Science in India Newsletter

Index

S&T Policies:

 S&T Policies:

1. Research and development outsourced to India

A new report from the Indian government's Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), has illustrated the extent to which India is becoming a more important player in Research and Development (R&D), with new figures on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in R&D. The report states that 1.13 billion USD flowed into India during the five-year period of 1998 to 2003. Some of this money came from Europe, most notably from Germany, which is the second largest joint investor in India, but also from France, Denmark and the UK. The largest investor is the US, while money has also come from Japan and China. This suggests that some of the investment that was coming into Europe, for example from the US, is now going to India. The report states that nearly half of the companies created through FDI in India have been established due to relocation of in-house R&D. Most FDI is going towards computer-based R&D, followed by pharmaceuticals, automotive, chemicals and agricultural research. India's draws include the availability and price of the country's workforce.
(To read more please visit: http://www.tifac.org.in/)                  

According to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the Centre would double the investment in science and technology to around two per cent of GDP. One of the best investments is to concentrate on enhancing manpower development in science and technology and provide the institutions with best facilities and faculty. Development of grid technology linking Indian institutions and foreign partners would revolutionise communications, Singh said, adding that Indian scientists and teachers will be a part of a networked community, interconnected with each other and the rest of the world.
(PTI Science Service, 1.-15.12.2005)                                          
 

• the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, would be given the status of a Deemed University as well as greater autonomy for bolder initiatives for public-private partnerships and investing knowledge as equity

• a national biotechnology development strategy with 50 centers of excellence and 500 research positions for life sciences and biotechnology

• a legislation on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to ensure inventors and organisations a return for their innovative efforts

• setting up of a board of science and engineering research and a pool of 1000 scientific positions in India and abroad at different laboratories
  (PTI, Science Service, 16.-31.01.2006)                                      

The Science and Technology Ministry (DST) has proposed a new funding mechanism, under which scientists will sanction funds. The National Science and Engineering Foundation (NSEF), with a corpus of 10 mill. Rs (198,4 Mio Euro) a year is intended to prevent bureaucratic delays. The Foundation will fund centers of excellence and support research in R&D institutes and universities.
(Hindustan Times, 25.11.2005)                                                  

A 100 mill. Rs grant (18,9 Mio Euros) is given to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) by Finance minister Chidambaram. Goverdhan Mehta, former IISc director, in an interview on this grant:
“Three components are needed to create a high class institution: intellectual capital, environment for best creativity and physical infrastructure. The IISc needs netter labs, buildings and hostels for the students. Many people are still unaware about the infrastructure at the IISc. In the past five years, equipment worth 100 mill. Rs (18,9 Mio Euros) have been inducted. Thrust areas will be nano sciences, genomics, microelectromechanical systems and mathematics, possibly also earth observation sciences.
(The Times of India, 04.04.2006)                                                   

Science and Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, emphasized the need to create an environment conducive to the growth of knowledge economy. Releasing the reports on the Indian Semiconductor Industry prepared by Frost & Sullivan in New Delhi, he said semiconductor is to knowledge economy today what oil was to industrial economy. The reports have projected a market of over 36 billion dollars by 2015 for semiconductors in India.

(PRA:AD:NC-(8), 03.02.2006, Summary available at www.isaonline.org/documents/isafns-report-execsum.pdf)           
 

India and South Korea signed a MoU for cooperation in S&T on February 7th 2006. The MoU, signed between India’s DST and Korea Industrial Technology Foundation, aims at promoting technology innovation and industrial cooperation. Technology transfer, co-hosting of investment fairs and seminars are also envisaged.
(PTI, 07.02.2006)                                                                  
 

 Research:

8. Guidelines on stem cell research

Guidelines on stem cell research will released in the near future. The Indian Council of Medical Research / Department of Biotechnology (DBT) guidelines are in their final phase of preparation. The Indian government is strongly promoting stem cell research in the country. To this end, a stem cell society has been established and the institutional infrastructure in institutes strengthended, like All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Post Graduate Institute (Chandigarh) and National Centre of Brain Research (NBRC).
(PTI, Science Service, 16.-31.01.2006)                                    
 

Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, summed up the proposals to make India a biotechnology power in future. A committee of secretaries has been constituted to work out modalities for the creation of a single window - Authority and rationalization of the legislative and regulatory regime. Included is a proposal to award 25 special overseas fellowships for students doing research in stem cell technology and nano biotechnology. The Ministry would like to build strategic partnerships.
(Press Release, 14.03.2006, PRA:NC-(18)

