It was 2018 when the nation first heard about National Research Foundation(NRF) through a speech by Prime minister of India in Indian science congress. Later it was recalled by finance minister N Sitharaman in budget session of July 2019 when she said that the creation of NRF was also one of the key recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020.
Again in June 2023 NRF became the topic of discussion when legislation was put on table in the current monsoon session of Parliament. Though the papers describing its detail are not available in public domain, various govt and non govt news agencies reported that it envisages a new, centralized body to fund research, with a budget of ₹50,000 crore (US$6 billion), over the next five years. Out of this budget 70 percent will be provided by private sector and govt will spend 30 percent unlike current scenario where govt is the sole funder of research in the country through various agencies.
The current bill is modelled on the lines of the hugely successful National Science Foundation of the United States (but we will see how it is different from NSF in subsequent paragraphs) which spent 2.83 per cent of its GDP on research and development. Similarly China spent 2.14 per cent, and Israel spent 4.9 per cent but India barely spends 0.7 per cent gross expenditure on R&D, top of that it is declining continuously, from 0.84 per cent in 2008 to about 0.69 per cent in 2018. Overall if we compare, even Brazil, Malaysia and Egypt spend more of their GDP on research.
According to DST officials and other experts the key focus areas for NRF is to facilitate research in universities because currently about 65 per cent of funds from SERB had been cornered by the IITs, and only 11 per cent flowed to projects in state universities.
Science and Technology Minister said the NRF would result in “democratization” of science funding. “We are emphasising the funding of projects in peripheral, rural and semi-urban areas, which are neglected and never receive funding for science projects. It is a democratization of funding of science,” Singh said.
Dr Jitendra Singh added, the NRF would have come into existence earlier, but was delayed by the disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. “The NRF Bill has now been formulated after having studied all the best models in the world, but it has been designed to suit Indian conditions. We have found that so far scientific research has been conducted in silos – in government departments and laboratories, central and state universities — with no uniformity in infrastructure, such as the kind that IITs in the country have. There has also been a lack of uniformity in the funding of scientific research. These issues have been addressed in the Bill,” he said.
The NRF is proposed to be administratively housed in the DST and would have a 16-member governing board with two members from DST, five from industry, one from humanities and six experts who would be selected depending on the nature of the project being evaluated. The Prime Minister will be the ex-officio president of the board and the Minister of Science and Technology and the Minister of Education will be the ex-officio vice presidents. The NRF’s functioning will be governed by an executive council chaired by the Principal Scientific Advisor to the government of India,” the DST said in a statement.
Most of India’s roughly 40,000 higher-education institutions are run by the states, and more than 95% of higher-education students go to state-funded universities and colleges. But these establishments have a limited capacity for research, says policy specialist Shailja Vaidya Gupta, a former senior adviser at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India.
“For some reason, there has been an artificial separation between research and higher education in the country. There are research institutions, and there are colleges and universities where very little research is carried out. One of the objectives of the NRF would be to build research capacities in our universities. The union of education and research must be restored,” said Spenta Wadia, founding director of Bengaluru-based International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, a centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. The NRF would promote research not just in the natural sciences and engineering, but also in social sciences, arts and humanities, with one of the primary aims being finding solutions to the big problems facing Indian society, she added.
Former Principal Scientific Advisor K VijayRaghvan said the NRF would turn out to be a major landmark for science in India. “India has, in the past few years, announced several major new missions in fundamental and translational research like the supercomputer mission or the quantum mission. These need an efficient and integrated management system for implementation that moves the fulcrum of research into university system. We have also opened dozens of new universities – IITs, IISERs, AIIMSs, state universities, private universities and colleges. These, and our older university system, need injection of research funding and capabilities. Our research everywhere needs to be internationally competitive and linked to society and industry. The NRF aims to do all of this, and more,” Dr VijayRaghavan said.
Partha Majumder, a geneticist and the founder of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani, India, says that he is optimistic about the NRF’s prospects, but that its success will depend on how it is governed in practice. He adds that, as yet, no publicly available documents comprehensively outline how the NRF will operate and achieve its objectives.
What to expect from private investors/Industry participation
As we learnt that private players’ contribution will be 70 per cent, many experts are being speculative about its implementation as we will see subsequently.
“If the idea for a project is good, then the industry has no qualms in supporting it and funding it,” a senior DST official said. He said the DST will also consider including a Corporate Social Responsibility component in the Bill.
