Power woes can be watered down, literally: CNR Rao

At the two-day national conference jointly organised by Jain University and Tumkur University, Prof CNR Rao noted that storing inorganic carbon would pose a significant threat in the future. “We need to find new ways of storing carbon. We may have to discover a new element that absorbs carbon or find a way to convert inorganic carbon to organic carbon. The Americans have proposed some ideas to that effect but they are all quite destructive. There has been a serious suggestion that we should store it in the oceans or underground, essentially destroying the oceans,” he explained.

“India is not doing well in science. China, which currently publishes 13% of all the research articles published in journals, is all set to overtake America in a few years. Soon, it will be at 17% and USA will be at 14%. But quantity is not what we should focus on; it’s quality, and India is probably responsible for less than 1% of the top 1% of research published,” he lamented. He added that the next Five-Year Plan should focus on creating avenues for new frontiers of research.