President calls upon scientific community for more R&D

"We have to give big importance to R&D. We are still lagging in this area," Mukherjee said at the centenary celebrations of the National Test House (NTH) here.

"Efforts on R&D are not upto the mark. An example of this is the number of patent applications which is an indicator of innovation. Patents filed by Indian scientists are far less than China, Germany, Japan and US," he pointed out.

He said that India would have to bridge the gap as fast as it can.

Lauding the contribution of NTH in Indian society, he said that it was instrumental in helping several notable scientists like C V Raman, J C Bose and Meghnad Saha in their research activities which made them big.

Mukherjee said that quality of products would have to improve substantially to fight competition, where NTH had a big role to play in testing quality.

West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan said that NTH and other institutes like Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) were under-rated in the country.

Other who spoke were minister of state for consumer affairs (IC) K V Thomas and West Bengal minister for consumer affairs Sadhan Pande.