Daijiworld News Network - Mangalore (Coordination: Anju D'Souza)

Mangalore, Jan 21: At a time when the Indian youth were seen chanting IT and BT, the latter's progress has been at a snail's pace. Scientist and National Knowledge Commission (NKC) vice-chairman Padma Bhushan Pushpa Mitra Bargava, who was the pioneer in the Department of Biotechnology in its formative periods, shared his aspirations and woes with Daijiworld on his visit to Mangalore on Friday.

Here are a few of the inputs which popped up during the interview.

"Although we (India) started late with BT we are way behind, but have made a mark in the scene. The country has the most suitable environment for BT, which should have fetched it atleast 50 per cent of the worlds BT output. However we achieved only worth 1 billion dollar output in 2004 in BT, which is only 1 per cent of the worlds biotechnology.

Our advantages are numerous our temperatures are right, energy costs are low, most BT processes are labour intensive, infrastructure costs are low, with ample sunshine, and have tremendous biodiversity and all the climate zones of the world. We have undergone ten revolutions beginning from the green revolution to the space and the telecom revolution but still are lagging behind.

I would rightly blame it on the bad quality of education, average standards of Indian scientists, nexus between bureaucracy, government and MNCs and bad leadership, responsible for the snail pace progress in the field of biotechnology. It is shameful, Bhargav said, on the part of the nation for not having utilised its potentials in the field of biotechnology.
 
The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has tremendous expertise, which is rarely found in other countries.
 
Our progress has been reasonable in genetical engineering products wherein we have only brought out the first genetically engineered vaccine, the Hepatitis B vaccine, but in medicine and health we have done nothing as we still are importing monochlonal antibodies used for diagnotics.

We have the expertise to make out own BT cotton, said Bargava but in finger printing have done extremely well.
 
Bhargava who is the vice chairman of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) desires to make the recommendation of the commission an election issue wherin the pressure from people will force the government to implement them.