Rajya Sabha

The Indian economy has undergone a structural change over the last decade, with shares of agriculture, manufacturing and services in the gross domestic product (GDP) changing from 28.52%, 24.37% and 47.11% respectively in 1997-98 to 20.83%, 26.78% and 52.39% respectively in 2007-08. The share of merchandise trade in GDP increased from 20.28% to 38.61% over the same period and India’s share in world exports increased from 0.5% in 1990 to 1.1% in 2006.

Science and Technology has played an important role in bringing about this transformation in Indian economy, which is showing a shift from a predominantly agriculture based economy to manufacturing and services based economy and is now increasingly integrating with the world economy to become globally competitive, as demonstrated by its increasing share in world exports. Government S&T departments and agencies have undertaken or promoted research and development to provide innovative and contemporary technologies to industry and India’s recent growth has been driven by rapid expansion in export-oriented, skill intensive manufacturing and, especially, skill intensive services. India is increasingly becoming a top global innovation player in bio-technology, pharmaceuticals, automotive parts and assembly, information technology (IT), software and IT-enabled services (ITES) and has already become the world’s fourth-largest economy on purchasing power parity (PPP) basis.

Eleventh Five Year Plan approach to S&T has emphasized the following:

• Setting up a national-level mechanism for evolving policies and providing direction to basic research;
• Enlarging the pool of scientific manpower, strengthening the S&T infrastructure and attracting & retaining young people to careers in science;
• Implementing selected National Flagship Programmes which have direct bearing on the technological competitiveness of the country in a mission mode;
• Establishing globally competitive research facilities and centres of excellence;
• Kindling an innovative spirit among scientists to translate R&D leads into scalable technologies;
• Developing new models of public private partnerships (PPPs) in higher education, particularly for research in universities and high technology areas;
• Identifying ways and means of catalyzing industry-academia collaborations; and
• Promoting strong linkages with advanced countries, including participation in mega international science initiatives.

The Eleventh Plan Outlay for S&T sector comprising of Department of Science and Technology, Department of Scientific & Industrial Research and Department of Biotechnology the three Departments under the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Departments of Space and Atomic Energy has been raised to Rs.75,304 crore, which is approximately three times the Tenth Plan Outlay.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences (Independent charges), PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions and Parliamentary Affairs, Shri Prithviraj Chavan in a written reply to a question by Smt. T. Ratna Bai in the Rajya Sabha today.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : July 30, 2009