One of the suggestions is to have the funds private companies allot, as part of their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations, directed to the NRF. Data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs show that during FY-2022, companies spent ₹14,588 crore as part of their CSR obligations. CSR trends suggest that nearly 70% of such funds were spent in education, health care, and sanitation projects. Moreover, many of the companies spend this on initiatives that are located within their own communities, with the government not having a say on how this must be spent. Whether the government can force, or offer tax benefits, to coax some of these funds into the NRF remains to be seen.
Who is not happy with NRF and why?
A statement released on 3 July by the Breakthrough Science Society said that funnelling grant applications through one centralized funding body, instead of passing them to several smaller agencies that focus on specific areas, would narrow the options available for researchers, particularly those looking to submit proposals that have no “short-term industrial spin-off”.
Soumitro Banerjee, a physical scientist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, and general secretary of the Breakthrough Science Society — a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting scientific ideas — worries that industry investors will gravitate towards projects that have commercial potential rather than those that are driven by curiosity.
The statement, signed by professor Dhrubajyoti Mukherjee, president of the Breakthrough Science Society, continued, “The possibility of obtaining research funds was relatively higher with several funding agencies, each with its own list of thrust areas. But with a single-window for supporting individual project proposals, such scope will be very restricted. Hard-hit will be research in the social sciences and those areas of natural sciences with no short-term industrial spin-off.”
The statement also pointed out that according to NEP-2020 (article 17.10), the NRF was supposed to be governed by a rotating Board of Governors which will function independently of the government. However, now the Union government has decided that NRF’s Board will be presided over by the prime minister, while the science and technology minister and the education minister will be the ex-officio vice-presidents.
All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN), a network of People’s Science Movements operating in 25 states, has expressed its opposition to the National Research Foundation (NRF) Bill 2023, urging the Union Government to send it to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on S&T, Environment, and Forests for a comprehensive assessment.
Asking for the government to re-examine the NRF Bill, AIPSN said, “Remit this Bill to the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on S&T, Environment and Forests for a comprehensive assessment. The Committee should invite the development authorities, line departments of the union government and state governments and the representatives of organizations working with the scientific community to submit their views on the Bill.”
One of the primary concerns AIPSN raises is the funding distribution, with only 28% of the proposed five-year allocation of Rs 50,000 crores for R&D through the NRF coming from the government. The private sector will finance the remaining 72% through a yet-to-be-identified process. Additionally, the organization said that the proposed funding structure seeks to establish a more robust intellectual property mechanism, similar to the Bayh-Dole Act, which may not align with the interests of academic institutions. The Bayh-Dole Act of United States permits universities, businesses, and non-profit organizations that receive federal funding to pursue ownership of an idea or product they created, rather than forfeiting the rights to that technology or invention to the federal government. The lack of engagement in active research by higher education institutions is another concern highlighted by AIPSN. To address this, AIPSN emphasises the need to strengthen state universities by recruiting more qualified teachers and researchers for permanent posts.
AIPSN believes that the NRF may not effectively address the structural barriers to academic research and societal applications due to its centralization of decision-making and lack of academic oversight. The organisation argues that the NRF should involve academics from across the country, state higher education councils, and ministries of the Union Government to ensure decentralized decision-making, enabling the harnessing of multiple sources of initiatives.
Dinesh C Sharma, a renowned Science Commentator wrote in a opinion in The Tribune that now NRF has been finally announced, it has emerged that it will not be a fully public-funded entity like the NSF of USA (so NRF is not similar to NSF). It means the future of the NRF and Indian R&D funding depends on the mercy of non-government agencies. f 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.
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 centralize 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.
The researchers expressed their apprehensions about the National Research Foundation being headed by political leaders owing to the Modi-led government’s promotion of belief-based ideas like panch-gavya, and the so-called ‘Indian Knowledge Systems’.
References
https://www.cnbctv18.com/views/national-research-foundation-why-india-should-broaden-its-research-graph-17146621.htm
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/national-research-foundation-a-dream-come-true-for-academics/articleshow/101403659.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/four-things-nrf-needs-to-do-to-fix-indias-research-ecosystem/
https://thewire.in/education/researchers-concern-political-leadership-nrf-funds
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/national-research-foundation-union-budget-education-policy-kasturirangan
https://www.newsclick.in/all-india-peoples-science-network-raises-concerns-over-national-research-foundation-bill-2023
