Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chaired a meeting of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) society via video conference and appreciated the “scale and speed” with which vaccines were made by scientists in the country.
The Prime Minister remarked that the pandemic has emerged as the biggest challenge of this century, and that scientists in India were working at a speed at a par with other countries, making the country self-reliant in Covid-19 vaccines, testing kits and necessary equipment and new effective medicines in the fight against Covid-19. He said that bringing science and technology at par with developed countries is better for the industry and the market.
Modi said that in India, CSIR works as an institutional arrangement to keep science, society and industry on the same page and talked of scientist Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, who gave leadership to this institution. He noted that CSIR has a powerful set of research and patents ecosystem.
The Prime Minister said that CSIR was helping the country become self-reliant in biotechnology, battery technologies, agriculture, astronomy, disaster management, defence technology, vaccines and virtual reality and that India was leading in areas such as sustainable development and clean energy.
“Today, from software to satellites, India is accelerating the development of other countries, playing the role of a major engine in the development of the world. Therefore, India’s goals should be in line with the needs of this decade as well as for the next decade,” Modi said.
He also called on scientists to prepare for climate change with a scientific approach emphasising sectors such as carbon capture to energy storage and green hydrogen technologies.
He praised CSIR for its role in the Aroma mission launched in 2016. He added that today, thousands of farmers of the country are changing their fortunes through floriculture, and praised CSIR for helping in cultivation of asafoetida within the country for which India was dependent on imports.
The Prime Minister further said that there is immense potential in every field, from agriculture to the education for our MSMEs and start-ups and urged scientists and industry to repeat the success achieved during the Covid crisis in every field.