Indian companies not spending enough on research: Tharoor

Regretting little investment by private sector on Research and Development, Government today asked the corporate bodies to invest more in this area as it would be beneficial to industry and society.
"Why not Indian companies getting much more into the research space? Why are you not pumping more on research in our universities," Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor asked the industrialists while inaugurating the 9th FICCI Higher Education Summit here.
His remarks assumes significance in the wake of top policymakers expressing concern over the abysmally low spending by the private sector on Research and Development.
In a recent speech, President Pranab Mukherjee had said that the contribution of private sector in research was only one-fourth of the total money spent in the sector. India spends only 0.9 per cent of the country's GDP into the research and development. It is much less than that of China, United Kingdom and even Israel.

Addressing the investors and educationalists, Tharoor said, "One of the challenges we do talk about is that in our country 80 per cent of the revenue spent on research and development are by the government. But in Western countries as a whole 75 per cent of R & D spending come from the private sector."
However, private investors said that they were willing to invest more into the R & D but asked the Government to build trust and confidence between industry and the educational institutions.

Talking to reporters, Sushma Berlia, a former chair of the FICCI Higher Education Committee, cited reasons why there was less spending by private industries in the research and development.

"Part of the problem is trust and part of the problem is that people don't know how exactly to go about it because there is no Indian experience," Berlia, who was facilitated by Tharoor for her 'Outstanding Contribution to Education', said.
Executive Officer and Managing Director of Larsen and Toubro K Venkataramanan, who was also present there, said his company was not mulling to enter into the education sector, "as of now".