• India has climbed 4 spots and has been ranked 48th by the World Intellectual Property Organization in the Global Innovation Index 2020 rankings.

    • Earlier India was at the 52nd position in 2019 and was ranked 81st in the year 2015.

    • In midst of the Covid -19 pandemic, is a remarkable achievement to be in a league of highly innovative developed nations all over the globe and is a testament of its robust R&D Ecosystem.

    • The WIPO had also accepted India as one of the leading innovation achievers of 2019 in the central and southern Asian region, as it has shown a consistent improvement in its innovation ranking for the last 5 years.

    • Global innovation index rankings owes to the immense knowledge capital, the vibrant startup ecosystem, and the amazing work done by the public & private research organizations and pivotal role played by Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of space.

    • NITI Aayog has also been working tirelessly to ensure optimization of national efforts in this direction by bringing policy led innovation in different areas such as EVs, biotechnology, Nano technology, Space, alternative energy sources, etc.

    • The India Innovation Index, which was released last year by the NITI Aayog, has been widely accepted as the major step in the direction of decentralization of innovation across all the states of India. 

    • The call for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat by the Hon’ble Prime Minister could only be realized if India punches above its weight class and compete with global superpowers in developing scientific interventions. It is time that India brings a paradigm shift and aims to be in the top 25 countries in the next global innovation index rankings.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)