New Delhi: Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today informed that 168 proposals/requirements from 33 Ministries of the Government of India had been received for technological support and solutions from the six Science Ministries/departments.
Those include Biotechnology, Earth Sciences, CSIR, Department of Science & Technology, Space and Atomic energy. The concerned Science Ministries and Departments have started working on these, he added.
This was stated by Dr Jitendra Singh at the first-ever high level Capacity Building joint meeting of all the Science and Technology Ministries/Departments. The meeting was attended by Prof. K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India, Hemang Jani, Secretary Capacity Building Commission, Dr. M. Ravichandran, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Dr S. Chandrasekhar, Secretary, DST, Dr Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, DBT, Dr. Shekhar C Mande, Secretary, DSIR, and other senior officials.
This unique initiative was launched by Dr Jitendra Singh in mid-September this year, wherein representatives from all the Science Ministries including Science & Technology, Earth Sciences, Atomic Energy, Space/ISRO, CSIR, and Biotechnology separately engaged in extensive brain storming with each of the different Ministries in Government of India to work out which scientific applications could be utilised in which sector. The Minister had stressed the need for integrated theme based projects instead of a particular Ministry based or a particular Department based projects.
The minister expressed satisfaction that such a large number of proposals were received from Line Ministries within three months of the initiative launched in September to work out utilisation of different scientific applications for sectors like agriculture, food, education, skill, railways, roads, Jal Shakti, power and coal to name a few. This is keeping in mind that every sector today has become largely dependent on scientific technology, he said.