The biotechnology industry is expected to grow again by more than 30% like in the last years. K.K. Narayanan, president of Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises, Bangalore (ABLE), said that the bioagro segment is expected to have the highest growth. Biopharma will account for the majority of the revenues. In 2004-2005 the BT industry zoomed past the $1 billion mark and the target by 2010 is $5 billion. This aim would be achieved by increased foreign collaborations for cost-effective innovations and Venture capital funding, added Narayanan.
(The Economic Times, 22.03.2006)

The BT Industry was growing by 36.5 % this year and India is among the top three in Asia-Pacific Biotech and among the top 12 globally.

(Business Standard, 05.04.2006)                                         
 

During the inaugural session on “Bio Parks” it was decided to set up a joint working group of States which are interested in setting up biotechnology parks for attracting life sciences companies and R&D organisations. The number of parks will be increased to ten by 2010. The two parks in Hyderabad and Pune had completed renting or selling the created space. Another major decision was to train the physicians in large numbers in the country for clinical research and clinical trials.
(The Pioneer, 10.02.2006)                                                  
 

Bangalore Bio, India’s biggest Biotech Show, has emerged as the global destination for the entire Biotech fraternity to come together and explore networking and business opportunities. The Biotech fraternity leverages this exciting forum to showcase their products and services, transform concepts into markets, explore investment and partnering opportunities and forge new alliances in the Biotech industry globally. Bangalore Bio is promoted by the Deptartment of IT and Biotechnology, Government of Karnataka and the Vision Group on Biotechnology.
(www.bangalorebio.com)                                                   
 

Delhi’s National Institute of Immunology has identified five key genes that enable Mycobacterium Tuberculosis to acquire the iron needed to grow and promote the infection in humans. Experts say targeting genes would help evolve better drugs to cure TB, which affects 15.4 million people world-wide. Observing that the expression of some genes increased significantly in response to low iron concentrations in the body, NII’s lead researcher Rajesh S. Gokhale and his team identified a new siderophore core and four new genes.
(PTI, Science Service, 1.-15.02.2006, The Hindu, 5.2.2006)      
 

Indian scientists of The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay (TIFR) achieved what has proved to be an illusive dream for Albert Einstein and generations of physicists. They found an experimental test for the quantum theory of gravity. Dr. Pankaj Joshi is one of the Senior authors of the work published in the “Physical Review Letters”. The work implies that there could be no naked singularity when a star dies and shrinks or when its stellar fuel is exhausted. Their work showed that a collapsing star instead of turning into a black hole or a naked singularity throws away all its matter in the form of an explosive burst.
(The Pioneer, 08.02.2006)                                                
 

The Phase I clinical trial of a new conjugate vaccine against Meningitis bacteria has been completed successfully and the next Phase would begin later this year. The results were encouraging and opened prospects to start Pivotal Phase II clinical trials in Gambia and Mali later this year. If all goes well the new vaccine could be introduced in Africa in the next three to four years with a price of 40 cents per dose. The vaccine is being developed through a public-private partnership between the WHO, Serum Institute of India Ltd. (Pune) and Seattle-based PATH. The new vaccine is expected to be more effective than the existing ones because of its high immunogenicity in young children.
(PTI Science Service, 01.-15.04.2006)                               
 

Indian Scientists have announced a new concept that does not rely on natural or enriched uranium but instead on thorium, that India has in plenty, and a small amount of “seed” plutonium, which India can recover from its spent fuel that has been accumulating over the years. Called “A Thorium Breeder Reactor” (ATBR) it has been evolved by scientists of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai and has already attracted international attention. One of the unique features of the ATBR concept is loading of thorium oxide fuel rods in specially designed “flux trap” or fissile breeding zones. The BARC scientists say that there is no reactor design, fast or thermal, which gives a continuous fissile growth within a span of single fuel cycle. The ATBR idea will play a key role in harnessing the energy from the large deposits of thorium in India.

