Gratifying rise on innovation index

Gratifying rise on innovation index

Yet, India realises a fraction of its potential.

Innovation has increasingly gained importance as a driver of economic growth on par with investment. Growth of R&D spends has been outstripping growth of GDP for the world as a whole for several years. And countries that take the lead in this effort will reap the gains in the years to come. India has not been doing a bad job. In a ranking of nearly 130 countries on innovation, by the World Intellectual Property Organisation that brings out the Global Innovation Index, India has risen 24 positions in the last four years, to rank 52nd. This is creditable. But, then, China ranks 14th. Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand rank ahead of India. Singapore ranks eighth. Tiny Israel has broken into the top 10. Sanctions-hit Iran still manages to rank 61st. The United Arab Emirates ranks 36th. India can and should do a lot more.

The Index is a composite of 80 indicators that measure creative output, quality of institutions, investment, quality of education and so on. But innovation is, in essence, a mindset, a vision, whose translation into a realised output calls for enabling factors and institutions. If India’s 1.3 billion people, particularly the 650 million aged 25 or less, acquire the innovation mindset, nothing can hold the country back. Yet, while India has been moving ahead on facilitating factors, such as the time it takes to examine a patent claim, or opening more higher educational institutions, or tinkering labs at schools, things have not moved ahead on other fronts. It is proposed to centralise research funding. It is fine to allocate resources to priority areas. But to deny funds to research bureaucracy finds trivial would be a disaster. Battle tanks on university premises and classifying campus thought as pro- and anti-national are hardly designed to promote free-ranging thought and accompanying academic inquiry.

India has to improve the quality of school education for the masses, expand healthcare and dismantle the traditional social hierarchy that throttles ideas and their articulation at the lower rungs of society, and not just step up allocation for R&D in the public and private sectors.