New Indian Minister for Science and Technology sworn in

With around 550 million voters deciding the fate of 15000 candidates spanning 500 political parties, India saw the biggest elections in history which lasted over a period of 5 weeks.

The result was a clear parliamentary majority for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and, the new Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi. This is the first time a single party has secured a majority since 1984.

As with any new government, people will now look to what policies the government will bring in and what they’ll prioritise. We of course, coming from the world of science, were keen to know what this means for Science and Innovation in India! Here is what we know.

As this blog goes live, we’ve heard that India’s new Minister of State for Science and Technology is Dr. Jitendra Singh. In this role he will have independent charge of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Earth Sciences. Reporting to the Prime Minister, he will also have day to day responsibility for Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space, among others. His academic background is Diabetes & Endocrinology and he has authored eight books and several articles. We look forward to working with him to further develop the UK-India Science and Innovation relationship.

In terms of policy, the S&T section of BJP’s manifesto reads – ‘Science and Technology – India Innovates and India Leads’. We expect this means that the new government will focus on promoting innovation for the economic benefit of the country. This is similar to UK’s position on R&D, which was highlighted in this recent article. The manifesto further promised to address global challenges like ensuring food, agriculture, health, water and energy security through science and technology, in addition to building an Institute of Big Data and Analytics for studying the impact of big data across sectors for predictive science.

These areas tally well with those that have been identified as priority areas for UK and India collaborations on research and innovation. The UK-India Science and Innovation Task Force met in February 2014 with the specific goal to identify key grand societal challenges for the two countries to address through their bilateral research agenda. The areas that emerged from the deliberations were – Energy-Water-Food Nexus, Sustainable Cities and Urbanisation, Public Health and Well Being, High Value Manufacturing and Big Data.

These are surely exciting times for UK-India Science and Innovation relationship. Not only with respect to developments in India, but also from the UK end. In December 2013, the UK announced the Newton Fund under which an additional commitment of £50 million has been made for jointly funded research programme with India. This is currently at a formative stage and we look forward to progressing discussions with our Indian partners.

In this background of growing UK India Science and Innovation joint collaborations, which is moving towards more strategic and impact driven partnership, we look forward to working with the new administration. As a final note, we would like to offer our particular thanks to Dr T. Ramasami (Former Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST) who announced his retirement recently) for his enthusiastic support during his tenure as the Secretary, DST.