India must invest heavily in R&D to be in the reckoning

In keeping with the tradition that was set rolling in 1987, India celebrated the National Science Day, commemorating the Nobel-winning light discovery by C V Raman, on February 28. The day has emerged as a national festival. A bigger tribute comes courtesy of UNESCO, which has declared that 2028 will be observed as the “International Year of Raman Spectroscopy”.

Meanwhile, every November 10 is celebrated as the ‘World Science Day for Peace and Development’, to highlight the crucial role of science in society and promote sustainable development. In India, the theme for 2026 is ‘Women in Science: Catalysing Viksit Bharat’.

Science has grown from the natural philosophy based on deductive reasoning of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle through the empirical experimental methods of the scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries, by pioneers such as Bacon, De Cartes, and Galileo, to what it is today. British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon propounded the steps-experiment, observation and inference-as the foundation of the scientific method.

Scientific research has largely flourished due to the support and assistance received from rulers. Fortunately extending patronage to cutting-edge scientific research, inventions and discoveries has remained high on the agendas of governments, across countries.

The flipside of the matter presents an interesting picture, as perceived by experts. The first is whether as much energy, effort and support are going into the cause of supporting R&D, given the needs of the country, on the part of governments, the corporate sector, scientific community and academic institutions. The second is the extent to which such results, as the scientific community is able to generate, are finding adequate and productive application in the national effort aimed at rapid growth and sustainable development of the socio-economic fabric of the nation. On both counts, however, it is regrettable that all efforts made so far leave much to be desired.

And that continues to be the situation, although several efforts have been made in the past such as the Lab to Land programme launched in 1979 by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to transfer proven technologies to the fields of small and marginal farmers. Transferring technology from academic research to commercial application using licensing, startups, and patenting to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the industry is another effort promoted by the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) and other key factors such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.

For one thing, India has a long way to go before the desired level of two per cent of the GDP goes into promotion of R&D from the present 0.6 per cent. As a result, the remarkable ability of the community of Indian scientists, to apply their skill and talent to discovering solutions for the pressing problems of the country, is largely underexploited. What is even more distressing is that even the corporate sector has shown far less than the desirable levels of interest in developing R&D.

Therefore, while it is all very well to commemorate the memory of our great scientific legacy, and the towering personalities that dotted its history, the time has come for the Union and state governments to realise the enormous, and largely unutilised, potential of the R&D sector to develop new knowledge, techniques and technologies that can spur production and productivity and reduce costs, improve quality, diminish risks and respond to market signals apart from increasing Total Factor Productivity (TFR).

Needless to say, the support has to be directed into areas where there is potential that can have maximum impact, from the point of resolving problems of the neglected sectors, regions, and sections of society.

The question, as always, boils down to whether those inhabiting the corridors of power will appreciate the need to make a short list of options and address them in an acceptable order of priority. Things that can wait for better days like organising international sports events, or investing heavily in somewhat unproductive activities like statues and magnificent new buildings, should perhaps make way for more urgent issues like sale of children, honour killings, economic distress in the farming community leading to suicides and the country’s somewhat fragile state of preparedness to combat terrorism, climate change and conflict and inequity.

Also, it is necessary to preserve, protect, validate and make contemporarily relevant use of the rich legacy of indigenous technical knowledge that has been inherited from ancient times.

As noted in a similar context in this column earlier, one only has to lie back and look at the big picture. Just imagine the world in which we live today without search engines and sources of knowledge, information, entertainment, and support like Google. It could not have come into being without the help of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defence, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and prior research undertaken in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The focus of future scientific research should, in other words, be made to stand on a tripod foundation of basic, applied and development research. Basic research, the variety that is also referred to as “blue sky’ or fundamental research, is largely concerned with the acquisition of new knowledge which may or may not have direct application in the needs of society, including applied research and development research. In the situation in which India is in today the central and state governments will be well advised to accord the highest priority to applied research, particularly that part of it which addresses the most pressing challenges that figures among the priorities.

While on the subject of the priority accorded by governments to the R&D sector, I cannot help recalling the position which obtained in Israel when on a visit to that country in 1994.

The delegation led by Sharad Pawar, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, became the first official initiative of the government of India after 1948, and followed the resumption of diplomatic ties with Israel. As a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, the country’s commitment to research in the agriculture sector was of special interest during that visit. The Agriculture Research Organisation (ARO), a counterpart of ICAR, had set apart an overwhelming 97.5 per cent of its total budget entirely for conducting contractual research. Farmers would propose problems confronting them. Finding solutions to them was the primary task of the organisation. In a stark contrast, in India, even today, not even the remaining 12.5 per cent is earmarked to applied research aimed at coming to the rescue of the farming community.

The case being made out for increasing the country’s spend on R&D is substantially strengthened by the fact that such an enhanced allocation correlates strongly with higher socio-economic progress, acting as a key driver for innovation, GDP enhancement, and improved living standards. A relationship whose veracity is brought out by the experience of countries, including South Korea and Israel, which lead the nations of the world in terms of the emphasis they lay upon R&D, setting apart as much as 6.8 per cent and 5.21 per cent, respectively, of their GDPs for that purpose. Handsome allocation is also made in countries such as Belgium, Greece, and Croatia.

One can see that India lags behind even those countries which still have a long way to go, in recognising the importance of R&D.

It is high time, in other words, for the country to get going in this direction.

(The writer was formerly Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)