Union Minister of State for Planning M V Rajashekeran on Thursday asked business and industrial houses to adopt innovations as they alone could help the country to achieve human growth and development.

Delivering the inaugural address at the Second Max Planck- IISc International conference on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth, he said that innovations are roadmaps for nation building and globalisation had pushed innovation to the top of the agenda of policy makers.

“ According to the Global Innovation Index (GII) that examines the degree to which individual nations are currently responding to innovation, US ranks first with an index of 5.8 followed by Germany and UK, whereas India ranks in the 23 rd place with an index of 3.57. What we need for a developing country like ours is innovations and research,” he said.

He added that despite an uptrend in patent activity by Indian institutions, we lagged behind significantly when it came to applying for patents in comparison to China. 

"The total number of patent applications filed in China is about a lakh, whereas India files about 17,00 applications of which 80 per cent applications are from foreign companies and individuals. ” he added.

"According to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, an overwhelming 79 per cent of workers in the unorganised sector live on an income of less that Rs 20 a day and over 3.94 million workers which is around 86 per cent of the working population belonging to the unorganised sector work under ‘ utterly deplorable’ conditions.