self-reliance.

On the 2nd day of the high-level Industry consultation roundtable for the formulation of the new Science, Technology & Innovation Policy STIP 2020, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Professor K Vijay Raghavan and DST Secretary Professor Ashutosh Sharma, focused on the need for more incentives and recognition to encourage industry to fund R&D and ways to leverage the use of CSR funds for the purpose.

In his introductory address, Professor K Vijay Raghavan highlighted that the regulatory system need to be reformed and the CSR mechanism broadened to leverage it in R&D activities.
 
Prof Ashutosh Sharma emphasised on need for a robust policy for the long term, which could attract industry investment in R&D & also for identifying weak links to connect knowledge generators with knowledge consumers.
 
In his opening remarks, Mr. Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), re-emphasized the critical facets of R&D that needs to be immediately strengthened such as importance of public funded research in academic system, focused R&D programmes, unlocking entrepreneurial ecosystem, IP valuation, cross-collaboration, and effective translational research amongst others.