Government on Friday unveiled a new science policy that boosts tax breaks for private research to help meet a goal of doubling research and development expenditure.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee released the new policy at the annual Indian Science Congress in the technology capital of Bangalore, where a software boom has powered the nation's ambitions in knowledge-based industries.
The policy document, which replaces a 1983 policy made eight years before India began unshackling state controls, said the government would promote close interaction between private and public institutions.
"On the one hand, during the era of licence-permit quota raj, industry had little incentive to upgrade its processes or products," Vajpayee told the gathering of 6,000 scientists.
"On the other hand, many of our scientists viewed applied research and its commercialisation as an inferior occupation."
With about 400 state-run laboratories, 230 universities and 1,300 research and development units in industry, India has a huge scientific base, but much of the spending has been by the government, resulting in poor profitability and complaints of red tape.
Pharmaceutical companies, like Ranbaxy, have wooed scientists from state units but private research has been rare, technology imports high, and there has been a steady "brain drain" abroad.
The new policy aims to more than double R&D spending in India to two percent of gross domestic product by 2007.
The policy promises to ease the way for scientists to train overseas and shift between private and government bodies. It also includes a world-friendly patent regime.
India's current intellectual property laws, aimed at keeping down the cost of medicines and other high-tech products, make it easier for companies to produce copy-cat products. This has upset Western governments and stifled innovation at home because inventors find it hard to make money from their breakthroughs.
"Our legislation with regard to patents, copyrights and other forms of intellectual property will ensure that maximum incentives are provided for individual inventors, and to our scientific and technological community to undertake large-scale and rapid commercialisation, at home and abroad," the government said in the policy document.
India has promised the World Trade Organisation rules, to introduce product patents in drugs by 2005, shifting from an old regime that only recognised patents on processes to develop drugs.
Technology leaders like Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems have already set up collaborative projects in Indian academic institutions in a growing sign of India warming up to foreign-funded research.
