KUSUM ARORA

Jalandhar

Two days after Nobel Laureate Duncan Haldane asked India to follow the example of rival country China to reverse brain drain, Union Human Resource Development Minister Parkash Javadekar Sunday said that India was striving efficiently to achieve Brain -Gain through major initiatives launched by Modi government. The Union HRD minister was seen hard selling India as the future hub of science, technology and research during the Indian Science Congress.He said that earlier the best brains of the country were conducting research abroad but now they were returning back home, after the government facilitated them with major funding initiatives through Higher Education Financing Agency
Two days after Nobel Laureate Duncan Haldane asked India to follow the example of rival country China to reverse brain drain, Union Human Resource Development Minister Parkash Javadekar Sunday said that India was striving efficiently to achieve Brain -Gain through major initiatives launched by Modi government. The Union HRD minister was seen hard selling India as the future hub of science, technology and research during the Indian Science Congress. He said that earlier the best brains of the country were conducting research abroad but now they were returning back home, after the government facilitated them with major funding initiatives through Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA). “It was observed that good scientists were working abroad because of lack of world class labs, lesser size of scholarships for scientists and supervision to guide them. We decided to remove these deficiencies and launched HEFA scheme, where tie ups were done with the best existing labs of IITs, IISC, NITs and other leading institutes. The government also earmarked Rs 250 crore for the nano labs and now we have the best labs in the country”, he said, during the concluding day of the Women Science Congress at Lovely Professional University (LPU) Phagwara on Sunday. Parkash Javadekar said under HEFA scheme, a fund of Rs 30,000 crore was added to the existing budget of the ministry.

Sharing the facts, the minister said, “The total budget of education for the year 2013-14 was Rs 82,000 crore while it was Rs 85,000 crore this year. We added another Rs 30,000 crore for HEFA in the existing budget this year. This is more than the total budget of my ministry, and now we have the highest budget of Rs 1 15,000 crore. Apart from this, we have also started the Prime Minister Scholarship, where the researchers were getting Rs 1 lakh per month as scholarship.” After highlighting the facts, the minister said that the best professors who were settled abroad were now coming back to the premier institutes of India. “All the three problems of the top brains abroad were getting solved. Earlier, we discussed ‘Brain Drain’, now we will achieve ‘Brain Gain”, he emphasised, adding that the government was asking bright minds to conduct the same research in their own country India. It is pertinent to mention here that on Friday, noted Nobel Laureate Duncan Haldane had drawn a comparison between India and China’s science and technology prowess. He had stated that not only India should emulate the example of reverse brain drain of China but also increase its funding in science, technology and research to compete globally. Further, Javadekar also pointed out that earlier industry, researchers and students were conducting separately. He said that now the three were brought together. “Now, research labs of ICAR, ICSR, IITs, DRDO, ISRO to name a few were blend together and the students, researchers and scientists were conducting joint researches. It was imperative to inculcate a scientific spirit among the students”, he added. Earlier, in the day, the HRD minister said that he differed from the statement that women scientists were a minority in the scientific community and said that it was Madam Marie Curie, who won Nobel Prize twice for discovering Radium and Polonium. He also shared example countries like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China which were unknown in research sector a few decades ago and said that the country which progresses in science and technology excelled on all fronts. “PM Narendra Modi has given the slogan of ‘Jai Anusandhan’ and a nation’s progress was incomplete without research works”, he stated. On this occasion, the minister also launched the ‘Driverless Multi Seated Solar Bus’.

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