Eleventh Five Year Plan

30 Eleventh Five Year PlanBox 1.3.3Mohali Knowledge City—Advantages of Clustering• It is planned to build a knowledge city in Mohali, Punjab with a vision to promote innovation and startup companies. Thecluster includes, on a single campus, the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), National Agri-foodBiotechnology Institute, Nanotechnology Institute, Management School, Technology and IP Management Centre, BusinessCentre, an Informatics Centre, Centralized Platform, Technology facility, a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)compliant Bio process Facility for Food and Nutriceuticals, a Technology Park for start-ups, and a host of other sharedfacilities. Governance, as a cluster is so designed as to allow dynamic contact and collaboration within the cluster and withall existing local institutes and enterprises.• Building cluster in strategic location enables innovation. Characteristically, in a cluster, research, technology management,investment and business skills, technology incubators and parks for startups are co-located, functionally linked,based on a common vision. The vision of such a cluster is to create necessary synergies and sharing of resources, ideas, andfacilities.1.3.47 Efforts will be made to establish 50 centres fortraining and research in frontier areas like Biotechnology,Bio-informatics, Nano-materials and Nano–technologies, Mechatronics, MEMS, High PerformanceComputing, Engineering, etc. However, these willbe funded on the basis of specific proposals and on acompetitive basis.SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (S&T):THE CUTTING EDGE1.3.48 In the current knowledge era, our developmentdepends crucially on the ability to harness S&T to findinnovative solutions. Capabilities in S&T, therefore, arereckoned as a benchmark for establishing the status ofthe development of a nation. India must occupy afrontline position in this listing. The Eleventh Five YearPlan approach to S&T will be guided by this ambitionand emphasis will be on:• Evolving an integrated S&T Plan involving UGC,Department of Science and Technology (DST),CSIR, Indian Council of Agricultural Research(ICAR), Departments of Atomic Energy and Spaceto provide the resources needed for substantiallystepping up support to basic research, setting up anational level mechanism for evolving policies, andproviding direction to basic research.• Enlarging the pool of scientific manpower andstren-gthening the S&T infrastructure. Focusedefforts will be made to identify and nurture brightyoung students who can take up scientific researchas a career.• Promoting strong linkages with other countries inthe area of S&T, including participation in megainternational science initiatives.• Evolving an empowered National Science andTechnology Commission responsible for all mattersrelating to S&T (Administrative, Financial, andScientific) including scientific audit and performanceassessment of scientists and scientific institutionsthrough peer review.• Supporting the schemes suggested by the EmpoweredCommittee on the Science Education.Faculty Development and Research1.3.49 The world over, it is recognized that R&Defforts are imperative for sustained economic growthand social development. However, in India therehas been a low level of R&D efforts, mainly due tothe inadequate number of highly trained and knowledgeableR&D personnel—particularly at the levelof PhDs—relatively low investment in R&D by thecorporate sector, and the lack of synergy among R&Dinstitutions and universities. The present output ofabout 450 doctorates per annum in Engineering andTechnology, should increase several folds with theexpanded technical education capacity, offering substantialscope for postgraduate and doctoral levelprogrammes.National Science and EngineeringResearch Board (NSERB)1.3.50 Upgradation of science education and researchinfrastructure in the universities is a major challenge.The DST would adopt a two-pronged strategy toachieve this objective: (i) expansion and strengthening