📋 Tender Overview
Secretaries-both former and present of the Department of Science and Technology DST highlighted the milestones achieved so far by DST and discussed the road ahead at the inaugural panel discussion on Remembering 50 Golden years of DST organized to commemorate the golden jubilee celebration of the department.DST has an extraordinary impact on the ST ecosystem in the country. DSTs reach and depth in every area is huge making it truly the agency for transformation of India through Science Technology said former DST Secretary and present Principal Scientific Adviser PSA to the Government of India K VijayRaghavan said in the panel discussion which was part of DST Golden Jubilee Discourse series.For India the approach to catch up with other global leaders in science should be to do more for less and use the intellectual capacity to do so. It has to be proportionate to our investment in terms of GDP. Looking at various themes of technology India also has to see whether there is room for originality that could make it valuable for us in terms of investment he added chalking out a way forward.DST Secretary Professor Ashutosh Sharma pointed out that the establishment of DST has been a turning point for science technology and innovation in India and connected to a very wide stakeholder base of ST in India all the way from school students to Ph.D. to young scientists RD labs Universities and colleges.He elaborated about some of the great institutional structures built by DST - the Technology Development Board TDB responsible for commercializing indigenous technologies and the Science and Engineering Research Board SERB which has empowered several scientists. He added that all the deep foundations built so far and human resources built over 5 decades can be activated with speed and scale as seen during the COVID 19 pandemic.Professor T Ramasami former Secretary DST 2006-2014 underlined that DST has played the role of pranavayu or the oxygen for the Indian Science system. Given that science is ultimately to be celebrated by the citizens of the country DST should look at the opportunity today that India presents of a completely new ST policy framework to reach the unserved and underserved people of the country he added.Prof. VS Ramamurthy former Secretary DST 1995-2006 sharing his memories of DST said We established the first Technology Business Incubator outside any educational institution and now this year 100 more such incubators will be set up by DST. This is a scale in which we would like to move.We need enough number of researchers and technologists consistent with our population. COVID times have shown us our technological strength come to life and deliver in times of need. This will take us forward he stressed.The discourse series a part of a chain of programmes for the 50 years celebration of the department was organized virtually by the National Council for Science Technology Communication NCSTC a division of the Department of Science and Technology Government of India and Vigyan Prasar.
