Govt gives much priority to social science research: Pandey

Emphasising that the government gives much priority to social science research, Union Minister of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey today said its role is key in making evidence-based policies.
"Social science knowledge generated through research helps us to understand the problems of society. It improves our understanding about the nature of problems that societies face and the causes of the problems," he said.
Similarly, social science knowledge helps the government and private sector to develop evidence-based policies to deal with various problems faced by countries, Pandey said.
He was speaking at a conference organised by Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and Asian Social Science Association (ASSA). It is supported by Think Tank Initiative, a multi-donor program.

The first session of the conference was marked by the release of a study 'Social Science Research in India - Status, Issues and Policies'.
"The aim of the conference is to encourage sharing of experiences by representatives of funding bodies of participating countries and describe how they prioritise, organise, fund and evaluate their investments in research," Prof Sukhdeo Thorat, chairman of ICSSR said.

A statement released on behalf of ICSSR said India ranks low in per capita expenditure on research with 23.2 dollar in 2005 and 38.5 dollar in 2011, among the BRICS countries which also include Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa.

"Our study finds out that in 2010-11, the share of expenditure on Social Science Research (SSR) as percentage of total Union budget was 0.025 per cent, whereas it was 0.86 per cent for pure science research.
"The share of SSR budget to GDP at market price for the same year was 0.0062 per cent, whereas it was 0.21 per cent in pure science," said Samar Verma, Senior Program Specialist, Think Tank Initiative, and the co-author of the study.
The study also mentioned the need to make government research institutions more oriented towards serious research from its current focus on training only.