The Cabinet approved the National Research Foundation (NRF) Bill last week. The aim is to give a massive fillip to research in the country. India has been lagging in R&D expenditure even as China has deployed substantial public funds for research at its top 100 higher education institutions. Sarthak Ray examines the backdrop in which the NRF will come up and what it can achieve.
India’s R&D landscape
The country’s R&D expenditure is not just much lower than other countries — 0.7% of the GDP vis-a-vis China’s 2.1%, the US’s 2.8%, Israel’s 4.9%, and South Korea’s 4.2% — it has also fallen over the years; in 2008, it stood at 0.85%. Indeed, the world average stands at 1.8%.
The low spending manifests itself in both low researcher population and low research output. India has 255 researchers per million, compared to the US’s 4,245, South Korea’s 7,498, the UK’s 4,341 and Japan’s 5,304.
And, as per data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), though India saw a higher filing of patent applications at 61,573 than Germany’s 58,569 in 2021 (the latest such data available), it was a fraction of China’s 1,585,663, the US’s 591,473, and Japan’s 289,200.
NRF’s goals
The government envisages NRF as the apex body to provide high-level strategic direction to scientific research in the country as per recommendations of the National Education Policy.
The foundation will foster collaborations between industry, academia, government departments and research institutions. It will also be responsible for setting up an interface between industries and state governments and line ministries. It will “focus on creating a policy framework and putting in place regulatory processes that can encourage collaboration and increased spending by the industry on R&D”.
As per the detailed project report for NRF, the foundation will fund competitive peer-reviewed research proposals across disciplines, including inter-disciplinary research and research infrastructure, and work on building research capacity in the country.
Building research capacity
NRF will harness the talent of outstanding serving and retired researchers to mentor and foster research at state and other universities and colleges where research needs to be germinated or is at a nascent stage. There will be grants to universities for research proposals as well as infrastructure. NRF will also launch a system of doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships to encourage more talented young people to join the research workforce, with a focus on under-represented groups. NRF fellows will be eligible to apply for enhancement to their fellowships.
It will support researchers in international collaborations and attending workshops. It will also facilitate mega-scale research with various interests, including to serve national goals such as eradication of malaria, cleaning up of rivers and clean energy, and international collaborative research such LIGO.
Administration and funding
The department of science and technology will serve as the administrative department for NRF, though the foundation’s scope will extend to promoting research outside natural sciences as well (for instance, in social sciences). It will be governed by a board that will comprise eminent researchers and professionals across disciplines. The government has said that since the scope of the NRF will be wide-ranging and would impact all ministries, the prime minister will serve as the ex officio president of the board and the ministers of science and technology and education will serve as the ex officio vice-presidents.
The NRF will be set up at an estimated cost of `50,000 crore over five years (2023-2028). The detailed project report said the foundation will be given an annual grant that will eventually aim to reach 0.1% of the GDP (`27,000 crore in current terms). The Indian Express reported that `36,000 crore of the `50,000 crore over 2023-2028 is expected to come from industry and, in future, research projects will be funded in a 50:50 manner by the government and industry. The NRF will have the autonomy to set its own financial/ governance statutes.
Any unspent funds in the initial years will be held as a corpus for NRF, to be managed professionally for steady, risk-free return.
* Rs 50,000 cr over five years to set up the national research foundation
* 0.7% of GDP: India’s R&D spend, compared with China’s 2.1% and the US’s 2.8%
* 255 per mn researcher population in India vs 4,245 in the US and 5,304 in Japan
* 61,573 patent filings in India vs 1,585, 663 in China (2021)