SATISH HANDA

Years 1980 to 2000 was a golden period for ‘Science City’ Ambala when scientific instruments manufactured in were known not only in the country but all over in world with technical facilities provided by Instrument Design & Development Centre (IDDC) –HARTRON. But from year 2001, the situation changed and recession started in ‘Science City’ in the absence of lack of up-gradation in IDDC-HARTRON when large number of scientific instrument manufacturing companies in the country developed their manufacturing units in Western and Southern parts in the country adversely affected the glamour of ‘Science City’ Ambala failed to introduce advanced research and development techniques in local industry to compete the manufacturers of scientific instruments manufactured in China and Korea both in quality as well as price, and succeeded in expanding their marketing network not only in our country but all over world. Today, our domestic markets are flooded with scientific instruments imported from China giving tough competition to products manufactured at Ambala on the basis of quality as well as the prices.

There are nearly 1200 micro, small and medium enterprises manufacturing scientific goods at Ambala. Two projects to inject energy in the arms of entrepreneurs in ‘Science City’ Ambala approved by former Congress government: developing a Science Cluster and a Tool Room Centre are dumped in files without action since past many years. According to entrepreneurs, to meet competition with the manufacturers in China, state government has decided to bring entrepreneurs of Ambala scientific industry and IDDC-HARTRON together on a platform once again  after a period of about 15 years, which would prove beneficial not only for scientific instruments industry but also Mixi and Agro equipment industry Ambala City.

A meeting was held between Principal Secretary cum Chairman HARTRON Ankur Gupta and members of Scientific Industry Association Ambala a couple of days ago in this regard to discuss measures to meet challenge by manufacturers of scientific instrument industry China fast spreading its marketing network in our country as well as in other countries by up-grading IDDC-HARTRON again and boost collapsing Ambala scientific industry again and local manufacturers will not have to run to Dehradun, Chandigarh and other places in the country for their  requirement of optics, electroplating and quality testing again and again.