Industry-academia-govt tie-up can help India sail through

India can escape the "middle-income" trap through a model in which industry, academia and government collaborates to harness knowledge and solve problems, Department of Heavy Industry Secretary A R Sihag said on Friday.

The new knowledge created through such collaboration can help India sail through a turbulent zone of USD 2000-6000 per capita without getting stuck, Sihag said, inaugurating an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Development Centre (AMTDC) at IIT-Madras.

"India is today at 2,000 USD per capita income. When people study about growth story of countries, 2000 to 6000 USD per capita is a turbulent zone. When countries come into this zone, there is something called middle income trap," Sihag said.

It is important for India to generalise the experiment done here (AMTDC), he said, pitching for its implementation on a larger scale.

"This will take us across these turbulent zone of 2000-6000 USD per capita. Otherwise, we will get stuck here," the official said.

Stating that some countries in Latin America and Asia were facing such a situation, he said, "They are not able to create a system of harnessing knowledge.

Their institutions, industry and academic set-ups are not able to generate synergy in environment to create knowledge and harness it for their development. So they get stuck."