DST releases Draft 5th National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy for public consultation

Department of Science and Technology has finalized the draft of the 5th National Science Technology and Innovation Policy; and now it is available for public consultation. The policy prepared through a four- track process of consultations within last Six months aims to make deep- rooted changes through short, medium and long-term mission mode projects by building a nurtured ecosystem that promotes research and innovation on the part of both individuals and organizations.

Its goal is to foster, develop, and nurture a robust system for evidence and stakeholder-driven STI planning, information, evaluation, and policy research in India. The objective of the policy is to recognise and point out the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian STI ecosystem to accelerate socio-economic development of the country and also make the Indian STI ecosystem competitive all over the world.

As India and the world changed their point of focus and direction, due to the COVID-19 crisis, a new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP) was initiated during the crucial period of pandemic in 2020. For India to move forward on a sustainable development pathway to include economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability for achieving an “Atmanirbhar Bharat'', a greater emphasis may be needed on promoting traditional knowledge systems, developing indigenous technologies and encouraging grassroots innovations. The new challenges have been generated because of the emergence of disruptive and impactful technologies and at the same time greater opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a compelling opportunity for R&D institutions, academia and industry to collaborate all together for sharing of purpose, synergy, collaboration and cooperation.

The STIP will be guided by its broad vision of achieving technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers in the upcoming decade, to attract, foster, strengthen and retain critical human capital through a ‘people centric’ science, technology and innovation (STI) ecosystem, to double the number of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) researchers, Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) and private sector contribution to the GERD every 5 years and to build individual and institutional excellence in STI with the aspiration to achieve the highest level of global recognitions and awards in the coming decade.  

The new policy, STIP, turns around the main principles of being decentralized, evidence-informed, bottom-up, experts-driven, and inclusive. It also aims to involve the concept of ‘dynamic policy’ with a robust policy governance mechanism incorporating features such as implementation strategy, periodic review, policy evaluation, feedback, and adaptation, and most importantly, a timely exit strategy for various policy instruments. 

As of now, the process brought in nearly 300 rounds of consultations with more than 40,000 stakeholders well distributed in terms of region, age, gender, education, economic status, etc. the Office of PSA, NITI Aayog, and DST coordinated, supported, and guided the STIP Secretariat. The formulation process, by design, envisioned as a very inclusive and participative model with intense interconnectedness among different tracks of activities.

The draft is placed for public consultation on DST’s website.

Suggestions, comments and inputs on the draft Policy are invited on [email protected] by 25th January 2021.