VZCZCXRO1073
RR RUEHHM RUEHLN RUEHMA RUEHPB RUEHPOD
DE RUEHNE #0967/01 0931145
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 021145Z APR 08
FM AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1182
INFO RUEHCI/AMCONSUL KOLKATA 2034
RUEHCG/AMCONSUL CHENNAI 2734
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 1839
RUEHKP/AMCONSUL KARACHI 8611
RUEHLH/AMCONSUL LAHORE 4374
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHDC
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RUCPDC/NOAA NMFS WASHINGTON DC
RUEHZN/ENVIRONMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 000967 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR G, OES/PCI, OES/STC, OES/SAT, OES/EGC, AND SCA/INS 
STATE FOR STAS 
STATE PASS TO NSF FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SENV ENRG TSPL TRGY KSCA KGHG IN
SUBJECT:  S&T ADVISER TO SECSTATE ENGAGES PRINCIPAL SCIENTIFIC 
ADVISER TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ON ENHANCING INDO-US SCIENTIFIC 
COLLABORATIONS 
 
NEW DELHI 00000967  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY:  Dr. Nina Fedoroff, S&T Adviser to the US Secretary of 
State and the AID Administrator, met with Dr. Rajagopala 
Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of 
India (GOI) during her recent visit to India and discussed the scope 
and status of Indo - U.S. S&T collaborations.  Dr. Chidambaram 
elaborated on GOI's plans for enhancement in S&T funding and 
capacity building with a focus on attracting the best talent towards 
research.  He highlighted the unique challenges of innovation in 
India, as it has to address the needs of the industrial as well as 
the rural sectors and strive for inclusive growth.  He also 
reiterated the need for a broader engagement in S&T between the two 
countries and for simplifying the visa process for scientists 
traveling from India to USA.  Some of the areas he suggested for 
collaborative programs include closing the nuclear fuel cycle for 
power, biofuels, renewable energies, supercomputers, climate 
modeling, biotechnology and nanotechnology.  END SUMMARY. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
Enhancement in Science and Technology Funding with a Long 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
------------------------------- 
Term Vision of Inclusive Growth 
------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  Dr. Chidambaram who was also the former Chairman of the Atomic 
Energy Commission (AEC), started the meeting by welcoming Dr. 
Fedoroff (SciCouns and SCI FSN were also present) and mentioning how 
most young Indian scientists have a strong affinity for research in 
the US and hence is their most favorite destination.  Looking at 
India's aspiration to be a developed nation by 2020 and the relative 
slow growth in S&T in the past two decades, funding for S&T R&D has 
been increased three fold from $5.9 billion in the tenth plan period 
(2001 - 2006) to $18.7 billion in the eleventh plan period (2007 - 
2012). He further added that if one looks at the history of any 
nation, progress coincided with enhanced investment in S&T. 
 
¶3.  When Dr. Fedoroff asked him what were the key challenges for 
India, Dr. Chidambaram said it was joint planning for the rural and 
the urban India.  Innovation needs for the industrial and rural 
sectors of India were very different. No single formula could 
address both.  He added that his views on approaches to innovation 
were recently published by the US National Academy of Sciences in 
their quarterly magazine "Issues on Science and Technology", Fall 
¶2007.  The article entitled "India's Changing Innovation System: 
Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities for Cooperation" was 
submitted to the US Board on Science, Technology, and Economic 
Policy for it's project on "Comparative Innovation Policy: Best 
Practice for the 21st Century". 
 
¶4.  Dr. Chidambaram further added that funding during the eleventh 
plan period has been enhanced for different GOI agencies including 
Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of 
Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Information Technology (DIT), 
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Council for Scientific and 
Industrial Research (CSIR) in order to address India's diverse 
needs.  Further, to ensure focused and time bound output, all 
agencies and institutions have been strongly encouraged to work as 
interdisciplinary teams and partner with the private sector.  Also, 
several agencies in India have modeled some of their activities 
after the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program in USA 
as it has spawned innovation and entrepreneurship. 
 
¶5.  He expressed happiness that some success has already been 
achieved by DBT with the introduction of a similar program.  The 
program is called the Small Business Innovation and Research 
Initiative (SBIRI) which has led to new drugs and food crops being 
introduced in the market.  Other agencies hope to implement similar 
programs. When asked about the level of industry-academic 
collaborations , Dr. Chidambaram accepted that unlike the US, there 
is a huge disconnect between academia and industry in India.  Though 
the new funding schemes encouraged cooperation, they are slow to 
take off.  The transformation of the academic professor to an 
entrepreneur is taking time.  Hence an effort is also on to help the 
two to work together, with provision for fast track funding of up to 
90% to academia and R&D institutions who have industrial partners, 
with at least 10% contribution from the industry. 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
NEW DELHI 00000967  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
Strategies for Capacity Building and Attracting the Best 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
------------------ 
Talent for S&T R&D 
------------------ 
 
¶6.  Further commenting on the need for trained human resources, Dr. 
Chidambaram elaborated on the problems faced in India. He said the 
continued high rate of growth in India in the last few years, and 
especially in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT), 
had led to a situation where most science and engineering graduates 
take up ICT jobs which are relatively well paid as compared to those 
in academia and research labs.  So in spite of enhanced funding, 
there are no takers for positions in S&T R&D.  Hence with the 
objective of building capacity and attracting the best talent 
towards scientific research, many new schemes are being introduced. 
One such scheme starts with scholarships for school children from 
age 10 through their university education over a 12 year period. 
The program also has provision for mentors from a very early stage. 
Another program provides support for graduate studies and guaranteed 
employment with assurance of funding upto age 32 if the student 
pursues a career in research. 
 
