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CANADA’S National Research Council (NRC), a premier research organisation in science and technology, is keen on getting into the “India Act” and is one of the major actors looking at the country in a very serious fashion.
Playing the lead role in Canada in the realm of science and innovation, the NRC looks to interface with India in a number of different angles – the industry and scientific institutions in particular – with a view to leveraging partnerships and opportunities in both India and Canada, maintains its President, Dr Arthur Carty.
The NRC by all accounts is the leading edge organisation in Canada very much involved in innovation and research determined to having its knowledge and technology reach the marketplace with a special emphasis on support to small companies in the field.
The NRC does not invest in companies per se but this takes place through the Industrial Research Assistance Programme (IRAP), which gives technical advise and support to companies on a national network. The NRC is very focussed on areas such as biotechnology, manufacturing technology, information technology and communications, e-business and environmental biotechnology, many of the areas that Canada feels it could have quite a cooperative and fruitful interaction with India.
In fact, the NRC, led by Dr Carty, had a delegation to India recently to participate in the first international biotechnology exhibition with a primary purpose of exploring potential areas of cooperation between the two countries.
“We see India as an emerging economic power. With a large and a well-educated population, it is certainly a power. Canada has to have a strong science and technology relationship with India. We have to learn from India,” Dr Carty said in the course of a conversation in Ottawa. Acknowledging the past deep freeze in Canada-India relations, Dr Carty appeared confident of the present and of the future. “I hope we are on track.”
Describing his visit to India as “very useful,” Dr Carty pointed out that what is going to follow are workshops on targeted areas between India and the NRC; and much of this will be focussed on the CSIR. Currently, a process is said to be underway to work on an institutional arrangement and a Memorandum of Understanding is being prepared.
“India is a difficult country to grapple with,” Dr Carty says in the context of zeroing in on who or which organisation to work with. “Ultimately we decided to work with the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research),” he said. While there will not be an exchange of funds, the primary attention will be in the personnel exchanges, joint publications and `real’ collaborative pieces.
The NRC-CSIR combination “can open a lot of doors,” Dr Carty says as it pertains to business houses, companies and students with a lot of research flowing in both directions.
Source: THE HINDU (14 March 2004).
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