Thiruvananthapuram: India is facing serious shortage of faculty members in higher education due to rapid increase in number of institutions, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Prithviraj Chavan said here on Sunday.

"We need creative solutions for addressing this challenge. One of them could be the re-entry programmes for our women scientists and return of Indian diaspora," Chavan said at the inaugural session of the 97th Indian Science Congress (ISC2010) here.

The minister also advocated global partnerships to meet the faculty shortage.

Cautioning the scientific community against complacency, Chavan said there were enormous challenges due to the changing dynamics of science and technology the world over and market forces influencing science.

"Technology is now mostly market driven. Gross expenditure on research and development has emerged as one of the important parameters for assessing the technology and innovation status of countries," Chavan told about 6,500 delegates participating in the five-day premier science event in the Indian sub-continent.

Though global investments into Research and Development (R&D) surged to trillion dollars in the 20th century, share of technology-led growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased to 25-50 percent in many countries.

Noting the key role played by science, technology and innovation in providing improved quality of life and opportunities to citizens, Chavan urged scientists to step up achievements in different pursuits of science.

"The objective of providing improved quality of life and opportunities for every child will entail addressing the challenges of energy security, food security and affordable health care for all land," he said.

Calling upon the scientific community to take advantage of the diminishing spending on R&D expenditure in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, the minister said India had significant advantage of high return per dollar invested in R&D.

"The opportunity can be leveraged by the Indian science and technology sector to increase the share of its pie in the global R&D spending," Chavan pointed out. IANS