High-quality standards to help India become developed economy by 2047: Piyush Goyal

PTI, Sep 27, 2023, 7:40 PM IST

Source: PTI / File

Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said high-quality standards in products and services will help India achieve its ambition of becoming a developed economy by 2047. He also stressed that ”standards must support creating robust enforcement ecosystem and that they are developed after extensive consultation with all stakeholder groups”.

Addressing the onboarding workshop for Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) technical committee members at the National Institute for Training in Standardization (NITS), Goyal said standards are a cornerstone of domestic trade and export, a facilitator of innovation and efficiency contributing towards national growth.

As members of technical committees formulating Indian Standards, they have an enormous responsibility to ensure that standards embed the principles of sustainability, facilitate the fight against counterfeit goods and support MSMEs and startups to become more competitive, he said in a statement.

Goyal further said each member must ensure that Indian standards reflect the latest technological advancements in the country and that these are at par with international standards.

”Only then, will India be able to achieve its vision of being the manufacturing hub of the world and realise the ambition of becoming Atmanirbhar Bharat,” he said.

BIS develops Indian standards through a consultative mechanism in technical committees, which bring together all relevant stakeholders like industry, consumers, academicians, R&D institutes, technologists and ministries/regulators. The standards are thus developed after taking into account all stakeholder viewpoints through a process of wide consultation and consensus building.

The process of standard development in BIS follows accepted international best practices based on principles of openness, transparency, impartiality and consensus.

There are around 400 standing technical committees in BIS carrying out standardisation work in 16 broad technology areas/sectors covering both core technology areas as well as new and emerging areas like geospatial information, artificial intelligence, blockchain, e-mobility, space research, smart manufacturing, smart farming etc.

Technical committee members play a big part in making sure the standardisation process works well. Their contributions and collaboration are essential for creating high-quality standards that meet national and international needs. It is therefore important that technical committees are dynamic in nature and new members are added regularly to address the subject areas on which standards are being developed.

BIS thus, regularly reviews its technical committees and in the year 2023-24 itself, more than 500 new members have joined various technical committees.