Ease of Doing Science’ gets coined in India

‘India has data, demography, demand, democracy to achieve world-class scientific solutions,’ PM modi said in his inaugural address at the India International Science Festival-2020

Ancient India has immensely contributed to the knowledge in various branches of Science. The science of astronomy, called Khagolshastra, was in fact well advanced in ancient India. Contributions of popular ancient scientists & discoverers like Kanad, Varahamihira, Nagarjuna, Charak, Sushruta, Aryabhatta, and others, are a proof of India’s rich legacy in science, technology and innovation.

Many of world’s most remarkable and game-changing discoveries were made here long before they got cracked by the western world. The only drawback, however, had been on the promotional front as ancient India missed out on proper pedestalling of the discoveries and a shout out to the world. The new India, which is on a roundabout of taking science to newer heights, is but taking care of both showcasing India’s scientific prowess to the world and promoting science enthusiasm within the country, through even funding and other facilitations now.

Government of India coined a new term i.e. ‘Ease of Doing Science’ in the country today. Union Minister of Science and technology Dr. Jitendra Singh released the new guidelines for ‘Ease of Doing Science: Towards less government, more governance’ on the foundation day of the Department of Biotechnology. This step has been taken to reduce the compliance burden and switching from research administration to research facilitation. Under the initiative, the central government has relaxed compliance guidelines for scientists, therefore making it easier for them to access grants and rope in associates for research and development projects.

It is pertinent to mention that the reforms include single-step approval for administration issues including Budget re-appropriation within the recurring head and change of principle investigatory. The guidelines also stated that to ease the burden of research personnel engaged in research & development projects, salaries for the first two years will be released during the first year as ‘grant-in-aid’ in the project. With the view to promote scientific research in India, the Centre also planned to develop “Ease of Doing Scientific Index” that would ensure effective use of both disbursed funds and the time to weed out sub-standard research work.

Budget 2022-2023 allotted the Ministry of Science & Technology a sum of Rs 14,217, of which Rs 6,000 crore went to DST , Rs 5,636 crore to DSIR and Rs 2,581 crore to DBT. This allocation to DST and DSIR in 2022-2023 has increased by 15% and 6% respectively, as compared to last year allotment. The budget of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) also saw a miniscule jump of Rs 67 crore, whereas the allocation under R&D in DST saw an increase of Rs 11 crore. As the spectrums of innovation, startups, technology, indegeneity and science converge rapidly with changing times in the country, it would be rather interesting to see what all solutions India comes up with before the world in the coming years.

Building Cyber Sustainable Solutions

With growing digital indulgence and technological shift, the matters of privacy and secured networking and storage channels also become of prime importance and require equally robust support systems and mechanisation. Building and replicating a technology is one challenge. Another challenge, rather trickier one, is posed when all these technologies get interconnected to form a web of the country’s total digital & cyber undertakings and the state is met with piling needs to protect its cyber net. This vulnerability gives birth to the need of developing strong data protection systems and technologies.

One such data protection solution is the technology of ‘Quantum key distribution’ (QKD) which is a secure communication technology that uses quantum physics to construct a cryptographic protocol. It allows two parties to generate a shared secret key that is only known to them and can be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. For the first time in India, a team of DRDO scientists and IIT Delhi successfully demonstrated a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link between Prayagraj and Vindhyachal in Uttar Pradesh spanning over 100 kilometres, using a commercial-grade optical fibre that was already on the market. In the test runs, the performance parameters for this QKD were found to be repetitively within the reported international standards at sifted key rates of up to 10 KHz.

With this breakthrough, the country has demonstrated its own secure key transfer method, which can be used to bootstrap a military-grade communication security key hierarchy. The QKD technology will further enable India’s security agencies to plan a suitable quantum communication network with indigenous technology backbone.

A report by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) highlighted India’s remarkable growth in the cyber space. It said that India’s cyber security industry nearly doubled in size amid the pandemic, with revenues from cyber security products and services growing from $5.04bn in 2019 to $9.85bn in 2021. India, its startups, various industries and public & private institutions are also getting acquainted and/or working on other tech-solutions and systems like the blockchain technology, Digital Forensics Technology, modern data science tools, vulnerability assessment & penetration testing tools and solutions, etc.

To build even better capacity towards this, the government has been making relevant provisions in the budget and various policies. Budget 2022, under GIFT-IFSC, talked about Data Centres and Energy Storage Systems including dense charging infrastructure and grid-scale battery systems to be included in the harmonized list of infrastructure. This will facilitate credit availability for digital infrastructure and clean energy storage. It also mentioned Blended Financing solutions where Government backed Funds like ‘NIIF’ and ‘SIDBI Fund of Funds’ have provided scale capital creating a multiplier effect. For encouraging important sunrise sectors such as Climate Action, Deep-Tech, Digital Economy, Pharma and Agri-Tech, the government proposes to promote thematic funds for blended finance with the government share being limited to 20 per cent and the funds being managed by private fund managers.

Observing The Cosmic Dance

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate” – Carl Jung. Mahashivratri is considered one of the most important festivals towards this effort. “The Great Night of Shiva” is the most significant among twelve Shivratris, the fourteenth day of every lunar month or the day before the new moon. Who am I, What is my source, and Where am I, are the three most important and fundamental questions, any thinking human mind seeks answers to. Trinity of Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh is at the core of understanding one’s surroundings in Hinduism. Mahesh or Shiva is the Lord of destruction or evolution. Change is the very nature of nature, and this understanding is perhaps most vital aspect of a person’s intelligence.

