Lok Sabha Question No. 5559 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2022-04-06
Subject: CSIR
Ministry: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Ashok Mahadeorao Nete

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 5559

(TO BE ANSWERED ON 06.04.2022)

## CSIR

## 5559. SHRI ASHOK MAHADEORAO NETE:

Will the Minister of SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

- (a)  the role of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in providing necessary basic knowledge for the social and economic development of the country including that of rural areas and small cities;
- (b)    the  details  of  achievements and performance made in this  regard during the last two years;
- (c)  whether CSIR has taken several new measures to include scientific temper among the youth; and
- (d)   if so, the details including the positive outcomes thereof?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE) OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY & EARTH SCIENCES

(DR. JITENDRA SINGH)

- a) CSIR is utilizing the knowledgebase and technologies available in different institutes of CSIR  for  addressing  the  rural  challenges  through  various  projects,  which  enables deployment of relevant CSIR technologies/ innovations/ products/ processes/ interventions/  services in  villages across  the  country for  augmenting  the incomes  and improving the quality of lives of the targeted communities.
- b) CSIR is working to promote Scientific & Technological interventions for the development and support to the society. Some of the initiatives taken by CSIR for the benefit of people especially from rural areas are as follows:
- I. CSIR  Aroma  Mission:  Catalysing  Rural  Empowerment  through  Cultivation, Processing, Value Addition and Marketing of Aromatic Plants: CSIR initiated a Mission Mode Project 'CSIR-Aroma Mission in 2017 and till date more than 20,000 hectare additional area has been brought under cultivation of economically important aromatic  crops.  During  this  period  30  new  superior  varieties  of  various  aromatic crops  have  been  developed,  45  agrotechnologies  developed  and  are  being deployed.  Total  300  distillation  units  (primary  processing)  have  been  installed  in various clusters developed under Aroma Mission across the country enabling the distillation of about 600 tons quality essential oils worth about Rs. 75-80 crores which

helped to reduce the import of these oils. This has helped aroma industry in India especially during the long pandemic time duration. More than 1100 Training/Awareness  programs  were  conducted  benefiting  around  63,300  human resource. Besides 34 value added products have been developed to encourage the new  entrepreneurs  and  startups.  Socio-Economic  Impact  Assessment  (SEIA)  of activities  carried  out  under  CSIR  Aroma  Mission  resulted  in  following  major outcomes:  enhanced  and  assured  income  of  the  beneficiary  farmers  specially utilizing unproductive areas, ~300 Women Self Help employees created, 41-60% of the  product  exported,  21-40%  increase  in  percentage  of  growth  revenue  and educated youth are returning back to farming in their native land from urban areas. These youths are entering into new business opportunities through training of the technology intervention given under CSIR-Aroma Mission.

- II. CSIR-Floriculture Mission: CSIR initiated a 'Floriculture Mission' in 2020-21 which is expected to utilize the knowledgebase available in CSIR institutes and leverage it in an effort to help Indian Floriculture farmers and industry reposition itself to meet the  import  requirements  in  the  domain  by  developing  and  deploying  varieties  of crops like Gladiolus, Canna, Carnation, Bougainvillea, Chrysanthemum, Gerbera, Lilium, Marigold, Rose,  Tuberose, Strelitzia, Alstroemeria and  Hippeastrum. Through implementation of 'CSIR Floriculture Mission' an area of about 4,350.54 hectare  is  expected  to  be  brought  under  floriculture  crops  with  integration  of floriculture with apiculture is expected to benefit > 3500 farmers and generation of >15.00 lakhs man days in 3 years of implementation.  Enhanced income of farmer up to Rs. 18 Lakh per annum per hectare of land is expected.

## III. Development of agriculture and increasing the income of farmers and poor people in tribal-dominated Nabrangpur District of Odisha:

Nabrangpur is an aspirational and one of the poorest districts in the country having 56%  tribal  population  with  lowest  per  capita  income  in  Odisha.  12  Government Departments (Central & State) and 15 entrepreneurs working with 5,000 farmers, artisans and women self-help groups.

