India has been ranked 48th on the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020 among 131 economies, breaking into the top 50 countries for the first time. Moving up four positions from last year, three ‘clusters’ - Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai - feature in the top 100 science & technology hotspots, further endorsing India’s presence in the global innovation economy.
High-income countries Switzerland, Sweden, the US, the UK and the Netherlands lead the innovation ranking, with a second Asian economy - South Korea - joining the top 10 for the first time. Singapore is ranked at the eighth position. The GII by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ranks global economies according to their innovation capabilities, including roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs. Together with three other economies - China, Vietnam and the Philippines - India has made the most significant progress in the GII innovation ranking over time, it said.
The Covid-19 pandemic is severely pressuring a long-building rise in worldwide innovation, likely hindering some innovative activities while catalysing ingenuity elsewhere, notably in the health sector, according to the GII 2020. WIPO director-general Francis Gurry said, “Even as we all grapple with the immediate human and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments need to ensure that rescue packages are future-oriented and support individuals, research institutes, companies and others with innovative and collaborative new ideas for the post-Covid era.
Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said, “To promote innovation and its culture in India, the government is formulating the new education policy 2020, which we are sure will be in the long term, as we shift gears and accelerate our efforts towards a mindset of innovation, towards the spirit of inquiry among our youngsters right from a very young age. The National Innovation Council, which promotes innovation in our micro, small and medium enterprises, is also working in a variety of ways, particularly through the India Inclusive Innovation Fund, to support activities around innovation.”
The top-performing economies in the GII are still almost exclusively from the high-income group, with China (14th) remaining the only middle-income economy in the GII top 30, and Malaysia at the 33rd position.
