Warning that a development model followed by industrialised nations has the potential to threaten the existence of developing countries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said that there was a need for exploring a more sustainable path for growth.
Inaugurating the annual meeting of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World here, Singh said the sharing of intellectual property rights was a major a roadblock in collaborative research efforts for commercial applications.
"We need to address this problem head on", he said. The Prime Minister said that the developing world faces common challenges like combating tropical diseases, transforming traditional agriculture and predicting and tackling natural disasters.
"These problems of under-development do not receive adequate attention in the advanced industrialised countries. Nor should we expect others to solve our problems," he said.
"We have seen how the path of development followed by industrialised countries has the potential to threaten our existence and way of life. If we can find a path that does not unduly constrain our ability to deal effectively and quickly with basic challenges of development, we should follow it in our enlightened self-interest," he said.
However, the developing world is constrained by the lack of well-organised systems and critical mass of expertise in scientific establishments, he said, adding that these countries need to invest more in science and technology.
Referring to the problem of IPR sharing, he said that the approach of 'open source' is being tried now in the software world and in the field of drug discovery. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) launched an Open Source Drug Discovery project which may freely be used by any participant.
The government has committed $40 million towards this project and an equivalent amount would be raised from international agencies and philanthropists, he said.
The Prime Minister said India has been a strong advocate of South-South Cooperation on challenges facing the developing world.
The India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) forum provides a unique framework of cooperation among the three major democracies from three different continents.
Under the IBSA framework there has been a series of collaborative activities in science and technology including in ocean research, agriculture, climate change and nano- technology, he said.