Fritjof Capra, one of the foremost proponents of the link between ‘Eastern philosophy’ and science, says “Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”

One of the fundamental issues of our scientific understanding of the physical world is the attempt to superimpose the principles of macro-physics onto the micro-world of atoms, subatomic particles and energy, where they fail spectacularly. Quantum mechanics is a hugely successful theory in modern physics and has led to far-reaching practical applications in our lives today. We still don’t know the basic explanation for some of its foundational predictions.

Fritjof Capra explained in The ‘Tao of Physics’, “The Dance of Shiva symbolises the basis of all existence. At the same time, Shiva reminds us that the manifold forms in the world are not fundamental, but illusory and ever-changing. Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. “According to quantum field theory, the dance of creation and destruction is the basis of the very existence of matter. Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. For the modern physicists then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter, the basis of all existence and of all-natural phenomena.”

The night of celebrating the changing apparent reality by fasting, singing, dancing and meditating, so that one comes closer to directly experiencing the changeless reality, Mahashivaratri, is celebrated across India and is a Gazetted Holiday.

Gati Shakti for Transforming Connectivity

“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” – Winston Churchill

The new India is marching on the roads of an unprecedented transition into an entirely new dimension of modern living, where system are both solution-oriented and sustainable. By rightly identifying the hitches, the focus has shifted to ‘building afresh’ in the recent years. While prominent initiatives like Make in India, Vocal for Local, Self-Reliant India, Startup India, and others have ignited a sense of awareness and stimulation in India, especially boosting sectors like manufacturing and entrepreneurship, all of this is being rightly taken to the next level by working on the infrastructural development like never before across the country.

PM Gati Shakti, which runs on a transformative approach for economic growth and sustainable development, is driven by seven engines, namely, Roads, Railways, Airports, Ports, Mass Transport, Waterways, and Logistics Infrastructure. All seven engines can lift up the growth curve of the entire country, if supported by the complementary roles of Energy Transmission, IT Communication, Bulk Water & Sewerage, and Social Infrastructure. Such an economic breakthrough can create a plethora of job and entrepreneurial opportunities for all, catering to especially the youth.

The introduction of Gati Shakti, as the name suggests, is a powerful means to get almost all the imperative sectors of the economy up and running with ‘Connectivity’ being the main fuel, as ease in transportation relentlessly brings down the logistics cost. This retention further relaxes the budget plots across various sectors, leading to exports competitiveness, boosting labour employment, resulting in more investments and vigorous economic expansion. More and more connectivity convenience naturally leads to the development of multiple urban, industrial centres. These urban centres are enabler of balanced regional development, paving way for more and more industrial clusters to sprout up across the country. Further, a good roads infrastructure would feed well into railway lines, which in turn, would feed into ports, resulting in faster goods transportation, stirred up supply chain systems, quick manufacturing and more trade and business.

It is well documented that as a proportion of the total value of goods, logistics costs are almost double in India (around 14%) as compared to developed nations (around 7%), hence there is lot of room of improvement. This underlines the need and power of Modern logistics mechanisms, which is the aim of the endeavour of Gati Shakti. The government also has in its pipeline the National Logistics Policy to ease supply chain bottlenecks and accelerate India’s logistics sector, which frequently deals with competitiveness gap. The plan will improve India’s trade competitiveness, create more jobs, improve India’s performance in global rankings and pave the way for India to become a logistics hub.

Indian Healthcare Sector – Coming of Age amidst Pandemic

It is indeed remarkable that India has achieved both the highest number of vaccinations as well as highest percentage of population being vaccinated . This is an unparalleled large-scale implementation in handling the pandemic while considering welfare of all at home with ‘Sabka Saath’ and abroad with Vaccine Maitri. Right communication regarding vaccines at the grassroots level was pivotal. For this, a five-point strategic action framework was utilized to draw up the guidelines – Advocacy; Capacity Building; Media Engagement and social media; Social Mobilization and Community Engagement; and Crisis Communication using AEFI (Adverse Events Following Immunization).

One of the key aspects that haven’t gotten enough attention is the vaccination teams’ compassionate attitude and approach during the vaccination drive. All were trained to engage and show empathy to beneficiaries seeking information or sharing their concerns irrespective of their socio-economic or demographic status. The first and foremost preparatory step that was imperative prior to the launch of the vaccination drive was to train and build the capacity of skilled resource personnel. The success of the vaccination initiative was highly dependent upon the quality of training being provided.

Following the successful development of two vaccines – the indigenously developed COVAXIN and AstraZeneca’s COVISHIELD through technology transfer – India embarked on a new herculean task of vaccine distribution to every nook and corner of the country. Government formulated the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration (NEGVAC) for COVID-19. NEGVAC facilitated the high level of coordination required at the national, state, and district levels to establish effective levels of coordination among key departments. The Co-WIN platform was at the heart of the vaccination drive. The software performed the crucial functions of registration, real-time status on booked and available booking slots on different dates and at different sites, end-to-end implementation of vaccine process, etc. at national, state, district and block levels. In the global battle against COVID- 19, various low-cost innovative technologies developed and scaled up by start-ups from all over the country played a critical role. E-Sanjeevani, the largest telemedicine service, made its efforts towards successful communication. State-level monitors undertook the continuous supervision of vaccine arrival and distribution cycle and ensured quality orientation in vaccine receipt and distribution.

Right information has changed the minds of those who were skeptical about inoculation, and turned the Indian vaccination journey from resistance to acceptance.