-  Participating Research Institutes: CSIR - Institute of Minerals & Materials Technology,  Bhubaneswar;  CSIR  -  National  Botanical  Research  Institute, Lucknow; CSIR - Central Institute of Medicinal & Aromatic Plants, Lucknow; CSIR - Central Food Technology Research Institute, Mysore; CSIR - Indian Institute  of  Petroleum,  Dehradun;  ICAR  -  Central  Institute  of  Freshwater Aquaculture, Bhubaneswar; ICAR - Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, Bengaluru; ICAR - Central Tuber Crop Research Institute, Thiruvanathapuram; ICAR - Central Avian Research Institute, Bhubaneswar; ICAR - Indian Institute of  Water  Management,  Bhubaneswar;  ICMR  -  Regional  Medical  Research Centre, Bhubaneswar; DBT -   Institute of Life Science, Bhubaneswar.
-  Areas of S&T Interventions: Farm based Intervention: Value  added agriculture of  Aromatic,  Horticulture and Tuber crops, Improved varieties, Capacity building, training and

demonstration  (Agrotechnologies,  Integrated  farming,  Water  harvesting  & management).

Value addition of farm products: Development of entrepreneurial activities and training the trainers in basic food processing techniques, Common facility creating  for  primary/secondary  processing  of  food,  aromatic  and  horticultural products, Fishery and poultry development.

Health and habitat: Understanding health and nutrition issues, Utilization of waste biomass for energy recovery, Conservation of biomass through efficient devices for cooking, drying etc., Water and sanitiation, Solar/wind energy for farm use.

- IV. Improved  Samba  Mahsuri  variety  for  Bacterial  blight  resistance  with  low glycemic index Rice: Improved Samba Mahsuri being similar to Samba Mahsuri (BPT5204) in quality and yield traits and having additional features like resistance to bacterial blight disease, low glycemic index value, 7-10 days early maturation than existing variety has a potential to replace existing Samba Mahsuri which is cultivated in about 2-4 million hectares in India. Currently this variety is being cultivated in an area of about 900,000 hectare. The total value of ISM produce is estimated to be Rs. ~8650 crores out of which the trait value (Benefit of growing ISM instead of SM) is Rs. ~1650 crores.
- V. Seaweed farming for enhancing the income of coastal farmers: ~1000 (Mostly Women) trained in sea weed farming during last 2 years in association with National Fisheries Development Board, Hyderabad to get the assured income up to Rs 15, 000/ month. M/s. Aquagri private limited is the private partner offered the buyback of the biomass produced by the beneficiaries from cultivation. The program has been developed with M/s. Pidilite industries where capacity building and hands on training will be imparted to the fishermen of coastal Gujarat for the next three years. This will also be linked to the CSR activities of the industry.
- VI. Unnat  Bharat  Abhiyan  (UBA): Unnat  Bharat  Abhiyan  is  the  flagship  National Program of the Government of India. The major objective of UBA has been to bring in transformational change in rural development processes by leveraging knowledge available with institutions spread across the country. CSIR has been at the forefront of  developing and deploying various technologies for agriculture sector and rural development for creating livelihood opportunities in rural areas. CSIR entered in to a  tripartite  Memorandum  of  Understanding  (MoU)  with  Unnat  Bharat  Abhiyan (coordinated by IIT, New Delhi) and Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA) to provide an enabling platform for CSIR to work jointly for creating livelihood opportunities in rural areas especially in the wake of situation created by COVID-19 epidemic.
- c) Yes, Sir.

d)

- I. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been providing doctoral

and Postdoctoral fellowships with the objective:

-  To nurture the budding scientific talent and to nourish the objective of doing scientific research by pursuing PhD programmes;
-  To  identify  promising  young  researchers  with  innovative  ideas  and  provide them with training and research opportunities in niche areas of basic science, engineering, medicine and agriculture;
-  To promote postdoctoral research in the country; and
-  The scheme aims at facilitating their transition from mentored to independent research career.

For  the  socio-economic  development  of  the  disadvantage  persons,  CSIR  has provision  of  reservation  in  its  largest  fellowship  programme  i.e.  Junior  Research Fellowship awarded through CSIR-UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) for candidates belonging to EWS/OBC/SC/ST/PwD as per GoI instructions issued from time to time. Under its "Capacity Building and S&T Human Resource Development: Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship  Programme",  CSIR  provides age relaxation  of  5  years  to women  candidates  in  upper  age  limit  for  award  of  Fellowships/Associateships  to pursue  doctoral  and  postdoctoral  research  with  the  aim  to  encourage  women candidates to opt science and technology as a career. As a result of the steps taken by CSIR to encourage women in the field of Science and Technology, the women participation has witnessed an upaward trend in their overall strength in the doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships awarded by CSIR. During 2021-22, out of total doctoral and postdoctoral fellows supported by CSIR, the women representation was 45%. Annually CSIR offers a large number of fellowships to young students who are going to be future scientists. At any given time, CSIR supports about 9500-10000 young researchers  in  their  pursuit  for  doctoral  and  postdoctoral  research  in  the  field  of science and technology.

