Indo-US tech tie-up being finalsied

Indo-US tech tie-up being finalsied
NIRMALA GEORGE

NEW DELHI, MARCH 11: Away from the hype and hoopla surrounding the Clinton visit, scientists from India and the United States have been busy readying a slew of agreements which will give a thrust to knowledge-based cooperation between the two countries.

Final touches are being given to an agreement to set up an Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, an agreement on HIV/AIDS research and a joint statement on reproductive health research, all of which are to be initialled when U S President Bill Clinton comes to town later this month.

Setting aside the controversies that have dogged the setting up of the Forum, the scientific establishments from both sides have worked out the details for the mechanism which would permit scientific exchanges and bilateral workshops as well as fund joint research projects in cutting edge technologies.

"With globalisation of R and D, India and the US have realised the enormous potential in using scientific research as a means of wealth creation", says one official. "India has the scientific expertise in certain key areas. These strengths and core competencies can push India to the top in the global R and D business", he adds.

The Forum will have an initial corpus of Rs 30 crore, money left over from the US-India Fund (USIF). India is also likely to make a contribution to the corpus funds to help the Forum take off, Indian officials said.

India and the U S have had a long tradition of scientific cooperation, with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, as the highly-successful testimonials of this collaboration.

An Indo-US science and technology agreement was first mooted in 1993, but it ran into trouble over difference relating to intellectual property rights provisions.

Then in 1997, the Indo-US S and T Forum was proposed, but even as the termsof the mechanism were being negotiated, the efforts were overtaken by the Pokharan nuclear tests, pushing all talk of Indo-US scientific cooperation into cold storage.

"The forum would act as an umbrella platform for all kinds of scientific research. It would have a body of experts from both countries who would meet periodically to examine and facilitate scientific research", said V S Ramamurthy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The forum would help identify sources of funding for major projects from governmental and non-governmental sources like the multilateral agencies or from the private sector.

Taking the opportunity presented by the Clinton visit, two health-related agreements are also being readied. An Indo-US agreement on sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and HIV research is awaiting final signature. Although US Secretary of Health Donna Shalala is understood to have dropped out of the Clinton entourage, the agreement facilitating research on behavioural issues relating to HIV/AIDS would be signed during the visit.

Shalala's absence is also not expected to hold up a joint statement on research into reproductive health to be signed by the Union Health Ministry and the U S Department of Health.

The research, to be conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), would focus on such areas as infertility, contraception and obstetrics and gynecology.

There would also be some forward movement in space research, one area where India and the US have had a very profitable interaction in the last decade. The Department of Space (DOS) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and their US counterparts, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would also be exploring cooperation in sharing meteorological and atmospheric science data, with agreements likely to be finalised during the visit.