NRF and India’s R&D challenges
FIVE years after announcing that it would establish a new mechanism to fund and steer scientific research in the country, the Central government has finally approved the setting up of the National Research Foundation (NRF). The Union Cabinet recently gave its go-ahead to the National Research Foundation Bill, 2023, which envisages a new body that will ‘seed, grow and promote research and development (R&D) and foster a culture of research and innovation’ in universities, colleges, research institutions and R&D laboratories.
In the US, though the NSF Director is appointed by the President, the nomination needs to be ratified by the Congress.
The promoters of the idea claim that the NRF is being modelled on some of the best scientific funding agencies globally, including the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Science and Technology (S&T) Minister Jitendra Singh has credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi with conceiving the idea, conveniently ignoring that India’s S&T leaders have been pursuing an NSF-like funding agency for close to two decades now.
In 2005, the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister recommended the formation of a National Science and Engineering Research Foundation to promote and fund research in all fields of science and engineering. It was approved by the then PM Manmohan Singh. The council chairman, CNR Rao, visualised it to be patterned after the NSF and as an autonomous entity. It finally took the shape of the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) in 2008, replacing the Science and Engineering Council (SERC) that had existed in the Department of Science and Technology since 1972. Now, the SERB will be subsumed in the NRF.
Despite shortcomings such as limited funding and bureaucratic delays in the disbursal of grants, the SERB has played a key role in promoting basic and applied research. Once it is subsumed in the NRF, India will be without an independent funding agency dedicated to science and engineering research. This is because the mandate of the NRF is to promote research across the board, including social sciences and humanities. The SERB and its predecessor, the SERC, were meant to fund only scientific and engineering research. The mandate of the US NSF is to fund fundamental research and innovation in science and engineering — everything from biology to black holes. It is because of such focus on fundamental research that NSF-funded science projects have won scientists and researchers over 250 Nobel prizes since its inception in the 1950s. Therefore, replacing the ‘science and engineering’ focus of the SERB with general-sounding ‘research’ in the NRF does not augur well for the dream of making India an R&D superpower.
The government has been talking with a forked tongue about the source of funding for the NRF. Jitendra Singh and science bureaucrats have been flaunting the magic figure of Rs 50,000 crore in funding for the NRF between 2023 and 2028, amounting to Rs 10,000 crore every year.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech in 2019, said “the funds available with all ministries will be integrated in the NRF and would be adequately supplemented with additional funds.” The next year’s Budget made no mention of the NRF. In the Budget speech for 2021-22, she spoke of “an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore, spread over five years” for the NRF. It was a mere statement of intention, with no money needed to be allotted since the NRF did not exist as a legal entity.
Now that NRF has been finally announced, it has emerged that it will not be a fully public-funded entity like the NSF. The government says that it is committed to allocating only Rs 14,000 crore to the NRF over the next five years. As the SERB is being subsumed in the NRF, its funding of about Rs 4,000 crore will presumably be transferred to the new entity (SERB spends Rs 800 crore annually). It is not clear if the remaining Rs 10,000 crore the government is committing will be additional or from the existing R&D budget of other ministries.
For the remaining Rs 36,000 crore, the government “will try to raise it from industry, philanthropic bodies and international foundations”, as Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the government, told Doordarshan in an interview. It means the future of the NRF and Indian R&D funding depends on the mercy of non-government agencies.
If the private sector — corporates and international foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — is going to fund the government’s flagship research body, can it retain its public nature and remain free from external influences? Will private funders get a seat on the governing body of the NRF? How far will the NRF be answerable to the taxpayer and Parliament when it will be only partly public-funded? Who will drive the research agenda? Private funding — domestic or international — comes with strings attached.
The biggest worry is about the NRF’s proposed governance structure. The government says that ‘since the scope of the NRF is wide-ranging — impacting all ministries — the PM will be the ex-officio President of the Governing Board and the Union Ministers of Science & Technology and Education will be the ex-officio Vice-Presidents.’ The highest decision-making body of the NRF will have three political leaders in key positions. This is bound to inject politics into decision-making, particularly given the proposal that the NRF will fund humanities research also. This will effectively open the doors for ideology-driven research. In contrast, a body like the NSF is apolitical. Though the NSF Director is appointed by the US President, the nomination needs to be ratified by the Congress. Its board members are rotated every two years and its peer-review process has inbuilt transparency.
The creation of a superstructure presided over by political leaders is a brazen attempt to centralise all research — scientific or otherwise. It will facilitate private and non-state actors to drive the research agenda in public-funded research labs and universities. We need the industry to increase its R&D spend but on its own, not by reducing public funding of R&D. We need autonomous, transparent and accountable mechanisms for public funding of research. The NRF does not hold out hope on all these counts.
