Development of New Generic Technologies in India

The growth of scientific and technological culture in India has played an important role in attracting world attention to indigenous capabilities. Today, India has a vast S&T infrastructure with more than 200 national laboratories, over 190 universities including institutes of technology, and about 1200 in-house R&D units in the industrial sector. Indigenous efforts have enabled the country to make considerable progress not only in developing local capabilities but also in adopting and adapting exotic technologies. The president of the Institute for Scientific Information (USA) has referred to India as a Third World ‘research superpower’. India is the only ‘developing country’ to figure as high as eighth (above Italy and Australia) in a list of the ten top countries contributing to world literature in science. In a Science Citation Index (SCI) coverage of 5000 journals, India was found to publish more than 10 000 papers a year during 1981–85.1