Articles by Sunil Mani

Looking into India's research and development figures for 2011-12, this article points out that four issues stand out in a systematic analysis of the data. These are the national system of innovation moving closer to the business enterprise sector; the private sector's share of R&D in the agricultural sector increasing; R&D in the research councils having very little interaction with the production sector; and the quantity of human resources engaged in R&D.

The new Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of 2013 makes all the right noises, but how do we know that it will not go the way of the 2003 policy when it comes to implementation? There are indeed some interesting ideas in STIP 2013 but none show that they have been thought through.

There has been a significant increase in the college seats available in undergraduate engineering degree programmes in Kerala. This has happened by licensing a number of privately-owned engineering colleges. Consequently, enrolment in engineering increased from about 2,800 in 1991 to about 28,000 in 2008. After a careful analysis of a unique data set, this study reaches the conclusion that actual out-turn rates have been steadily declining, especially since 2004. This decline is observed at the aggregate level, across different branches and also across different colleges. It then hypothesises about the probable causes for this steady decline in out-turn rates and concludes with the larger implications of this state of affairs.

India has the highest level of productivity in natural rubber and coconuts. While natural rubber productivity has grown rapidly, that of coconuts has barely increased over time. This paper seeks an explanation for this differential performance in terms of relative rates of diffusion of new technologies facilitated by their respective Sectoral Systems of Innovation. The ssi of rubber consists of an articulated regulatory policy mechanism which ensured that the new technologies that were generated by the research arm of the regulatory body itself were adopted by the farmers. Contrary to this, in coconuts there appear not much evidence of diffusion of new technologies and its ssi is characterised by a lack of cohesiveness with a multiplicity of actors operating at sub-optimal scales. However, some concerted efforts have been made over the last 10 years or so to develop new technologies and its diffusion among farmers and this has started bearing fruit in the form of increases in productivity, specifically since 1995-96.

This paper addresses a number of issues arising from the growth of telecom services in India since the mid-1990s. It also discusses a number of spillover effects for the rest of the economy and one of the more important effects is the potential to develop a major manufacturing hub in the country for telecom equipment and for downstream industries such as semiconductor devices. The telecom industry in India could slowly become an example of the service sector acting as a fillip to the growth of the manufacturing sector.