Harsh Vardhan

MINISTER FOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AND EARTH SCIENCES

IN THE PAST THREE years, India has continued its notable progress in the fields of science and technology. “The goal was to make the whole more

than the sum of its parts,” Dr Vardhan says, reading off a list of achievements since he took charge in November 2014. He’s particularly proud of the ethanolfrom-biomass plant, now being scaled up by oil companies. Another green initiative on trial in Delhi’s Barapullah Drain uses biotechnology to treat flowing sewage. Under the National Supercomputing Mission, launched in 2016, Vardhan reveals plans for a supercomputing grid for which the first batch of six systems will be up and running this year. And a cyber-physical systems program is developing capacities in artificial intelligence, deep learning and robotics to make India future-ready. There’s a whole lot more in the works—a deep ocean mission on the lines of the space programme and the huge task of training 100,000 young scientists to expand the footprint of excellence.