Future of R&D in Pandemic-hit India

Today, India is facing its one of the worst pandemic in the form of Covid-19 second wave which has devastated many families so far due to shortage of important facilities in transportation, healthcare and production systems.

May it call the tardiness or inexperience of those who operate the "system" that they never thought of it or the need for upscaling the Research & Development (in short R&D) never arose, India does not have the luxury but now has a duty to become a R&D hub to sustain itself under the pressure to cater to its 1.4 billion citizens.

Many countries like Israel, Singapore, South Korea have been achieving some spectacular feats which even the big guns have not started to think of. Lets take a comparison between India and Israel; both countries gained independence around the same time while India had the upper hand in terms of population, resources, land and the vast coastline it enjoys, yet Israel has emerged as one of the most Self-sufficient countries because they focused on education and R&D which make Israel respected and feared for its military might and scientific advancements in the Middle-East. Israel is also the first nation to vaccinate everyone living there against Covid-19 while India has not yet been able to fully vaccinate even its 2% population.

The situation of R&D in India is so dire that only 0.7% of the GDP is spent as Science Budget which should be at least 2-3%. This is also the reason that India is still stuck on conservative scientific models despite having majority of population as working population. People here still thinking that introduction to 5G in their area will attract more corona rather than not wearing masks or the conspiracy theories of the world ending because of The Large Hadron Collider does not raise morale of researchers. We are still debating over Ayurveda and cow-dung can cure corona without a valid proof or research. We are still questioning the need of masks even after seeing the situation we are well aware of.

India needs to revolutionize its education system from (a+b)^2 and linguistic system to the more vocational and practical based learning to aid the researchers with high output laboratories and environment to conduct research. The private players and the government bodies like DRDO, ISRO should create a joint-venture to give researchers the facilities they need. Global giants like Tesla, Harvard and Oxford should be given chance in India along with IITs and other educational institutions to draw out the researchers from the young professionals and students. It should be ensured that Patent and Copyright laws are enforced more strictly and safeguard the researchers against plagiarism and intellectual property theft.

According to my opinion, the most important areas which the Indian researchers should explore are Healthcare, Transportation, Aerospace, Energy, Food and Water Management, Environmental Pollution and Socio-economic diversities. So, we can become able to ensure the acceptable living standards for our citizens till 2040.

In the last, I want to conclude this article with the hard truth that as a nation we have not given much credit to Science and its keepers that they deserved. We are still blinded by misinformation, illiteracy and conservatism so that we cannot appreciate what Science offers to us. But we can still make amends for it so that the present and next generation has a better world to live in.

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