15 September 2023 : Indian Express
Indian Express
15-September-2023
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1) Invent in India
Topic:GS2-govt policies and interventions
Context:
- Even though India is the 5th largest economy in the world and on its way to becoming the 3rd largest, it’s contribution towards science and technology and innovation still remains dismal.
- This article will discuss the possible reasons and solutions to address this shortcoming.
Main reasons for this deficit:
- Indian academia and industry failing to ramp up its contribution to the national Research and Development efforts (R&D).
- Manufacturing in key sectors has been hobbled by constraints in fundamental factor markets of land, labour and capital.
- Faulty trade policies.
What steps have been taken to correct it?
- Make in India campaign has garnered some momentum in terms of India’s share of global merchandise exports registering fresh highs.
- Recognising the importance of generating patents and hence there is a strong effort underway to make it easier and faster to file for and obtain patents for inventions.
- Recent bilateral agreements in science and technology, especially with the United States, shows that the government is correctly identifying strategic priorities in this vital sector.
- Acknowledging the fact that Invent in India has to complement Make in India.
What needs to be done to scale up Invent in India?
- The newly established National Research Foundation (NRF) will hopefully address this important issue.
- The institutions that mediate the flow of capital and resources to convert scientific knowledge into technology-based wealth will require drastic changes to become effective and efficient, so that these institutions power India’s economic output to $10 trillion and beyond in the coming decade by delivering on productivity-multiplying R&D across industries.
What should be the parameters to revamp key scientific institutions?
Merit and Quality of human Capital:
- Merit and quality of human capital should be weighted the highest when it comes to staffing and administration of institutions.
- India has to gear up to both retain its premier talent at home, as well as position itself as a home for talent from abroad.
- The remittance-seeking mindset of the License Raj era needs to give way to a value creation approach.
- Many government labs could enter into structured collaborations with universities where appropriate coordination with on-campus science parks could expand their activities into the industry itself.
- The idea should be to bring teaching and research together in a merit-driven admissions system.
Barbell strategy:
- India should have a barbell strategy for funding research, with high convexity, high payoff projects getting their share of funding from a consortium of government agencies and industry.
What is Barbell Strategy?
- The barbell strategy is an investment concept that suggests that the best way to strike a balance between reward and risk is to invest in the two extremes of high-risk and no-risk assets while avoiding middle-of-the-road choices.
- There are two precedents for creating this barbell approach: The New Millennium India Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) programme launched in 2003, and the more recent Design-Linked Incentive (DLI) programme.
- NMITLI made collaboration across industry, academia and national labs as a standard practice.
- DLI envisages underwriting innovation with big payoffs in collaboration with high technology businesses, with the India Semiconductor Mission receiving appropriate funding for semiconductor design.
- NMITLI and DLI can prove to be reliable models for setting the baseline on R&D, which should be oriented towards industry.
- Innovative and entrepreneurial scientists should be encouraged to obtain supplemental funding from industry.
- Global business history has shown how joint efforts by government and industry to fund research have yielded breakout results in areas such as pharmaceuticals, transportation, chemicals and telecommunications.
- Ultimately, bringing industry to the table for such outcomes should be done through the carrot of profit and the stick of competitive pressure.
Rebooting culture and software of Indian Science:
- Alongside the institutional and hardware changes, the culture and software of Indian science too needs a reboot.
- Ultimately the science bureaucrats needs to go out of the box to ensure productive innovations in order to break the status quo.
Way Forward:
- Long term outperformance will be dependent on the quality and motivations of the people involved in Indian science.
- A change in its approach is warranted today, as the stakes are high not just for India’s economic progress, but for national security too.
2) Striking a green balance
Context:
- As India develops its economy to meet the growing needs of its people, the country will confront serious challenges due to climate change consequences and the allied necessity to curb carbon emissions.
- This article will discuss the possible solutions to fight climate change.
What steps should be taken?
- With the impact of global warming becoming more severe, there is an immense urgency to embrace practices that mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
- A vibrant carbon trading network is among the numerous solutions that are being adopted or considered to tackle the emergency.
- How does it work and how will it be helpful?
- One can assume carbon credits as a temporary “licence” for an organisation to emit a specific quantity of CO2 that year.
- This mechanism will allow a company with low or no emissions to sell credits in the market via a carbon trading framework or carbon exchange.
- This will ultimately offset the emissions of another entity willing to pay for the credits.
- Carbon credits can assist companies in meeting sustainability targets. These outfits can purchase credits or fund programmes that create carbon credits.
- The Centre is planning to set up the Indian Carbon Market (ICM) by establishing a national framework that will help in decarbonising the domestic economy by pricing GHG emissions via trading in carbon credit certificates.
- The Bureau of Energy Efficiency functioning under the Ministry of Power has been tasked to develop the Carbon Trading Scheme in tandem with the Ministry of Environment, Forest& Climate Change.
How will Indian Carbon Market (ICM) help?
- The ICM will help mobilise investments for the transition to a low-carbon ecosystem.
- It will also help India lower the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45 per cent by 2030 compared to the 2005 levels, thereby meeting its NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) target related to its global climate commitments.
- Since the Centre has outlined an ambitious target of turning net zero by 2070, the ICM would help in decarbonising the commercial and industrial segments.
- It will offer flexibility to companies in hard-to-abate segments to augment their GHG emission efforts through carbon market credits.
- The mechanism could help attract finance and technology for sustainable projects that can generate carbon credits.
- The ICM can be an effective channel in mobilizing a major proportion of funds required for the low-carbon transition.
What could be the impact of these steps?
- It would create more awareness, change and innovation across hard-to-abate industries.
- Placing a price tag on carbon footprints would have a direct impact on industries.
- Enterprises driven by incentives and penalties would begin embedding the environmental impact as a key parameter in their strategic decisions.
- This, in turn, will encourage investments allowing the shifting of business and manufacturing towards practices with low carbon footprints.
Way Forward:
- As the country moves steadily towards a net-zero world, decarbonising industrial activity will be critical.
- The industry leaders in carbon management solutions and clean energy transition can play a pivotal role in facilitating the transition towards a net-zero future by helping the nation switch from fossil fuel or legacy technologies to clean energy systems.
- As India tries to strike a delicate balance between economic needs and environmental concerns, a vibrant carbon trading mechanism can be crucial in creating a more sustainable future.
- Hence it is imperative, that regulatory authorities closely oversee the dynamics of the carbon credit market and devise systems to ascertain its smooth functioning.
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