face to face
like emergence of new pests in Punjab has affected the agriculture production in a major way. In southern states too, soil salinity is a major issue as there are only few Bt crops that work in it.
India’ s food productivity is a huge challenge. We have to improve the yield and the productivity will only improve if we embrace new technology. We have touched maximum yield in agriculture and now we need innovation.
Nobody is championing the cause. It is an uncomfortable choice. During Late Mrs Indira Gandhi’ s time, we started the Operation Flood. Launched in 1970, it was a project of India ' s National Dairy Development Board( NDDB), which was the world ' s biggest dairy development program. It was taken on the mission mode, and the results were obvious. Similarly, biotechnology today requires a mission which will decide on the regulatory approvals, a dedicated minister who has high political weightage to drive it. Otherwise, with increasing population, India is working on a time bomb.
Biotechnology doesn’ t have any immediate political benefit. It has got a five to ten year cycle. The Department of biotechnology which I feel is a politically unimportant department, has to get its proper due place. It has to get a separate ministry for a proper attention. A dedicated ministry can deal with the regulatory approvals in a better way rather than current cumbersome approval process from the various ministries where a lot many people don’ t actually even understand the basics.
How have we fared on the biopharma front? Are you satisfied that now India is being talked about as a future biosimilar hub?
I will begin by saying that the future of Indian medicine is going to be biotech. From new treatments such as immunotherapy, preventive methods such as vaccines are slowly catching up. However, I feel that we still have an industry that has remained nascent for a long time. We have only few big names to talk about. Biocon and couple of companies have made India proud but then we have been unable to scale up.
Coming to biosimilars, I would say the nation’ s challenge is that whether we are just going after a short term growth or a long term strategy. What I am trying to convey is that should India only bank on biosimilars or we are also going to take up long chain molecules and work on it. So we have to ask
ourselves a question that is we a country that will have its shortcuts or we are ready to innovate. The entrepreneurial ecosystem will allow biotech to thrive or not. Biotechnology manufacturing is again complex. We require many centres of excellences to build the capabilities.
Do you agree that the successive governments have been unable to work on a clear strategy to develop a skilled workforce for this industry?
Lot of private universities have mushroomed in the country. The focus on the education has been replaced by competition to create huge campuses and facilities. The number of government teachers has gone down as compared to private ones. Students have to learn new technology by practical hands on training and only the comfort zones will not make them scientists. Cutting across governments, there has indeed been a lack of clear policy on this.
Privatization of education is fine but it should not be only a means of business. The responsibility is much beyond that. I believe that the biotechnology can only happen only with the government support. Hardcore basic as well as advance research is possible only in government backed universities. We have to give an option of long term safe career options to our PhD students and attract back those who left due to lack of opportunities in their own country.
The innovation will have to be funded with good financial support. Whether it is Max Planck, Germany or National Institue of Health, United States, everywhere in the world public funding has a great role to play. In India, we have left have our research and development or education to private players thinking that the job is done. Perhaps we think that there is no return on investments due to the long gestation period. But there has to be a realization that biotechnology is the future and we cannot compete with the world without it. The biotechnology is a sector with immense job creation opportunities. PM Modi talks about a lot about it but we have not seen any major results on this.
What are the remedies do you suggest? Should we do lot more Public Private Partnerships to bring both the academia and industry closer?
The central laboratories have to be encouraged to do the cutting edge science. I can see that the DBT institutes are doing well. CSIR laboratories too must buck up. We cannot say that we have created few
12
BioVoiceNews | July 2016