next 75 years

As India celebrates 75 years of independence, it is fitting to imagine what the next 75 years will be. Can our country, obsessed with politics, Bollywood and cricket, aspire to make the next 75 years a vibrant era with a high standard of living for every citizen? Yes, India can and will do, provided the focus is on science and technology. But how will India do that, given that it spends only 0.7% of its GDP on research and development (R&D)? It needs to make some fundamental policy changes to facilitate the transition. These include increasing the R&D budget to 4% of the country’s GDP, ensuring that individual institutions implement processes to accommodate large budgets, encouraging individual entrepreneurs and connecting science to society.

strengthen infrastructure

First, spending 4% of the national GDP on R&D is essential to driving science and innovation. Israel and South Korea are prime examples that run their respective economies by spending about 5% of their GDP on R&D. However, in order to innovate, an increase in the science budget must be preceded by appropriate macro-level policy changes regarding how and where the money should be spent. A part of this growth needs to be earmarked for building physical and intellectual infrastructure across the country, especially in universities. There should be well trained, globally competitive institutional administrators and processes with first class infrastructure. India cannot compete on the global stage unless the deteriorating infrastructure of its universities is upgraded.

Second, before any policy change takes effect, individual institutions must put in place procedures to accommodate large budgets. This requires standardizing processes across institutions and borrowing best practices from some of the global counterparts. For example, when the government encourages public-private partnerships, each grant-receiving institution must have internal processes to handle requests from its scientists to facilitate effective academic-industry collaboration. Although there is a well-defined system for distributing research grants to scientists through their institutions, it has run into inefficiencies. Inadequate staffing in funding agencies, lack of transparency in fund disbursal, lack of rigorous international standard review and feedback process, inordinate delays in fund disbursal, and an outdated evaluation system are holding our scientists behind. Everyone knows about the shortage, but what is the way? Part of the solution is to bring in and implement best practices from industry and some of the best science grant administrations abroad. The partnership of IT major, Tata Consulting Services and the use of technology gives us hope in transforming passport services across the globe. It is not meant to delegate the critical decision-making process of science grant administration to the industry, but to facilitate the process of paper submission and make the decision-making process easier, faster and with complete transparency.

science for the masses

Third, the time has come to take the fruits of science and technology to the masses. There is no better way to do this than by promoting and facilitating individual entrepreneurs. This has received more attention from the government with several positive policy changes. However, without proper nutrition, plants cannot produce green leaves. There is no better cradle for creative ideas than our university labs. Our society needs a robust system to link laboratories with entrepreneurs to funnel innovative ideas, products and solutions. To do this, universities must encourage scientists to innovate and establish standardized procedures for extracting ideas from laboratories. Entrepreneurship in India will be successful only when it is supported by a funnel of ideas and a liberal process of taking those ideas out of our university laboratories.

Where does India get $125 billion or about ₹10 lakh crore to fund science? India cannot do this by snatching money from social infrastructure, rural development or important welfare schemes. This is possible only when India cuts the defense budget. No country can claim to have won a war in the 21st century with increased defense spending. Even the mighty US, with over $750 billion in defense budget, could not defeat the Taliban. We must realize that the next generation of war is economic, not military, and that only a science and technology-driven economy can prepare us for it.

Binay Panda is Professor at JNU, New Delhi