NEW DELHI, Sept 3: India has climbed four spots and has been ranked 48th by the World Intellectual Property Organization in the Global Innovation Index 2020 rankings.
Coming as it is in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, India’s progress in the sphere was remarkable and a testament of its robust R&D Ecosystem, an official spokesman of the central government said.
India was at the 52nd position in 2019 and was ranked 81st in the year 2015. The WIPO had also accepted India as one of the leading innovation achievers of 2019 in the central and southern Asian region as it has shown a consistent improvement in its innovation ranking for the last five years.
The consistent improvement in the global innovation index rankings is owing to the immense knowledge capital, the vibrant startup ecosystem, and the amazing work done by the public & private research organizations. The scientific ministries like the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of space have played a pivotal role in the enriching the national innovation Ecosystem, the spokesman said.
The NITI Aayog has been working tirelessly to ensure optimization of national efforts in this direction by bringing policy led innovation in different areas such as EVs, biotechnology, Nano technology, Space, Alternative energy sources, etc. The India Innovation Index, which was released last year by the NITI Aayog, has been widely accepted as the major step in the direction of decentralization of innovation across all the states of India. A constant thrust in monitoring and evaluating India’s position in global rankings had been provided by the NITI Aayog, including the global innovation index, the spokesman said.
(Manas Dasgupta)