Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan calls upon Private Sector to help support Grassroots-Level Innovators

Introduction

India International Science Festival 2015 gets off to a flying start at IIT Delhi 

Union Minister for Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan has called upon Private sector in India to come forward to support unheralded innovators in rural areas, who are coming up with solutions to solve everyday problems but do not have opportunities to promote and market them. Inaugurating the first edition of the India International Science Festival (IISF) at IIT Delhi today he said--“We need an inclusive approach to entrepreneurship and there is a lot of potential in the informal sector that the private sector too can tap”.

The National Innovation Foundation in Ahmedabad, for instance, has identified a number of grassroots level solutions that can be scaled up, some of which have been developed by innovators from tribal communities, he said.

Dr Vardhan said the value of scientific research to the country’s economy is estimated at between

Rs. 1 lakh crore to Rs. 2 lakh crore every year. “An independent study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research has shown that weather forecasts by IMD alone have benefited the fisheries sector to the tune of Rs 34,000 crore annually,” he added.

Describing the festival as a landmark event, he said, “IISF is not just another routine programme for three to four days, it is the stepping stone for realising the dreams of great leaders from the first Prime Minister of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru to the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to make India a top country in the world”.

IISF 2015 is organised by the Ministries of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences in collaboration with Vijnana Bharati,  with the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) as the nodal agency.

Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Ashutosh Sharma, and Director General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Girish Sahni, expressed the hope that the festival would go a long way in promoting Indian science and technology.

Vijnana Bharati President Vijay P Bhatkar and Sachin Mandavgane, Member Secretary, Scientific Programme Committee of the Festival, noted that a salient feature of the festival was that it had different elements to cater to people from different walks of life. They said that there are interactions between scientists and students, screening of award winning science films and documentaries, the Science & Technology and Industrial Expo etc,. A key goal of the festival was to take Indian science to the common man and build bridges between the lay public and the scientific community, they added.

Director of IIT, Delhi, Kshitij Gupta, welcomed the gathering and Executive Director of TIFAC, Prabhat Ranjan, proposed a vote of thanks.

The IISF is open to the public from 10.30 am to 7 pm until December 8.

Source

Press Information Bureau, December 05, 2015