The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Mega desalination plant by 2007

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 26, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Mega desalination plant by 2007

Special Correspondent

Another plant with a capacity of one million litres per day also coming up

NEW FACILITY: Union Minister Kapil Sibal (centre) inaugurates the Bhupat and Jyothi Mehta School of Biosciences at IIT-Madras on Saturday. He is flanked by IIT-Madras Director M.S. Ananth (left) and Board of Directors Chairman A.E. Muthunayagam. 51; PHOTO: Shaju John

CHENNAI: The Department of Science and Technology is working on a proposal to set up a desalination plant with a processing capacity of 10 million litres per day off the coast of Chennai by 2007, Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said on Saturday.

Another plant off the Chennai coast, with a capacity of one million litres per day, would be inaugurated by January 2007, he said inaugurating the Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.

Legislation would be brought in the next session of Parliament to ensure that creators of intellectual properties got a fair share in profits resulting from such ventures. "Under the new legislation, if any publicly-funded R&D project creates wealth, 30 per cent of the money would go to those who developed the intellectual property and another 30 per cent to the project. Systems will be put in place to ensure that the creators of intellectual property will inform when the IP will actually be created, so that the process of patenting can start,'' he said.

Increased allocation

Making a case for increased budgetary allocation for science and technology, Mr. Sibal said he had requested the Planning Commission to increase the allocation from Rs. 25,000 crore in the Tenth Five Year Plan to Rs 100,000 crore in the Eleventh Plan. India's $4.5 billion annual allocation for R&D was paltry compared to the $220 billion set apart by the US every year.

"Investments in science and technology should be increased manifold as they form the core of a nation's economic development,'' Mr. Sibal said.

The department had developed a new technology to catch criminals. An investigator going into a particular case would be provided with a hand-held tablet, which would embed anything written on it into a system, including audio and video files. This would be forwarded to a forensic expert who would tell the investigator how to go about collecting evidence. "This would prevent falsification or fabrication of evidence,'' Mr. Sibal said.

IIT-Madras was building a 400,000 sqft facility for research for industry, in addition to a research park, IIT-M Director, M.S. Ananth, said. The institution was looking at internationalising its profile by getting 25 per cent of its student population and 10 per cent of its faculty from abroad.

The new school, which has been built with financial assistance from the Mehta Family Foundation, will house the Biotechnology department, and has 19 state-of-the-art research laboratories spread over six floors, apart from other supporting infrastructure.

A.E. Muthunayagam chairman of the board of directors of IIT; S. Santhakumar, Dean of Academic Courses, IIT, and Rahul Mehta, chairman of the board of directors of the Mehta Family Foundation, spoke.

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