The government has initiated a consultation process for formulation of a new national science, technology and innovation policy (STIP 2020), a statement said.

The office of the principal scientific adviser to the government of India (Office of PSA) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) have jointly initiated a decentralised, bottom-up and inclusive process for the formulation of the new policy, it said.

The fifth S&T policy of the country is being formulated at a crucial juncture when India and the world are tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As the crisis changes the world, the new policy with its decentralised manner of formation will reorient STI in terms of priorities, sectoral focus, the way research is done, and technologies are developed and deployed for larger socio-economic welfare,” the statement said.

Significance of STIP

In 2013, the ministry of science and technology came out with the ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Policy’ providing guidelines for shaping the future of an aspiring India.

India has declared 2010-20 as the ‘Decade of Innovation’.

Science, technology and innovation (STI) have emerged as the major drivers of national development globally. As India aspires for faster, sustainable and inclusive growth, the Indian STI system, with the advantages of a large demographic dividend and the huge talent pool, will need to play a defining role in achieving these national goals. The national STI enterprise must become central to national development.

Scientific research utilises money to generate knowledge and, by providing solutions, innovation converts knowledge into wealth or value. Innovation thus implies S&T-based solutions that are successfully deployed in the economy or the society. It has assumed centrestage in the developmental goals of nations. Paradigms of innovation have become country and context specific. 

Science, technology and innovation can exist separately on their own in disconnected spaces. But, it is their integration that leads to new value creation. India’s global competitiveness will be determined by the extent to which the STI enterprise contributes social good and/or economic wealth. 

There is, therefore, the need to create the necessary framework for enabling this integration in identified priority areas by exploiting endogenous resources, strengths and capacities. 

New structural mechanisms and models are needed to address the pressing challenges of energy and environment, food and nutrition, water and sanitation, habitat, affordable health care and skill building and unemployment.

The process for STIP 2020

The six-month long process involves broad-based consultations with all stakeholders within and beyond the scientific ecosystem of the country, including academia, industry, government, global partners, young scientists and technologists, civic bodies and the general public.

The formulation process for STIP 2020 is organised into four highly interlinked tracks.

Track I involves an extensive public and expert consultation process through Science Policy Forum — a dedicated platform for soliciting inputs from larger public and expert pool during and after the policy drafting process.

Track II comprises experts-driven thematic consultations to feed evidence-informed recommendations into the policy drafting process. As many as 21 focused thematic groups have been constituted for the purpose.

Track III involves consultations with ministries and states, while track IV constitutes apex level multi-stakeholder consultation.

For track III, nodal officers are being nominated in states and in ministries, departments and agencies of the government for extensive intra-state and intra-department consultation.

For track IV, consultation with industry bodies, global partners and inter-ministerial and inter-state consultations represented at the highest levels are being carried out.

The consultation processes on different tracks have already started and are running in parallel.

The track-II thematic group (TG) consultation started with a series of information sessions last week.

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