UN biotechnology institute seeks govt takeover

Primary fund source dried up due to the economic crisis in Europe

A United Nations institute on biotechnology research has approached the Indian government for take over as its primary fund source has dried up due to the economic crisis in Europe.

International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology started as a UN Industrial Development Organisation project in 1987 and later became a full fledged UN centre in Delhi since 1994 with the objective of translating western biotechnology research into products for the developing world. An autonomous inter-governmental organisation with 61 member states, ICGEB now has three separate institutes in Delhi, Trieste and Cape Town.

In June 2012, the Italian government, which provided two-thirds of funding to the Indian component, decided to quit the Delhi centre triggering a financial crisis for the institute, which discovered malaria vaccine and dengue diagnostic kit among other research accomplishments in the last 15 years.

“The Italian government requested (to ICGEB) that from 2014 all the components (Delhi, Trieste and Cape Town) be funded by the host governments exclusively while the contribution of member states will go to the extramural program that includes fellowships, courses and grants to all the member countries,” ICGEB director general Francisco Baralle told Deccan Herald.

The cash-strapped institute with a sprawling campus in south Delhi has now approached the department of biotechnology under the central government with a request of taking charge of the institute.

This, in fact, will possibly be one of the first tasks cut out for the new DBT secretary K Vijayraghavan – currently director of National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore – who is scheduled to take up his new assignment in the last week of January, sources said.

Vijayraghan’s predecessor in the DBT, M K Bhan, decided to set up a five-member panel to review technical and administrative issues involved in central government’s taking over of an UN organisation. But the panel’s terms of reference are yet to be framed and is expected only after the new DBT secretary assume his charge.

While India’s contribution in ICGEB currently hovered around Rs 10 crore, it might go up to Rs 30 crore if DBT took over it as a national institute, said ICGEB director V S Chauhan.

A section of ICGEB scientists feel once DBT brings the institute under its fold, it would help in improving the working atmosphere in the institute and instill a sense of transparency among researchers working there.
For instance there is wide disparity in salary between two groups of staff scientists under the current UN system, which caused a lot of heartburn.

“We should not have two different kinds of salary. It’s not a good situation in running an institute. But nothing can be done now and salary disparity can be sorted out only after DBT takes over, which I am hopeful, it will,” he said.