[ad_1]
Girish Sahni | Photo Credit: File photo/The Hindu
Former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Girish Sahni died on 19 August at the age of 68. Several sources said the hindu He died of a heart attack.
On X (formerly Twitter), CSIR said The 5:40 pm post “expressed condolences over the sudden loss”.
Dr Sahni joined the Chandigarh-based CSIR laboratory, Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), in 1991. He became its director in 2005 and held the post till he was appointed CSIR director general in 2015. He remained associated with IMTECH, sources said.
As a scientist, Dr Sahni was known for his research on the formation and elimination of blood clots and ‘clot buster’ drugs. Among other work, he developed a drug called clot-specific streptokinase, the licensing rights of which were sold to Nostrum Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey, US, in 2006 for $5 million.
He also led the team that developed the country’s first indigenous clot-busting drug, later marketed by Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd. under the name ‘STPAz’, and another drug, Recombinant Streptokinase, later marketed under the names ‘ClotBuster’ and ‘Lupiflo’.
His tenure at the helm of CSIR was often tumultuous. For instance, in 2016, a product called BGR-34 developed by two CSIR laboratories in Lucknow came under scrutiny after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised its alleged anti-diabetic effects in a speech. At the time, it was being sold by a private entity and bore the CSIR logo. Several eminent scientists questioned CSIR’s “moral, ethical and public health responsibility” over the lack of scientific testing of the product.
But Dr Sahni’s tenure as CSIR director-general was overshadowed by financial issues. In June 2015, the year he took charge, the central government – itself 18 months into the new Bharatiya Janata Party regime – asked CSIR to cut costs by starting to pay half of its expenses in two to three years. Government officials said the move was aimed at guiding CSIR to better serve “national interests”. It also had the full support of Dr Sahni, who said at the time, “It is time that Indian scientists take advantage of this opportunity and not just publish papers to satisfy their natural curiosity.”
Independent scientists have criticised the rapid shift towards self-funding, saying it lacks a funding structure to obtain funding from industry for scientific research.
Just two years later, CSIR declared a financial emergency. In 2017, Dr Sahni sent a letter to CSIR employees, saying that out of the Rs 4,063 crore allocated in the 2017-2018 Union Budget, the balance available for lab allocations and various new research projects after capital costs and salaries and pensions was just Rs 202 crore — a small fraction of the Rs 1,200 crore needed by the organisation for new research projects.
“This crisis was mainly due to a shortfall of Rs 1,650 crore in meeting the increased salary expenditure arising from the 7th Pay Commission recommendations and also in meeting pension requirements.” the hindu had reported,
In the same letter, Dr Sahni had asked CSIR laboratories to compile content from their “current technology basket (old and new) as well as at least one outstanding game-changer technology” that could be licensed to industry, and tasked the CSIR Business Development Group to draft “a strategy paper on the roadmap for bringing CSIR’s knowledge base to market” by June 2017. Stakeholders in new CSIR projects were also required to bear “the cost of all temporary manpower, consumables and contingencies” and bear about a third of the capital cost.
However, the money crunch ended in 2018, with allocations to CSIR increasing by only 3.3%. Dr Sahni had hoped that CSIR laboratories would generate revenues of Rs 1,000 crore per year by 2017, but data released in March 2018 showed that the average revenue between 2014 and 2018 was about Rs 475 crore per year.
His tenure as Director General of CSIR ended in August 2018.
Dr. Sahni was a member of the three major science academies of India. He was also awarded the National Biotechnology Product Development Award (2002), CSIR Technology Shield (2001-2002) and Vigyan Ratna Award (2014).
[ad_2]
Source link