India’s Global Innovation Index ranking declines to 76^th

A collaborative study by Cornell University, INSEAD, and World Intellectual Property Organization, has ranked India 76^thout of 143 nations on its Global Innovation Index (GII), with a special mention being made on overhauling of higher education sector in India.

The latest publication of the its Global Innovation Index 2014, reported India’s ranking to have fallen down 10 places to 76^th rank out of 143 economies for this year. The report ranked India 65^th on its Innovation Output Sub-Index, and93rd on its Innovation Input Sub-Index. Amongst other sub-indices, India has exhibited a higher rank of 31 in Global Innovation Efficiency Index.

Other BRICS nations improved their positions wherein Brazil improved by 3 places to 61^st rank, Russia by 13 places to 49^th rank, China by 6 places to 29^th rank and South Africa by 5 places to 53^rd rank. The report cited the divergence in India’s performance from rest of the BRICS nations has been due to challenges it faces in integrating its efforts along the different dimensions of innovation to sustain a high level of innovation success.

The report enumerates that India has shown strength in areas like Research & development, QS University ranking, General infrastructure, Gross capital formation in infrastructure, investments in market capitalization, investments in total value of stocks traded, intensity of local competition, state of cluster development, citable documents H index, growth rate of PPP$ GDP per worker, knowledge diffusion, communication, computer & information services expenditure and creative goods exports.

The report says that India has shown weakening in areas of political stability, business environment, ease in starting business, education, scales in reading, maths and science, tertiary education, environment performances, firms offering formal training to workers, computer software spending for knowledge impact, creative outputs, global entertainment and media output, printing and publishing manufacturers and video uploads on youtube.

The report has made special mention of Indian higher education system and bottlenecks it faces. The report says that rapid growth in higher education sector is concentrated in private rather than public institutions and focused on only a few professional fields. In order to tackle these challenges India needs to ensure quality education, build graduate education and research institutions, provide equity of access, and build excellent liberal arts universities.

Warm regards,

Dr. S P Sharma

Chief Economist