Additionally,  Council  of  Scientific  &  Industrial  Research  (CSIR)  and  Kendriya Vidyalaya  Sangathan  (KVS)  had  signed  an  MoU  on  Scientist  -  Student  Connect programme 'Jigyasa' on 6th July, 2017. The CSIR's Jigyasa program is  a unique platform for bringing scientists and teachers for nurturing young minds. This program envisages  opening  up  the  national  scientific  facilities  to  school  children,  enabling CSIR scientific knowledgebase and facility to be utilized by schoolchildren. This model of engaging school children also has been extended to other schools in addition to KVS.  The  Jigyasa programme  envisages  some  of the following models of engagement:

-  Laboratory Visit;
-  Popular Lecture Series;
-  Summer Vacation Programmes;
-  Scientists as Teachers and Teachers as Scientists;

-  Teachers' Workshop;
-  Student Residential Programme;
-  Visits of Scientists to Schools; and
-  Lab specific activities / Onsite experiments and many more.

The  Jigyasa  program  is  being  implemented  through  CSIR  laboratories  wherein ~3,00,000 students across the country have benefitted, directly since 2017. More recently,  CSIR  has  signed  MoU  with  NVS  (Navodya  Vidyalaya  Samiti)  and  Atal Innovation  Mission  of  NITI  Aayog  to  further  accelerate  the  Student-Scientist outreach program of CSIR. Recently 'Jigyasa Vigyan Mahotsav 2022'- a National Level  Scientific  creativity  competition  to  create  contents  (comic,  science  fiction, infographics,  videos,  App  development,  animation  and  others)  in  the  domain  of energy, health, artificial intelligence, climate change, water conservation, disaster mitigation and agro technology were organized during January to February 2022. The Jigyasa Vigyan Mahotsav 2022 programme had organised 15 bootcamps with more than 30,000 participants. Taking forward CSIR's Jigyasa program to millions of  school  students,  the  Jigyasa-Virtual  Lab  concept  has  been  formalized  and developed.

- II. India International Science Festival (IISF) 2020: World's largest Virtual Science events (41 events) including Science for Agriculture & Rural Development, Industry & MSME, Science for students & Masses wherein 400+ sessions were organized with  2000+speakers,  307  model  presentation,  4073  gallery  showcase  and  483 poster  presentation.    Special  emphasis  was  on  youth  was  focussed  and  special sessions like Northeast Student Conclave, Science Education in India and Students Engineering Competition were organized and these events witnessed total 1.33 lakh visitors.
- III. Science  Awareness  Magazines  &  Activities: The  popular  science  magazines Science Reporter, Vigyan Pragati and Science ki Duniya played pivotal role among youth and students during COVID Pandemic as  the magazines brought out special coverage on various aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, pandemics and epidemics, viral genome sequencing, testing for COVID-19, digital transformation in healthcare, role of wildlife trade in increasing zoonotic diseases, efforts being made towards mitigation  of  COVID-19  and  public  awareness  features.  Weekly  e-Bulletin  on COVID-19 from March, 2020 to September, 2020 was brought out. Other activities taken focusing the youths are as below:
3.  Special issue of Rajbhasha magazine (Navsanchetna) on COVID-19: focused on various aspects of COVID-19 for creating public awareness.
4.  COVID-19  Awareness  Competitions  for  School  Children:  Drawing/Painting, Essay writing and Video making Competitions on COVID-19 for students of Class 5-12 with 8000 entries from 6200 schools in 1200 cities and villages across the country.
5.  World  Book  Fair  2020:  Science  Cartoon  Workshop  &  Competition  was

attended  by  more  than  100  students  from  different  schools  and  Panel Discussion on 'Communicating Science to Children' in collaboration with the National Book Trust (NBT), New Delhi.

-  Vigyanika: International Science Literature Festival 2019, as part of the fifth India International Science Festival mega-event and was attended by many students. As part of Vigyanika, various events were organised such as Keynote Lectures,  Panel  Discussions,  Scientific  Sessions,  Round  Table  Meet,  and Vigyan Kavita apart from Science Cartoon Workshop & Competition.

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