Industry should nurture these labs as they have generated a significant Intellectual Property over the last 72 years of existence, he added. While complimenting NAL on doing pioneering work in aerospace, he stressed that with a budget of around 200 crores with half of it going towards salaries and infrastructure support, it is difficult for any organisation to do a path breaking research and HAL would like to partner with NAL in all its endeavours and nurture it as an extended arm of HAL.

Lastly he touched upon the need of having a vibrant skill development set up in the country. He said all efforts to have a meaningful R&D cannot succeed unless the country has a very strong skill base. India will have approximately 25% of the world's total workforce by year 2025.

On the flip side, by 2022, India will require about 500 million skilled workers across all skilled sectors, specifically in the manufacturing, the country will see a skills gap of nearly 90 million workers -almost twice the current figure. He mentioned that HAL-BCIC-SIATI have joined hands to address this issue and have formed a Section-8 company, the Aerospace Sectoral Skill Council.

"India needs better training and education infrastructure supported by a pragmatic labour-industry-academia ecosystem, which is being enabled by HAL led endeavour in the field on skill development under the aegis of NSDC," Dr.Tyagi said.
END