India’s growing science budget

The Indian government has announced a fivefold increase in the education budget between 2007 and 2012 for a series of schemes to increase the number of science and technology researchers. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the news last month at the 95th Indian science congress. “We need a quantum jump in science education and research,” he said.

The announcement came days after India launched the first of three new nanotechnology institutes as part of a five-year 9.8 billion rupee (US $250 million) nanotechnology initiative. The initiative is to stop India from falling further behind China, the US, and the European Union, said Singh. The new institute, based at Bengaluru in the southern state of Karnataka, will open in 2009.

This is not the first time the Indian government has provided funds or a five-year strategy for nanotechnology, but the scale of the endeavor is 10 times larger than previous efforts. The new strategy is being led by a dozen academics and industrialists involved in nanotechnology and headed by C. N. R. Rao, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore and chairman of India’s science advisory council.