NRF: A landmark initiative

National Research Foundation has the potential to transform both higher education & scientific research

Four years after being announced, the National Research Foundation has been cleared by the Cabinet, and the legislation will now go to Parliament. While the rules of how it will function are still being worked out, there are positive aspects to celebrate, and a few areas that need to be fixed.
 
What is needed: When comparing India with other countries, a few things stand out (see table). India’s overall R&D spending at 0.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) is very low: At the same level for 40 years, while countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Singapore and (especially) China have moved far ahead. Indian industry invests around 0.25 per cent of GDP in in-house R&D, to a world average of 1.4 per cent. Indian government spending on R&D, at 0.3 per cent of GDP, is reasonable by world standards. The problem is that unlike the rest of the world, research is not done in universities but in autonomous government institutes. Consequently, India allocates a mere 0.04 per cent of GDP for research done within the higher education system. So what we need to fix is clear: Indian industry must scale its investment in in-house R&D by at least a factor of five (my last three monthly columns suggest how). And investment in publicly-funded research within the higher education system must grow eight times.  This is where the NRF comes in.
 
What the NRF is, and is not: The NRF is a fund for scientific research; it is not for technological research (see table). The top three funding agencies of the Union Government — defence, atomic energy and space — are largely for technological research.  That is not our concern in this article. Approximately 20 per cent of the Union government spending on R&D is for scientific research. By locating our publicly-funded scientific research primarily in autonomous laboratories instead of the higher education system, we miss a huge opportunity. The NRF is a good beginning to address this opportunity. It gets some essential features right. It allocates Rs 50,000 crore over five years, or Rs 10,000 crore a year, for funding research in higher education. Scientists working in autonomous national laboratories are eligible only if the work is done jointly with an academic researcher.  This condition is essential. It must not be diluted for the NRF to have an impact. And academics working at both public and private higher education institutions are eligible. This, again, is critical: In the US, funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health does not distinguish between public or private, and has directly contributed to building the world’s leading higher education system. The quantum of funding, at Rs 10,000 crore per year, would double research done within the higher education system, raising its share from 0.04 to 0.1 per cent of GDP. This reduces the gap, but we still have a long way to go to match the world average of 0.35 per cent.
 
Mind the gap: The NRF also has some features that, as currently announced, are problematic. When the Rs 50,000 crore figure was earlier mentioned in the New Education Policy and various Budget speeches of the finance minister, all of it was to be publicly funded. This is as it should be; the great bulk of scientific research the world over is done in higher education and funded by the government. My favourite example is my favourite university, Stanford, a private university, which in 2022-23 spent $2 billion (Rs 17,000 crore, more than every higher education institution in India put together) on research. Of this, over three quarters came from the US federal government. We must demand of Indian industry that we invest much, much more in in-house R&D, before we expect it to fund scientific research. Once Indian industry becomes more research-intensive in its own in-house operations, expecting some funding to spread externally is perhaps reasonable.  But as my Stanford example (typical of research universities worldwide) illustrates, even in the long term, the bulk of scientific research will have to be funded by the Union government. 
 
So, can we afford Rs 50,000 crore of public funding?  We have to, and can. Consider some other numbers.  We have announced a Rs 85,000 crore production-linked incentive subsidy for semiconductor manufacturing, and a subsidy of Rs 17,500 crore to just one firm, Micron, to set up a semiconductor packaging plant in Gujarat. The annual budget of the National Science Foundation is Rs 68,000 crore and the National Institutes of Health Rs 3.3 trillion. Relative to all these numbers, we should be able to find the money.
 
Focus on accountability, not governance: A final quibble is with how the NRF is to be governed.  Governance is to be with a high-level board chaired by the prime minister, with the ministers of education and science and technology as deputies. At first glance, this conveys how important the NRF is, but I would suggest an alternative construct. Effective long-term governance is indeed critical to the effective functioning of any institution; a key requirement is time, involvement and accountability.  I wonder if any prime minister or even minister for a country as complex, diverse and demanding as India can find the time to provide constant governance of a research fund. Instead, getting a fully professional board (read: No bureaucrats!), headed by an illustrious professional willing to devote the time and energy this needs, would be a far more effective solution. Let the board then be fully accountable to the Cabinet headed by the prime minister.

The NRF is a landmark initiative. Done right, it can begin to transform both the quality of our higher education system and the output we need (long missing) from our scientific research. Ensuring adequate and growing public funding, keeping that funding dedicated to academics at both public and private education institutions, and ensuring that we govern by holding accountable is how we can redeem its potential. The next part of this article will deal with what the NRF should fund, to truly deliver an innovative India.