India, June 9 -- As India counts down the years to 2047 - the centenary of our independence and the target year for becoming a fully developed nation - science and technology will not merely support that journey; it will determine its pace and character

When a lavender farmer in the Doda district of Jammu plucks the first blossoms of the season, she is not thinking about science policy. Yet it is precisely a decade of deliberate, mission-driven scientific investment that transformed barren hillsides in the Union Territory into fragrant fields of purple - a revolution in rural livelihoods born in a laboratory. This, in essence, is what twelve years of sustained commitment to science and technology in India has meant: not the advancement o...