Eisha Sarkar
Published in Economic Times on August 30, 2010
With the first anniversary of the launch of Switzerland’s first home-grown satellite by India coming up in September, the two countries are set to usher in a new era of partnerships and cooperation in science and technology.
The launch of the 1 kg SwissCube satellite, which was designed entirely by engineering students, is one of the finest accomplishments of the Indo-Swiss partnership in the 62 years that have followed August 14, 1948 - the day Switzerland became the first country to sign the Treaty of Friendship and Establishment with Independent India.
"We're hoping for more projects with India," says Professor Pramod Rastogi of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, which spearheaded the $620,000 SwissCube project. Rastogi, coordinator of the Indo-Swiss Bilateral Research Initiative supported by the Swiss State Secretariat of Education and Research, will be coming to India next month to meet heads of various institutes including BITS Pilani and AIIMS Delhi to develop student exchange programmes.
"We are currently in the second phase of implementation of the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme (ISJRP) that was launched in 2007 by Department of Science and Technology (DST) in India. We had received 61 joint proposals, out of which 22 proposals were approved," says Prof Rastogi. Over 400 students at IIT Madras, University of Pune, IIT Roorkee, IIT Delhi, National Centre for Biological Sciences Bangalore, II Sc, Anna University, JNU, University of Mumbai, etc are working in collaboration with EPFL, University of Basel, University of Friburg, ETHZ, University of Geneva and University of Lausanne.
On similar lines is the Indo-Swiss Collaboration in Biotechnology (ISCB) between Swiss and Indian institutes, which aims to help poverty reduction in India by increasing productivity of wheat and pulses in semi-arid and rain-fed agricultural systems and by supporting sustainable management of natural resources.
While ISJRP will give Indian students exposure to Swiss technologies, there are other Indo-Swiss initiatives in the manufacturing sector. In 2008, the non-profit Swiss Indian Chamber of Commerce (SICC) launched the Swiss dual-track Vocational Education and Training (VET) System in India to address the country's shortfall of skilled factory labour. After completing their courses in Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), students can join the VET programme that currently provides for apprenticeships at Bobst India, Burckhardt Compression and Reiter India in Pune and Bühler India in Bangalore.
"We started with 20 apprentices in October 2009 and are now looking to increase the number to 200 by this October. We also plan to include more companies in Pune and Bangalore and even Indian vendors of Swiss companies in the pilot project," says Joanna Pavel, VET Project Director-Switzerland, SICC. While Pavel remains hopeful to increasing the scope of VET in India, the project has had to overcome many challenges.
Pavel says, "Many of the VET instructors did not feel comfortable using “modern” teaching methods as instructed by the Swiss VET experts. Independent lesson planning and preparation techniques are new to Indian instructors. Nevertheless, it is crucial that the quality of teaching and training reaches the Swiss education standard."
While implementing Swiss standards of teaching and technology will be a challenge in education and industry in India, organisations such as SICC and Swissnex in Bangalore are trying to bridge the gap between the two countries in fields such as biotechnology, IT and engineering.
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Clean up, the Swiss way
Switzerland is increasingly looking at bringing cleaner technologies to India. Swiss private equity firm BTS Investment Advisors has started raising its clean energy fund which has a target of $120 million to invest in wind energy, biomass, hydropower, and energy efficiency. Companies such as automation technology group ABB are already developing such projects. ABB recently inaugurated its fourth global wind power generator factory in Vadodara, Gujarat to supply wind power generators for the growing Indian and global markets. The new factory will produce up to 100 units per month with a rating of up to 2.5 megawatts.
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