New Delhi: India's ranking in the Global Innovation Index has fallen to 76 position from 66 in 2013, the government on Wednesday said quoting a report.
In a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Science and Technology, said, "As a part of the Global Innovation Index (GII) Report 2014, co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and WIPO, India has fallen to 76 position from 66 in 2013."
GII measures national innovation performance based on a set of variables to both innovation input and output.
"New initiatives of the government are already underway to build an appropriate innovation system which also addresses some of the country specific challenges and gap areas as highlighted in the GII 2014 report," the Minister said.
He added that to address the problem National Innovation Foundation (NIF) has been set up by the Department of Science and Technology.
This supports grassroot innovations and outstanding traditional knowledge, to help the innovators to develop technologies by providing the risk capital, helping in development and documentation, value addition, Intellectual Property Right (IPR) protection, business development, commercialisation and social diffusion.
Responding to another question, Singh said there has not been any slowdown in the field of research in Science and Technology (S&T) in recent years.
"Citation impact of papers, measured as a qualitative parameter in research, has increased from 0.35 to 0.68 in 2006-10 period relative to 1981-85. There is an 81 per cent increase in the number of highly cited papers during 2006- 10 relative to 2001-05 period (4723 highly cited papers in 2006-10 as against 2610 in 2001-05).
"The patents filed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India and abroad have risen from 340 in 2009-10 to 562 in 2013-14. India's position globally in the field of scientific research and development, as measured by the number of research papers published, has improved from thirteenth the Scopus International database," the Minister said.
He added that in case of research in chemistry, India ranks fifth in the world with respect to scientific publications and today the country is placed third in terms of of scientific publications in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