¶7.  This latter research program model has been successfully tried 
out at the University of Bombay.   Graduate students of the 
University worked with mentors from two leading research institutes 
namely the Bhabha Atomic Research Institute (BARC) and Tata 
Institute for fundamental Research (TIFR).  This has led to enhanced 
R&D output and better trained personnel from the University. 
Leading Indian industries are being persuaded to permit some of 
their bright young engineers and scientists to work in academic 
institutions or national labs with corporate-level salaries. 
Companies like Tatas and Mahindra & Mahindra have already shown 
interest.  (Note: The Sixth Pay Commission, set up after a gap of 12 
years by the GOI to reduce the huge disparity in wages between the 
employees of the public and the private sectors, submitted its 
report on 24th March, 2008.  Now employees of government and 
publicly-funded organizations including academics and researchers 
can expect to receive average pay increases of 40%.  This should 
help in attracting and retaining talent. End Note.) 
 
------------------------------------------ 
Research to be Focused and India-Centric 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  When Dr. Fedoroff enquired about the focus of the research, Dr. 
Chidambaram said that the three fold increase in R&D budget has been 
done with a multi pronged strategy. This included supporting 
open-ended basic research, directed basic-cum-applied research and 
focused technology development with public-private partnership. All 
research was to be interdisciplinary and focus on issues which are 
relevant to India.  He said that unfortunately if one were to go by 
the citation index, Indian research is predominantly incremental in 
nature rather than original and generally guided by developments in 
the west and mostly irrelevant to the needs of the country.  The 
exceptions are in Indian space and atomic energy research and to a 
limited extent in defense applications.  One example of 
India-centric study, which could draw upon the huge knowledge base 
in the country and also lead to immediate returns, is the study of 
Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine).  India plans to develop 
drugs in an accelerated fashion in areas were Ayurveda has already 
proven to be very effective.  One example is the cure for arthritis 
being developed by the CSIR under it's Ayurveda based program called 
"Reverse Pharmacology".  The drug is expected to reach the market in 
two to three years time. 
 
¶9.  Dr. Chidambaram further elaborated that some of the other 
focused areas of R&D include automobile industry, bio medical 
instrumentation/devices, precision machine tools and optical 
instrumentation.  In these sectors it has been observed that there 
are clusters of companies who have not moved up the value chain.  He 
said the task has been given to Technology Information Forecasting & 
Assessment Council (TIFAC), a technology think tank which he heads. 
TIFAC is involved in transforming these traditional sectors of 
industries by facilitating interaction with other knowledge partners 
and in some cases even directing technology development from concept 
to prototype development. 
 
 
NEW DELHI 00000967  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
---------------------------------- 
Accelerating Indo - US Cooperation 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  When Dr. Fedoroff enquired about what he thought was the way 
forward to enhance interaction between the two countries, Dr. 
Chidambaram said that India would like to work more closely with the 
USA on big science projects.  These projects could be those for the 
public good or could lead to advances in S&T.  He further added that 
many countries wanted to collaborate with India due to its continued 
growth in the areas like ICT, biotechnology and manufacturing, and 
its large talent pool.  One example of how India and USA could 
interact is Indian participation in the EU Large Hadron Collider 
(LHC) program.  He said India is investing cash and providing 
in-kind support for this project, which includes USD 30 million and 
many scientists and engineers participating in the building of a sub 
systems for the LHC.  Indian scientists and engineers travel to the 
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Centre at Geneva 
for installation, testing and conducting experiments of interest to 
them.(Note: Similar collaborations are ongoing for the seven-country 
ITER project in which both India and US are partners and in support 
of the proposed International Linear Collider where the Department 
of Atomic Energy in India is working closely with Fermi National 
Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the US. End 
Note.) 
 
¶11.  Dr. Chidambaram added that the areas of cooperation could also 
include closing the nuclear fuel cycle for power, bio fuels, 
renewable energies, supercomputers, issues related to climate change 
& modeling, biotechnology and nanotechnology.  He said that India 
needs the US in the short term for upgrading its S&T infrastructure 
and even hand-holding in a wide range of technologies.  The US, he 
suggested, would need India as a long term partner in many of the 
above areas to develop sustainable technologies.  Thus, this could 
be a mutually beneficial partnership meeting the aspirations of the 
people of both countries. 
 
¶12.  He observed that in general there was a very positive climate 
in Indo - US relations.  The few issues which hinder cooperation are 
the well known Visa Mantis checks, nuclear non-proliferation 
concerns and high technology restrictions.  There are huge benefits 
in India and US working together and as the level of engagement has 
been raised to a strategic partnership, these issues need to be 
resolved.  Dr. Fedoroff agreed to look at ways and means in which 
she could facilitate removing some of these obstacles.  She said her 
interactions during her visit gave her a good insight of the wide 
range of Indian initiatives in S&T and that she foresees enhancement 
in the level of engagement between the two countries. 
 
¶13.  This cable has been cleared by Dr. Fedoroff. 
 
 
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