India rises in global innovation ranking

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India has jumped five places to rank 52 in the Global Innovation Index 2019, up from the 57 it had in last year’s rankings.

India’s rise in the rankings has been a consistent trend over the last few years. It had ranked 81 in 2015, which rose to 66 in 2016, 60 in 2017 and 57 in 2018.

“The performance improvement of India is particularly noteworthy,” the report, brought out by the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation, INSEAD and CII, said.

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“India continues to be the most innovative economy in central and southern Asia — a distinction held since 2011 — improving its global rank to 52 in 2019.

“India is consistently among the top in the world in innovation drivers such as ICT services exports, graduates in science and engineering, the quality of universities, gross capital formation — a measure of economy-wide investments — and creative goods exports,” the report added.

The report also highlighted that India stands out in the world’s top science and technology clusters, with Bengaluru, Mumbai, and New Delhi featuring among the top 100 global clusters.

“Given its size — and if progress is upheld — India will make a true impact on global innovation in the years to come,” the report said. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, who released the report, said that India’s hope of increasing the size of the economy to $5 trillion cannot happen without significant innovation.

“Invention comes naturally to India,” Mr. Goyal said.

“Aryabhata invented the zero, which probably is the mother of all inventions involving science and mathematics and astronomy.

“We are happy that India has made significant progress to the 52nd rank in the Global Innovation Index 2019. We are happy that our culture of innovation is coming to the centre stage,” he added.

Mr. Goyal also said that India must be a responsive country and work in mission mode by engaging with academia, the private sector and government agencies to improve the quality of citizens’ lives even in the remotest parts of the country.