Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 10 stressed on the need to identify and remove obstacles in the research ecosystem of the country.
He said this while chairing the first meeting of the Governing Board of the newly-formed Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) at his residence.
The foundation was established under the ANRF Act of 2023, to regulate all research and development in natural sciences establishments in India. The first meeting focussed on discussion about India’s Science and Technology landscape and redesigning of research and development programmes.
“Research should focus on finding new solutions to existing problems,” he said, emphasising the need to find localised solutions to global problems.
He called on the research community to set big targets, focus on attaining them and doing path-breaking research.
PM Modi also discussed the need for upgradation and standardisation of institutions, to create a dashboard to easily track the ongoing research and development in the country and also suggested preparing a list of domain experts on the basis of their expertise.
“The scientific community of the country should have faith that there will be no dearth of resources for their endeavours,” said PM Modi, while stressing on the need for scientific monitoring of utilisation of resources.
Further, he suggested grading of Atal Tinkering Labs, and discussed the need for research in environment change, battery ingredients for EVs, lab-grown diamonds.
The governing body also decided to launch a programme to “pair universities where research is at a nascent stage with top tier established institutions in mentorship mode”.
