Jalan was delivering the 12th Sir Vithal N. Chandavarkar memorial lecture at the Indian Institute of Science, here on Friday. Jalan, who had a prepared text, could, however, not stick to it entirely, on account of a protest staged by unions within the institute premises.

In his lecture on ``Science, Technology and Development'' he said that India spends less than one per cent of its GDP on R&D while more progressive economies like USA and Japan spend over 3 per cent of their GDP on R&D and science related issues. He further said that the key to growth is to bring industry and science together.

Relating the incentives offered in India for scientific development Jalan said that tax concession have also been given for R&D purposes. He also said that a technology developmentboard has been established in 1996 to facilitate development of new technologies, assimilation and adaptation of imported technologies and providing catalytic support to industries and R&D instituitions to work together. Worldwide, economic growth is defined by technological progress, he added.

Touching upon the issue of venture capital funding Jalan said that the recent draft regulations for venture capital funds issued by Sebi will go a long way particularly to fund innovative activities in the private sector.Jalan also touched upon the major changes introduced since 1991 for technology transfers like automatic approval for technological agreement to high priority industries up to sum of Rs 1 crore and the waiver for prior clearances to hire foreign technicians or foreign testing of indigeneously developed technologies.

Jalan also said that India needed to take new initiatives to secure a more favourable deal at the impending review of the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement bythe WTO.

Noting that the global regime represented by trips tilted the balance of benefits of innovation in favour of private innovators, he said this might have a negative impact on modes of industrial research in India like imitative research or reverse engineering. Jalan expressed anxiety on the loose patent laws or its violation.