NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched 'Imprint India', a Rs 1,000-crore project to kickstart original research in areas where the country is dependent on foreign technology.
"It's important to look towards affordable technology," PM Modi said, adding that ''science is universal but technology has to be local."
'Imprint India' is an Inter Ministerial Group that is set up as a single-window mechanism to screen research proposals from India's research and technology institutes. The group
approves projects and allots funds for them.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development(HRD), the Ministry of Defence,the Department of Science & Technology, the Department of Biotechnology, and the Ministry of Rural Development, among others, are part of 'Imprint India.'
The group has been set up to be a one-stop funding shop because many scientists and researchers said that bureaucracy was delaying projects and discouraging institutes from starting them. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)and the National Institutes of Technology are on board with the project that is being piloted by the Smriti Irani-led HRD ministry.
The group has identified 10 areas where India is heavily dependent on foreign technology and where little or no research and manufacturing has been initiated. These include healthcare, computers & information technology, energy, sustainable habitat, nano technology hardware, water resources and river systems, advanced materials, manufacturing, defence and environment and climate change.
The IITs and the Indian Institutes of Science have helped identify these areas and have detailed the specifics of India's technology requirements for the next few years. For instance, in areas like nano technology hardware and diagnostic imaging in healthcare, almost everything is imported. The research areas will also dovetail with the 'Make in India' campaign to boost indigenous manufacture.
"The idea is to encourage a research environment and also drive institutes to take up research that is socially and technically relevant to India's needs across sectors. For instance, in Healthcare, India practically imports every single diagnostic machinery simply because it is not manufactured here and there is new research in India which can be scaled up. Through IMPRINT, we hope to change that," said an official associated with Imprint.
