by Seema Pavgi Upadhye
In her speech for the 2024-2025 Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke of “a new scheme of bio-manufacturing and bio-foundry” to provide “environment-friendly alternatives such as biodegradable polymers, bio-plastics, bio-pharmaceuticals and bio-agri-inputs”.
The announcement is part of a bid to have the bio-economy contribute $300 billion to the Indian economy by 2030, representing a jump of around ₹18 lakh crore in value from current levels, and $1 trillion by 2047. The products of the bio-economy also play key roles in India’s sustainability and ‘green’ economy targets.
“The way to upskill India’s bio-science sector is to put money into bio-manufacturing and not only prioritise research,” Shambhavi Naik, a researcher at The Takshashila Institution, said.
The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a public-sector enterprise under the DBT that interfaces between academia and industry, has also been allocated what it was in 2023-2024 — ₹40 crore — even though its actual expenditure was higher.
The bio-economy refers to all economic activities that use biotechnologies to produce value, and includes vaccines, diagnostics, bio-ethanol, bio-plastics, genetically modified crops, etc. According to the latest Indian BioEconomy Report (IBER), published by BIRAC in 2023, “The [Indian] innovation ecosystem continues to flourish, and we aspire to become one of the top 5 global bio-manufacturing hubs and among the top 10 biotechnology destinations globally.”
The new bio-manufacturing scheme “will also help in transforming today’s consumptive manufacturing paradigm to the one based on regenerative principles,” Ms. Sitharaman added.
“Apart from the faux connection that increased supply will change consumption, the initiative is much needed,” Ms. Naik said. “As with any initiative, it will depend on what the initiative will do. It is not only about the money and tax breaks, but we need to focus on two pivotal things: creating appropriately trained workforce for bio-manufacturing and accessing the appropriate raw materials.”
Considering the existing gap in vocational training, the country currently has “highly paid Ph.Ds or low skilled BSc/MSc” graduates, Ms. Naik said. “We have for a long time now recommended an accreditation course for bio-manufacturing.”
The 2023 IBER report identified many opportunities to boost bio-manufacturing in the country, including a $2 billion investment to help start-ups transition to “large-scale manufacturing”, introducing a production-linked incentive scheme to improve production, and instituting a single-window clearance system for bio-manufacturers.
Among the significant steps taken by the Science Ministry in 2023 was clearing the National Research Foundation Bill. To be piloted by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), this envisages an autonomous body with a corpus of ₹50,000 crore, of which nearly ₹36,000 crore will come from the private sector and non-governmental sources. A major long-standing concern of the government has been in getting private sector enterprises to invest in core research and development, with nearly three-fourth of such R&D expense now borne by the government. The DST has provisioned ₹2,000 crore in 2024-25 towards the NRF.
Whether the new corpus has a connection to the NRF is unclear. Allocations to civilian science departments, namely the DST, the Department of Biotechnology, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), were modest with the CSIR getting a 10% raise from the ₹5,746 crore allocated in 2023-24 to ₹6,323 crore and the DST a 1% raise over the ₹7,931 crore in 2023-24 to ₹8,029 crore.
The Department of Biotechnology has seen allocations cut to ₹2,251 crore this year from ₹2,683 crore (2023-24) and MoES a cut from ₹3,319 crore to ₹2,521 crore. A senior official explained the cuts as occurring due to budgets for major programmes often being spread out over 3-5 years and the inability of ministries to spend budgeted amounts within the prescribed financial years. The Finance Ministry, in its overall assessment of ‘Research and Development’ spending (spanning multiple ministries), has allotted ₹13,208 crore for 2024-25, up from the ₹12,850 crore in 2023-24. The actual spending during 2023-24 (till December) was ₹12,943 crore.
