# Campus

We need to be more board-based

Statesman News Service | January 15, 2015 2:34 pm

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has batted for allowing universities more academic freedom and autonomy and promised to cut excessive regulation and cumbersome procedures to encourage research. “We want our scientists to explore the mysteries of science and not of the government system,” he said while inaugurating the 102nd Indian Science Congress in Mumbai recently. “Our institutions of research must become more broad-based. Our universities must have a higher degree of academic freedom and autonomy.”

In turn, the universities had to also subscribe to the highest standards of academic excellence and accountability, Modi said. In the backdrop of complaints of red tape by the scientific community in India, including delays in funding for research and approval processes, the Prime Minister said universities deserved greater academic freedom and “as the primary source of science and technology, government must do its part. When I speak of ease of doing business in India, I also want to pay equal attention to the ease of doing research and development in India. Our children should see role models in scientists as much as in sportsmen”.

Modi lauded the work of Indian scientists and said they had placed us in the forefront in many areas. “Our scientists put Mangalyaan in orbit in a first attempt,” he said. A nation&’s progress and development, he said, were linked to science, and called for clear regulatory policies for research and development in areas like biotechnology, nano-science, agriculture and clinical research.

Each government department, he said, should have an officer focusing on science and technology relating to its area of work and allocate a percentage of its budget for such activities. “We have to place the university system at the cutting edge of research and development activities in the country.”