Government and industry must synergise their efforts to promote R&D and innovation in the country, said Ratan P Watal, Principal Adviser, NITI Aayog at the India launch of Global Innovation Index 2018 in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The event was organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) -- one of the founding partners of GII along with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in collaboration with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

India's rank on the Global Innovation Index (GII) has improved from 60 in 2017 to 57 in 2018. India has been consistently climbing the GII ranking for the past two years.

Launching the index, Watal said, "The culture of spending on research and development is growing in India and we are seeing the results in the form of improvements in rankings such as the GII."

He further said that GII 2018 report served another purpose. It provided an opportunity to look at examples from similar economies from across the world and understand how they effected change in their countries.

He also drew a distinction between Innovation and Invention and emphasized the role of pure science in building scientific temper in the country.