UGC: Foreign universities are not allowed to offer full time courses in online mode, UGC directs

India has only 255 researchers per million people. State governments have to ensure funding for research and development to remain competitive in this sector. These things have been said by Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.

He further said as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the scientific community to link research with economic development. Sood said the share of state governments in the national R&D expenditure was only 6.4 percent. On the sidelines of the Indian Science Congress here, he said the central government's share was 45.4 percent, while the industry's contribution was 36.8 percent of the Rs 45,000 crore spent by India on research and development.

Sood said India ranked 75th in the Global Knowledge Index 2020 (GKI) out of 138 countries with a GKI score of 44.4, which was lower than the global average of 46.7. India has 255 researchers per million, which is much lower than the US, which has 4,245 researchers per million, he said, adding that the ratio is 7,498 per million for South Korea, 4,341 per million for the UK and 5,304 for Japan. was per million. Sood further said that with over 77,000 start-ups, India has emerged as the third largest ecosystem for start-ups.

However, there are only 3,000 deep tech startups, of which only 400 deal with innovative technologies. S Chandrasekhar, Secretary, of the Department of Science and Technology, urged the state universities to initiate reforms to encourage students to become ready to contribute to the national science program.

He said "For sustainable research in our laboratories, we need the best quality students. A student who can withstand all the pressure and all the stress. They will come from state universities."

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