India is increasingly positioning itself as an emerging leader in the global vaccines market. In fact it has all the relative advantages- lower costs in manufacturing, research and development, ability to produce and develop high quality vaccines, lower costs of clinical trials, a large pool of scientists and skilled manpower and increasing local demand.

With Asia fast turning into a favourite hub for vaccine development and manufacturing, there also exists a high potential for contract services by Asian vaccine manufacturers in areas like basic research, molecular cloning and gene expression, development of cell lines for vaccines, fermentation and purification processes, clinical trials and manufacturing.

While the US continues to account for 40 per cent of the vaccine market, the vaccine market size is expected to touch US $ 10 b by 2010. Asia consumes 13 per cent of global human vaccines and 20 per cent of animal vaccines. Home to 60 per cent of the world population and groaning under a heavy disease burden, the Asian continent, nevertheless, could aspire to be a global hub for vaccines.

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The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Government is the latest to join the ‘India Shining’ bandwagon with sops intended to attract IT/ITES companies in the State.

The state proposes to offer an incentive of Rs 20,000 (US $ 445) for every job with a minimum gross monthly salary of Rs 8,000 (US $ 178) created. This will come in the form of rebate in the buying of land or for buying of built-in office space. The policy also envisages a subsidy of 20 per cent on an investment of up to Rs 320 lakh (over US $ 711000) in fixed capital, and an additional subsidy of 5 per cent of fixed capital cost.

The government itself will be a big user of infotech products and each department will earmark 10 per cent of its budget for infotech applications.

Moreover, the state will be linked through the UP Net, which will be installed in association with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. The policy also says it will encourage the use of open source technologies.

It also proposes the establishment of a virtual institute for IT/ITES training, headed by the chairman of the UP State Higher Education Board. Its advisory board, drawn both from the academia and industry, will be responsible for ensuring that the curriculum design, certification methodology, etc. are in line with industry needs. The departments of English of the state universities will act as nodal agencies for the IT/ITES training courses run in the colleges.

There is also a proposal to develop virtual institutes, which will network with various institutions in the state as well as internationally, to train 10,000 students in the next 2-3 years to be proficient in English and other software skills. This number will go up to over 200 thousand students by 2010.