The country’s largest laboratory cluster – the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), with 38 labs across the country under its fold — is gearing up for its 70th birthday this week. It’s opening a new lab just across the one inaugurated by Jawaharlal Nehru back in the 1950s. The last time CSIR started a lab was a quarter century back. Besides the new lab that will focus on genomics research, this year marks a transformation that CSIR has never seen before. It has new focus areas, Medium Small & Micro Enterprises (MSME), CSIR is ready to undertake commercially-oriented research and plans to incubate and spin-off companies. “We are moving beyond Bharat Sarkar”, says an impassioned Dr Samir K Brahmachari, director-general, CSIR, in a reference to its past. In an interview with Mr Shelley Singh, Dr Brahmachari talks about CSIR’s future. Edited excerpts:
CSIR is 70 years’ old. How would you define CSIR’s role now,compared to when it was founded?
CSIR’s growth is collinear to the growth of Indian industry. Indelible ink, baby food, tractors, light combat aircraft, low-cost drugs, solar rickshaws and more have come out of the CSIR labs. CSIR was built with the objective of helping the country and local industries. There was a time when the strategic sector needed us – defence, aerospace, computing and healthcare. Over the last five years, CSIR has done 600 projects in strategic areas and a similar number of industrial projects. For Tata Steel alone, we have done 110 projects in the last decade. Almost 75% of the Indian pesticide industry has technology from CSIR.
Source: economic times.
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