(PTI Service, 16.-28.02.2006)                                        
 

Indian remote sensing satellite (IRS) has shown the potential for mapping the stress field of the earth’s crust that will help to predict areas where powerful earthquakes are most likely. Prof. Ramesh Singh of the IIT Kanpur has reported his work in the “Geophysical Research Letter” published by American Geological Society. As a test, they used the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat from 2001. The study has clearly shown changes in the stress direction after the main earthquake. It produced large surface deformations that could be easily mapped using remote sensing data. Future satellite study of lineaments may yield further data on stress field orientation and add to the existing World Stress Map.
(PTI Science Service, 16.-28-02-2006)                           
 

Indian scientists have cultured primitive human nervous system cells from foetuses for AIDS study. Dr. Pankaj Seth form the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), near New Delhi, said that they have been successful in isolating and maintaining purified cell populations of human fetal brain-derived CNS progenitor cells. The system is aimed to be used as a tool to investigate HIV-induced neuropathogenesis. The scientists have also been successful in inducing pathological conditions in these cells with the help of HIV -1 virus particle and certain virus proteins like “gp120” and “tat”. In November two interdisciplinary centers for stem cell research and tissue engineering - one each in New Delhi and Pune has been taken up.

(PTI, Science Service, 1.-15.02.2006)                           
 

People's genes could help determine how likely they are to become ill after being exposed to arsenic, according to research in the current issue of the International Journal of Cancer. The study, led by Ashok Giri of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB) in Kolkatta, is the first to link a specific gene to people's susceptibility to arsenic poisoning - a major public health problem in parts of South Asia.
Giri's team studied more than 400 people in West Bengal, India, where arsenic levels in drinking water can be 5-80 times above the WHO’s safe limit. They found that people lacking a gene called GSTM1 were less likely to have the skin lesions that are among the commonest symptoms of arsenic poisoning.
In India and neighbouring Bangladesh, more than 100 million people are at risk of arsenic poisoning. Over 300,000 people in West Bengal have symptoms of exposure, ranging from lesions to cancers of the skin and internal organs.
(www.SciDev.net, 27.03.2006, Link to full abstract of paper in the International Journal of Cancer, 118, 2470 (2006))              
 

 Academic Exchange/ Education:

19. Science and Technology education in India

India is fast emerging as a Knowledge Economy. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that India has 14 million young university graduates; this is 1.5 times the size of China’s and almost twice that of the United States. Every year 2.5 million new graduates are added to this pool. Some facts and figures from the survey:

• ICFDC.com presents highlights of the report

• ¼ of graduates in science

• engineering education has highest growth, pool of 1 million engineers

• India has a workforce of 376 million out of which 40.2 million (11%) could be classified as Human Resource in Science and Technology

(Sapra India Bulletin, December 2005)                            
 

According to the Indian High Commissioner Kamalesh Sharma, the number of Indian students studying in the UK has gone up from 3,800 five years ago to 18,000 last year, despite the steep hike in the fees. He also pointed out that out of the 21,500 work permits issued last year for software engineers by the UK, 85 per cent were from India. Lord Navnit Dholakia, Deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords said that now the biggest problem for the UK is how to stop the students from going back to India.
(PTI, 07.02.2006)                                                    
 

According to the German Academic Exchange Service, 4259 Indian students are currently studying in Germany. Among the European Member States, Germany has the second highest number of Indian students, after the UK.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has already zeroed on Noida, near Delhi, to locate its new campus. Though the attempt by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore to open a campus in Singapore had ran into trouble with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, IIT expansion plans have the full backing of the Ministry. One of the directors said that instead of opening a campus abroad, the IITs are keen to expand within India. All IITs will start new programs, also five-year integrated MA programs in different social science streams (humanities, policy research, etc.). The IITs are also enhancing coordination among themselves.
(The Indian Express, 16.02.2006)                               
 

The Indian government has decided to upgrade 20 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) into technical universities by the “National Institutes of Technology Bill 2006”. They will be more autonomous and will be placed under the administrative concept of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
(Hindustan Times, 24.03.2006)                                 
 

SThe Indian Government has signed a MoU with the University of California Systems. Both sides have agreed to spend about 10 million dollars per year on projects carried out in areas such as biomedicine, molecular biology, drug designing, mobile telephony, nanotechnology, energy, material sciences, marine systems, global warming and water management.

(PTI Science Service, 01.-15.04.2006)                        
 

The National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore (NCBS) is the first Indian research institution to get funds for joint research programs from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). A joint project on membrane mechanism is set up and the project will get $4 million from JST. 30 researchers from both sides will be involved, NCBS will spend an equal amount. JST is thinking about opening an office in New Delhi.

