Joblessness has thrown over 2,500 biotechnology master degree holders in the State and hundreds of those who have done their PhDs in various areas of the subject into depression.
This is despite the strident announcement made by the State government that it would provide funds, under Advantage Assam, for creation of biotechnology departments in colleges and universities and intensify programme support as well to biotechnology departments in the institutions.
It had further stated, under its Biotechnology Policy for the 2018-22 period under Advantage Assam, that it intends �to promote and develop the pace of biotechnology research, encourage national and international partnerships and enable the conversion of research into useful technologies, products and processes.�
On the matters of financial assistance also, it had stated that in order to facilitate the academia for applied research, leading to entrepreneurship ventures, the State government, on a case to case basis, may consider providing support to universities/institutes and other governmental organisations for industry-funded research.
Faced with such a situation, some biotechnology professors told this reporter that the government should close the biotechnology departments of the universities, be it public or private sector, so that the innocuous youths are not lured into such a hopeless situation in the future.
When the term biotechnology was coined by Hungarian agricultural engineer Karoly Ereky (also known as Karl Ereky) in 1919, little was known about its huge potential in shaping the history of human knowledge.
Today, biotechnology has emerged as an inseparable part of biology that studies the use of living organisms to perform specific development processes. Biotechnology can now produce genetically altered bacteria that can solve many problems. In its evolutionary process, it gave birth to molecular biology in 1938 and genetic engineering in 1941. It is believed by scientists that biotechnology has flourished in various forms since the prehistoric times. Modern biotechnology manipulates genetic information in organisms. It has been playing a major role in the developments taking place in medical sciences and agriculture-related sciences, etc.
The Biotechnology industry in India can be traced back to 1986, when the government created the Department of Biotechnology, India.
From merely US $1.1 billion in 2003, it has grown exponentially in size to US $51 billion industry as of 2018. The contribution of this industry in the global biotechnology market is expected to grow to nearly 19 per cent by 2025.
The Department of Biotechnology of India has set an ambitious target for the industry, to make it a US $100 billion industry by 2025. The industry is divided into the following segments in India � Biopharmaceuticals, Bio-services, Bio-agriculture, Bio-Industrials and Bio-IT.
Significantly, the advent of biotechnology has expanded the scopes of science, branching out into diverse areas like immunology, virology, health, agriculture, cell biology, plant physiology, seed technology, etc. But, in our State, its potential has been overlooked by those in power, said some of the jobless biotechnology masters degree holders.
