GS 3-Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, biotechnology

Keyphrases- Global Innovation report, Blue sky innovative ventures, Digital India Atma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge,VAIBHAV summit, RAISE summit, Kiran initiatives, Inspire scheme, Smart India Hackathons

Why in the News ?

• Recently, India ranked 46th in the latest Global Innovation Report.It has climbed two spots over the previous year’s ranking. The performance is labeled ‘above expectations’ in the level of development category.
• While India seems to score low in innovation in multiple areas of technology, there are two sectors, that are atomic energy and space science in which Indian Performance is above many developed nations.

What are Innovations?

• Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in existing goods or services. For example, CRISPR, or the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, which is the transformative gene editing tool, which brought new pathways in dealing genetic structures in genetic engineering.

Historical background of Innovation in India

1. In his Brāhmaphutasiddhānta, Brahmagupta’s marvelous take on his innovation of zero was, “A debt minus zero is a debt”.
2. A fortune minus zero is a fortune. A debt subtracted from zero is a fortune. A fortune subtracted from zero is a debt. The product of zero multiplied by a debt or fortune is zero.”
3. Historically, Indian innovation functioned effectively in implementing quick fixes, commonly called “jugaad”, which serve as low-cost, innovative workarounds or solutions to problems.

Factual Information:

1. India is a fertile ground to be a technology-led innovation garage. It is the fastest growing country in terms of Internet usage, with over 700 million users and the number projected to rise to 974 million by 2025.
2. The JAM Trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) has 404 million Jan Dhan Bank accounts with 1.2 billion Aadhaar and 1.2 billion mobile subscribers.
3. India has potential to add over $957 billion to India’s GDP by 2035 with artificial intelligence (AI), according to a recent report by Accenture.
4. India ranks 3rd among nations with New Startups.

Crusader of new innovative Indian era: Indian Startups

1. The recent winners of the ‘Digital India Atma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge’ Chingari with its video communication tools and MapMyIndia with its elaborative maps, motivating a new generation of Indian Startups entrepreneurs.
2. ‘Logically’, with its news delivery features, are challenging the old delivery designs.
3. Setu, true to its name, is building a bridge to bring banks to people. It has built an application programming interface which allows customers to make small ticket payments without going to the bank.
4. Yelo is offering neo-banking payment and money transfer services online for workers in the gig economy.
5. Niramai (or Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence) uses an AI-based thermal imaging portable tool that carries out non-invasive breast cancer screening for women for early detection.
6. Gramophone offers pricing information from mandis, advice on soil and crop health and access to agricultural inputs via micro-entrepreneurs to farmers. A unique Agri-startup bringing Agri-extension services to farmers' doors.

Challenges

1. India’s expenditure on R&D is very low. It is below 2 percent of GDP, which is the benchmark value that most innovative countries spend on R&D.
2. In the Indian context, innovations are carried out primarily by the public sector or government R&D centers. Private contributions mainly from Indian entrepreneurs are still very less.
3. Asian countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and even some of the East European countries like Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary, scored above India. Thus the notion that Indian entrepreneurs lack innovation culture continues to hold good.
4. Of the three heads of R&D — Design, Development and Testing (DDT), Education and Training (E&T), and Core R&D — support for Core R&D, one that focuses on making real innovations, is very limited in India.
5. Typically, the committee members responsible for allocating funds for innovation are government employees. So, there is always a chance of them being questioned by the CAG, if there is recurrent failure of innovative ventures. Hence, they are risk averse and do not support blue sky innovative ventures.
6. The chances of failures are low/limited in incremental innovation and so most of the funding of public R&D centers goes for the same. However, as the Indian Space Research Organisation is not governed by mundane rules, the progress of Indian space research has been amazing and at par with those of developed countries.
7. Moreover, India has never really made a forward looking strategic plan to channelise R&D expenditure on emerging technologies. As a result, India is usually a late entrant to a new technology. By the time India puts its imprint on a technology, the world has moved up the technology ladder, or the technology has moved in a different direction.

Initiatives of Government of India to boost innovation:

1. Vaishvik Bharatiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) Summit: Numerous overseas Indian-origin academicians and Indians participated to form ideas on innovative solutions to several challenges.
2. Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) 2020 summit: It grants a course to efficiently use AI for social empowerment, inclusion, and transformation in key sectors such as health care, agriculture, finance, education and smart mobility.
3. Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scholarships: Attract youth talent to the study of science at an early age and thus build the required critical human resource pool for the Science & Technology system.
4. Ramanujan Fellowship: It is meant for brilliant Indian scientists from outside India to take up scientific research positions in India.
5. Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme: Providing avenues to women scientists and technologists for capacity building.
6. Smart India Hackathons (SIH): To provide students a platform to solve some of the pressing problems of society.
7. Atal Innovation Mission (AIM): To promote innovation and entrepreneurship across India.
8. Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) and Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS): Common objective is to boost India specific research in social and pure sciences.

Suggestions

1. The R&D in public sector or government labs is governed by standard rules (audit, Right to Information Act, etc), even though, at best, only 5 per cent of the attempted innovations results in success. This is probably true in other countries as well. Thus, one needs to understand that experimenting with innovative ventures can be a total failure
2. Hence, to imbibe a culture of innovation, the rigid rules need to be amended and failures need to be taken in their stride. The gains from one blue sky innovation would be enough to compensate for the losses in all other cases.
3. Learn from industrialized countries, including Korea and Taiwan,which adopted a strategic plan based on Technological Forecasting exercise to direct their R&D expenditure for long term success.
4. India has never attempted a serious endeavor of this kind, barring half-hearted attempt by the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council. So, it is not surprising that India has not been able to leapfrog on the technology front.
5. Increase R&D spending: Government should frame a policy with the aim of increasing total GERD (Gross domestic expenditure on R&D) to 2% of India’s GDP.
6. Global partnerships in innovation: Global innovation partnerships need to be strengthened by enhancing public-private partnership mechanisms and increased public funds should be earmarked for joint industrial R&D projects.

Conclusion:

The realistic potential of technology for India resonates in the ‘Amara law’ named after Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist, who said that “People tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.”

• Thus, India should strive for new inventions, without worrying about failures and getting trapped in estimations. Innovation has the potential to transform the New India,where :
  • AI will transform education and health care.
  • Machine learning and blockchain will make commerce robust and resilient, clean energy will drive our economy.
  • Gene-drives would exterminate invasive and harmful species, and Gene-editing would help us bring back extinct species and reinvigorate depleted ecosystems.
  • Quantum computing will raise our processing capability to resolve challenges which seem insurmountable and augmented.
  • Virtual reality will optimistically change the way we interact with the physical world.

Mains Question:

Q. Globally, It is said that India lacks innovation in its culture, and new inventions are rarely born on Indian soil. In this context, analyze the deep rooted socio-economic conditions that are acting as barriers for innovation in India. Suggest some measures to make India a hub of Innovation and creativity. ( 15 marks)

Source- The Hindu BL