Railway Ministry to soon come up with policy to promote private sector R&D

While speaking in the concluding session of a post-Budget webinar on technology-enabled development, the Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the Indian Railways will come up with a policy in the next 7-8 days to make private-sector research and development a major part of the railway budget with 90 percent allocation in the future.

The minister announced, “We are starting something in the Railways soon. In another 7-8 days, we will launch a new policy where private sector R&D would become an integral part or rather major part of railways R&D budget.”

He also said that the defence and space sector has already broken the silos by opening up research and development (R&D) for the private sector and the same needs to be done in other sectors as well.

Vaishnaw also appreciated industry suggestions on the spectrum management and called for action from the industry to push domestic manufacturing of technology products.

He said, “For a long period, spectrum was viewed as a revenue-generating resource. The last two years have shown a public good element of the spectrum. I am happy to observe that there is a broad consensus on spectrum management issues which are basically leading to the public or to technology improvement or technology development. This we now need to convert in clear policy statements which can be then implemented.”