On November 7th Dr Bipashyee Ghosh, Research Fellow in Deep Transitions and Transformative Innovation, took part in a consultation session designed to inform India’s new STI Policy 2020.
The event, organised by DST India – STIP Secretariat, brought 14 Indian Science diaspora members from across the globe in conversation with Dr. Harsh Vardhan, India’s Minister of Science of Technology. This consultation was the first time the Indian diaspora had been directly consulted in national policy formulation processes. Dr. Vardham expressed his belief that “diaspora can be the best link between India and the world”, seeing its potential for “the benefit of our national development but also for global development”.
The Minister in his closing remarks referred to two of Dr Ghosh’s suggestions for integrating TIP principles into India’s STI policy. These suggestions were: 1) The need to nurture innovations in society, not just promote new technologies, and 2) encourage wider engagement with interdisciplinary scholars and not just engineers and natural scientists.
Dr Ghosh additionally suggested that India should seek to embrace a truly “policy co-creation” mode in implementing the new policy in 2021.
Dr Bipashyee Ghosh’s remarks built upon her previous discussion on STI in India in her article published in The Wire, Can India’s New STI Policy Help India Achieve Its Sustainable Development Goals?
