PM agrees to convene meeting of CMs on science education

The recommendation to convene a meeting of the National Development Council was made by the 32-member Scientific Advisory Council (SAC-PM) to the Prime Minister headed by Prof C N R Rao when the panel met him on Friday.

Singh asked his scientific advisors to prepare a roadmap for a discussion at the National Development Council, which is attended by Chief Ministers of all the states and union territories.

This was the first meeting of SAC with the Prime Minister after the advisory body was expanded and reconstituted late last year.

Lauding the efforts of the Council on various fronts, the Prime Minister urged them to work with the same zeal and to come out with appropriate recommendations related to several other important aspects for taking ahead science and technology in the country.

The hour-long discussions with Singh centred around future plans and programmes and areas that require attention on short term as well as long term basis.
In a presentation on "India's competitiveness in Science and Engineering", Rao presented a road-map for making India competitive in science and developing it as a global innovation hub in next five to ten years.

The discussion mainly pertained to three major topics -- operationalisation of the National Science and Engineering Research Board, the need and road-map to develop medical research in general and biomedical research in particular, and the need to improve the quality of scientific effort.

"Innovation was the focus of the meeting as also accountability of universities," a member of the Council said.He said that ways develop world class institutions were also discussed and the participants were of the opinion that at least seven institutions should rank in the top 50 institutions of the world.