(Biospectrum, August 2005)                                       

IIT Mumbai and IISC Bangalore are setting up a Centre of Excellence in Nanotechnology, funded by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. The total cost of 100 mill. Rs (18,9 Mio Euro) spread over five years is equally shared by both the institutions. The IIT Mumbai will focus on the devices and circuits aspects and the IISC will focus more on the materials aspects of nanoelectronics. It is the first joint program between two leading academic institutes. This way about 200 trained personnel will be produced every year. The two major benefits are the considerable cost saving and the complementary expertise of the two teams effectively used.
(PTI Science Service, 16.-31.03.2006)                           
 

Each year since 1951, Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine have been meeting in Lindau with students from around the world. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has been sending a group of students/ young researchers to these meetings, since 2001. It is planned to send a group of Indian Students and Scientists to the 56th Meeting of Nobel Laureates during June 25-30, 2006. The German Research Foundation (DFG) as well as the Max Planck Society offer a supplementary program for the carefully selected students after the meeting.
(DST, 06.02.2006)                                                     
 

The Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore have organized a workshop on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth.
Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a major determinant of economic growth in most developed countries.
(Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)                      
 

C.N.R. Rao, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Council said that Indian industries need more scientists. The S&T Ministry (DST) has therefore offered research facilities to scientists and engineers from all over the world – with a fellowship of Rs. 50.000 a month and a contingency fund of Rs. 500.000 (9470 Euros) a year. The Srinivasa Ramanujan Fellowship does not have limiting factors like age or citizenship. This is intended primarily as an invitation for Indian scientists working abroad to return home.
(Hindustan Times, 25.11.2005)                                   
 

Wolverhampton University, one of the leading Universities in the UK opened an office in New Delhi to attract Indian students for higher studies. Lord Swraj Paul, non-residential Indian industrialist and Chancellor of the University, formally launched the office on February 22nd.
(PTI, 10.02.2006)                                                    
 

 Miscellaneous:

30. Nasscom to enhance focus on the domestic IT market

NASSCOM, the premier trade body and voice of the IT software and service industry in India, has sharpened its focus on the Indian IT market through its Domestic IT Market committee.
A recent NASSCOM-IDC study has emphasised the huge potential of the domestic IT market.
In view to accelerating domestic growth, the NASSSCOM Domestic IT market committee includes a representation from the IT industry (Microsoft, Oracle, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Tally, NISG and IBM), corporate sector (Bharti Televentures, ICICI Bank, Hitech Gears, Reliance Infocomm, Shoppers Stop, Tata Steel, SBI and Jumpstartup) and research institutes (IIT Chennai and IIT Mumbai). The committee is chaired by Mr. Ramadorai, CEO, Tata Consultancy Services and Chairman NASSCOM, and this is indicative of the importance that NASSCOM attaches to the domestic market.

(IndiaTimes News Network, 04.04.2006, www.economictimes.indiatimes.com)                              
 

Renowned Indian scientist Goverdhan Mehta has become the second Indian to be elected as the President of the International Council for Science (ICSU) on October 21, 2005 in Suzhou, China. Another Indian scientist, Prof. Anupam Varma from the Indian Agricultural Institute, has been elected to the ICSU as chairman of the Regional Committee for Asia and the Pacific. Mehta, a former Director of the Indian Institute of Science and Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, is an expert in the chemistry of complex natural and non natural products.
(PTI Science Service, 1.-15.12.2005)                             
 

Continuing the trend of consolidation in the global generics business, India's pharma major, Dr Reddy's Laboratories has announced a 570 mill. USD acquisition of Betapharm, Germany's fourth largest generics company. Dr Reddy's outbid world's largest generics company, Teva, drug giant Sanofi-Aventis and India's largest pharma company, Ranbaxy to buy Betapharm.

Commenting on the acquisition, Dr Anji Reddy, chairman, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, said, "We see our investment in Betapharm as a key strategic initiative towards becoming a mid-sized global pharmaceutical company with strong presence in all key pharmaceutical markets. Betapharm has created a strong growth platform and is well positioned for the future and we are looking forward to partner with them in building a strategic presence in Europe."

Dr Wolfgang Niedermaier, CEO of Betapharm said, "Dr Reddy's impressive pipeline of generic and innovative products and its high quality standards combined with competitive manufacturing infrastructure will help further develop our position in the German market and offer an entry platform for the European market.
(BioSpectrum, 15.03.2006, www.biospectrumindia.com)      
 

This newsletter has been prepared by the Science Section of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, New Delhi. Texts of articles from science magazines and newspapers have been edited for their length and are partly based on information from the Embassy. No responsibility for the content of the articles is accepted.