that India is wasting a lot of its capabilities. "There is a big gap between India's achievement and potential," says Dutta. A few numbers first, along with a few caveats.



In 2008-09, India was ranked 41 and China 37. India gradually slipped every year, reaching a low of 81 last year. China improved gradually, and broke into the top 25 this year. India's position improved to 66 this year, which was where it was four years ago. Such jumps are rare. The GII index authors always warn against reading too much into individual rankings, and to focus on the trends. The trends show one thing unambiguously — India is on a roller-coaster ride while China is constantly improving.



GII parameters and methodologies are being tweaked continuously, and the changes ininnovation ecosystem in recent years," says former Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani . The ecosystem consists of educational institutions, research output, patents, entrepreneurship, venture capital, government policies and so on. Improvement is evident in some of these areas, and some of the improvements have been captured in this year's GII's sub-indices.India has improved its ranking primarily because of better achievements in human capital, research, market sophistication and business sophistication. In human capital, India improved its ranking to 63 from 103. This was mostly achieved because of improvements in education, and specifically tertiary education. Indian universities have improved their rankings internationally, and this improvement has had an impact on scores for education and in turn on overall rankings. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), for instance, broke into the top