At present over 90 research institutions are working on various aspects of lasers, like their fabrications, development of laser materials and their applications to various fields like meteorology, communications, medicines, isotope separation and in basic researches.
Scientists then started indigenous commercial production of nitrogen, argon, helium, cadmium, and nitrogen pumped dye lasers at various units i.e. Central Electronic Ltd, Sahibabad, Advani Oeerlikon and Jyoti Ltd. and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., IIT, Kanpur and BHU, Varanasi have made a pulsed carbon dioxide laser for work on photo chemistry while Marathwada University has developed a water dielectric coaxial cable pulsed Co2 laser. BARC has also done extensive work on Go2 lasers. They developed the photo type of low power helium-neon laser and transferred the technology to EC1L, Hyderabad.
Numerous centers like Kerala University, IIS Bangalore, Cochin University, IIT, and Mumbai have fabricated nitrogen lasers for their own experiments. In the field of semiconductor lasers, which differ from other lasers, works are going on at BARC and Solid State Physics Laboratory, New Delhi. The major centres in India with extensive facilities for development of lasers are BARC, Mumbai, IIT, Kanpur, IIS, Bangalore and BHU, Varanasi. A pan from these there are other centres of private and government organisations, like Instruments Research & Development Establishment, Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, Calcutta (Nd;Yag and Nd:glass lasers) and Advani-Oerlikon, Pune.
The TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Mumbai, BARC, Mumbai, IIT, Kharagpur are the centres where theoretical works on lasers or related topics are being carried out. The Survey of India is making use of lasers in range findings, whereas, for accurate measurement of air pollutants through Rayleigh scattering by Laser Diffractrometer, IIT, Madras has done significant works.
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Raman Research Institute, Bangalore is using laser system in the metrology work for their radio telescope whereas. Central Machine Tools Institute, Bangalore is measuring the accuracy of machine tools with lasers. Holographic works on various aspects like imaging, microscopy, conoscpy, interferometer etc. are being done at Mumbai University, Osmania University, IIS, Bangalore and IIT, Mumbai.
Hence lasers have wide range of applications. But due to limited availability of lasers, their components and cost effectiveness, the activities are still very slow in our country in comparison to other countries.