Railways to make 90% allocation for private sector in R&D, policy to be out next week: Vaishnaw
Premium- Ashwini Vaishnaw said a similar approach of bringing in private sector in R&D was required to be followed in all sectors
NEW DELHI : The government will bring out a policy on promoting research and development in railways within the next week where 90% of the allocation will be made for the private sector, said minister of railways, communications and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw.
“We are starting something in railways very soon, in another seven or eight days we will be launching that new policy where private sector R&D would become an integral part or rather major part of R&D budget. We do hope that going forward, probably 90% of railways R&D budget would be in the private sector, compared to 100% in the public sector today," the minister said while speaking at the concluding session of a post-Budget webinar on technology-enabled development on Wednesday.
He added that a similar approach of bringing in private sector in R&D was required to be followed in all sectors, noting that the ‘soli-breaking’ initiative had already been taken by the defence and space sectors.
Vaishnaw sought suggestions and recommendations from the industry to further increase local manufacturing of technology products while appreciating suggestions on spectrum management, with the changing thought process on spectrum being now viewed as a public good rather than a revenue generator resource.
"Thought process on the use of spectrum is changing. For a long period, spectrum was viewed as a revenue-generating resource. The last two years have shown a public good element of the spectrum," he said, referring to the increased use of digital services on the back of data networks during the pandemic.
"I am happy to observe that there is a broad consensus on spectrum management issues which are basically leading to the public or to technology improvement or technology development. We now need to convert in clear policy statements which can then be implemented," he added.
On the roadmap ahead, minister of state for information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that there should be an urgency to tap the accelerated digitalization opportunities. He also emphasized on conducting outcome-based research and collaboration between government and industry besides underlining the and need for India to go for leadership role in setting global tech standards.
During the day-long session on Budget proposals, several break-out sessions were conducted by ministries of communications and information technology and departments of science and technology and scientific and industrial research.
Telecom secretary K Rajaraman said players during the consultation process asked for steps to promote local manufacturing, patent technology, use of spectrum for research and development and higher production-linked incentives for companies based on local value addition, among others.
Additional secretary of electronics and IT Rajendra Kumar said that panel members suggested that the government should make an investment of ₹10,000 crore comprising ₹5,000 crore investment in artificial intelligence (AI) use cases and ₹5,000 crore in investments in deep technology start-ups.
He said the panel suggested identifying problems within the government sector and coming up with a structured framework for problem-solving for the adoption of AI at scale in India.
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