The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `CSIR's goal is good quality at low cost'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 22, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`CSIR's goal is good quality at low cost'

Staff Reporter

CSIR labs developing drugs, water purification systems, states Mashelkar

BANGALORE: The challenge ahead for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is in offering good quality products at low prices to the poor.

"Why should the quality of the product go down because the cost of manufacturing and selling it is low," asked R.A. Mashelkar, CSIR Director-General, at an event to celebrate the Foundation Day of National Aerospace Laboratories here.

On Friday, Dr. Mashelkar said the CSIR was working towards providing good quality products at a low cost.

The Rs. 1-lakh tractor developed by the CSIR was a move in this direction, he said.

Apart from designing tractors, Dr. Mashelkar said the CSIR laboratories were also involved in developing drugs as well as water purification systems.

Talking on "CSIR transformation: the phenomenon and the unfinished agenda," Dr. Mashelkar outlined the makeover that the organisation had witnessed since 1991.

He said that over the past five years, the organisation had doubled the number of papers that it had published.

From 1,699 papers in 2000, the organisation published 3,018 papers last year.

Dr. Mashelkar said that 2005 has been the best year so far for the CSIR.

Last year, the CSIR had an impact factor of 2.04, which was just slightly lower than that of the Indian Institute of Science. It was also in the top three for patents. Part of the CSIR's success was due to the devolution of powers to the laboratories as well as to increased networking among them, he said. At present there were 55 networked projects among the different laboratories.

Dr. Mashelkar said that resizing of the CSIR would play a role in the future of the organisation. From 40 laboratories and 145 outreach centres in 1995, the organisation now had 37 laboratories and 37 outreach centres. "However, some more needs to be done," he said. The former ISRO Chairman U.R. Rao stressed the need for experimentation in science. He said physicists and astrophysicists, apart from focussing on theoretical issues, should conduct a few experiments. Dr. Rao released the NAL yearbook on the occasion.

Dr. Mashelkar distributed awards to children of NAL employees for excellence in sports and academics.

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