The country will make a number of fundamental discoveries here in the next 20 to 25 years, said Dr. Shekhar Mande, director general of the Scientific and Industrial Research Council (CSIR), on Tuesday.

Mande spoke about “India’s S&T Journey in the Post-Independence Era” organized to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). This was also the first of the series of lectures organized by the University of Pune on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Indian independence.

“We are at a certain stage in which we will experience a very exciting time for our country in the next 20 to 25 years. There will be many fundamental discoveries and the future of science indeed lies firmly in Indian soil, ”said Mande.

He said India’s progress and scientific achievements in the past 75 years were far ahead of the 50-60 contemporary countries that became independent around the 1940s and 1950s, “including our neighbors.”

The Covid-19 pandemic and India’s response, its strategies to combat the outbreak and the first to identify the disease as airborne, even before the World Health Organization declaration, all illustrate the critical situations that India’s scientists are in today Able to handle it, he said.

“The pandemic has spawned a lot of collaborative biology work like never before,” said Mande.

With the new SARS-Cov-2 variant, Omicron, impending and Covid-19 cases on the rise again in many parts of the country and the world, the CSIR chief urged people to repair hidden ultraviolet equipment that They have their ACs installed in them to control the spread of the infection indoors. He said the spread of infection was reduced by 60 to 70 percent with this intervention, which was carried out in Parliament and in the AC cars on Indian Railways trains.

“An effective way to inactivate the virus indoors with ACs would be to use UV light. I urge all universities and institutions to have this setup in their offices, lecture halls, etc. It just has to be ensured that people are not exposed to UV light, ”suggested Mande.

On the future challenges facing the scientific community, Mande said that scientists in a number of CSIR laboratories were working to develop some advanced technologies to address the effective use of hydrogen, find alternatives to fossil fuels, and ways to capture and store carbon to find.

Sharing the latest developments from the CSIR labs, Mande said India recently became only the second country in the world to use indigenous biofuel to power its defense aircraft. By August next year, the demonstration of unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly used in disaster management, remote sensing, surveillance and telecommunications – is scheduled to take place at an altitude of around 20 km above the surface of the earth.