India Ups R&D Investment

India will almost double science and technology funding from 1.1% to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2007, according to a policy document released by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in January at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore. “The document sets the priorities in place and provides a road map for the next few decades,” says Valangiman Ramamurthy, secretary of the government’s department of science and technology. “But progress would depend essentially on how vigorously and in what manner its major provisions are implemented,” says Rajendra Pachauri, director general of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi.

Science and Technology Policy 2003 proposes cutting bureaucracy at India’s science agencies, providing universities and research institutions with greater autonomy, and improving university infrastructure. Other objectives include tax breaks for firms willing to invest in R&D; attracting expatriate scientists to return to India; increasing funding for research on natural disasters; and promoting more efficient, environmentally friendly, and clean technologies.

This is only the third time in the 56 years since India acquired its independence from the UK that the country has formulated a new research strategy. In 1958, the government released its first scientific policy resolutions, which proposed strengthening higher education, forming specific research institutes in areas such as nuclear and space technologies, and improving industrial infrastructure. The second policy statement, made available in 1983, recommended that India either engage in reverse engineering—which involves disassembling an object to see how it works in order to duplicate its manufacture—or obtain licensing agreements for goods that it could not manufacture. “Although the 2003 document rephrases a lot of what was contained in the original policy resolutions, there are some significant new ideas in it,” says Abhijit Sen, dean of the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in Bhat.

The new report’s recommendation that India increase public awareness of science and technology is welcomed by Pachauri. For democracy to be effective, he says, people need to understand the impact of science and technology. The report also proposes that the country’s researchers concentrate on meeting the needs of the poor population. “The large mass of [India’s] poor people have generally been neglected,” Pachauri adds. Instead, research has tended to focus on solving problems for India’s upper and middle classes. He points out that government-funded research in areas such as sustainable development can make a huge difference in eliminating poverty.

In the 2003–04 budget, science and technology funding received a 9.5% increase to INR 146 billion ($3.1 billion), despite a generally weak economy. Nearly 80% of the R&D money in India is provided by the government, yet almost all the increase proposed in the 2003 strategy document would come from industry. “We are seeing a very encouraging response to industry participation in R&D,” says Ramamurthy. “Indian industries [are looking] to technology to give them the competitive edge,” he adds. There is more than an even chance that the 2% GDP goal can be met, says Predhiman Kaw, director of the IPR, “but the contribution from industry may be slow coming and tend to be very selective.”

“The strength of India’s current R&D effort lies in the large, diverse, and qualified scientific human resource that the country possesses,” says Pachauri. “Its weakness is essentially in the largely inefficient institutional structure, symbolized by government-funded research laboratories, which have remained essentially stagnant and unproductive for much too long.”

Most of the funding goes to India’s 200 state-run and 1350 industrial laboratories. The government also funds 230 universities. The policy calls for a radical shakeup at these institutions and increased mobility of scientists among industry, academia, and research laboratories, and between fields. The universities will welcome the report, says Kaw, because it gives “clear recognition of the fact that they are the ultimate source of trained manpower, and that their infrastructure needs considerable upgrading with new investments.” However, according to Katepalli Sreenivasan, the new director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, “the report does not recognize the importance of first-rate undergraduate science education in the universities, which is where most of the raw talent for scientists exists.”

Pachauri agrees. “India had some excellent universities half a century ago, but many of these have declined in quality and caliber for a variety of reasons, particularly lack of government support…. It is hoped that the new policy will correct this historical trend and bring about a strengthening of the university system as far as science and technology is concerned.”

The document’s influence may be felt beyond India’s borders. “Many developing countries view Indian science policy as visionary,” says Sreenivasan, “and the document is well in that spirit.”