Brain-drain from India has been converted to brain-gain in the last two years:Harsh Vardhan

Harsh Vardhan stated that his ministry has moved from policy paralysis and worked with the country’s talented scientific community to connect with citizens and work on the needs of the country.

The Union Science & Technology Ministry has laid special emphasis and made steady headway in the fields of agriculture, nutrition, environment, wealth, health and energy security of the land.

The Minister also stated that the Government favours transforming India through science and technology and hence has increased funds for scientific research in this year’s budget.

The Government is also focussing on engaging and attracting more minds towards scientific research right from school-level  and also higher level research works by  way of providing attractive incentives, scholarships, expansion of funding schemes, improving laboratory facilities and other amenities.

The Government has also succeeded in bringing back the NRI scientists back to their motherland and thereby turning brain-drain into brain-gain. 250 scientists who had gone abroad have returned to the country over the last two years, informed Harsh Vardhan. Linking of laboratories around the country in a theme-based manner for knowledge sharing, national co-ordination and international collaboration has also been undertaken.

Streptokinase technology in the field of health sciences, developing a variety of bacterial blight resistant rice called ‘Samba Mahsuri’ , improved weather and cyclone predictions and agro-meteorlogical advisory service under Grameen Krishi Mausam Seva in the domain of earth sciences and also setting up of a National Centre for Seismology  are some of the achievements of Union Science & Technology Ministry over the last two years.

Further, Harsh Vardhan also stated that the Union Science & Technology Ministry is also encouraging start-ups based upon research in pure and applied sciences.

In the coming three years, said Harsh Vardhan, his ministry will focus on farmer centric agriculture science, innovations in the field of energy, national supercomputing mission  et al.

While interacting with journalists from Mumbai, Goa, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Trivandrum, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar,Guwahati , Chandigarh, Lucknow, Jammu and Kolkata,  the Union Science & Technology Minister replied to various queries related to the Government’s initiatives in the  field of earth and climatic sciences, agriculture and developing improved variety of crops as well as promoting research in pure as well as applied sciences.

In reply to a question from a journalist in Kolkata, Harsh Vardhan informed that a proposal of installing the 30 metre telescope (TMT) at Ladakh is under consideration. It is an ambitious project which aims to build an astronomical observatory with an extremely large telescope and involves many countries like USA and Japan.