India's science and technology system

The first principle

Knowledge is a public good: once a discovery is published anyone can use it, so a private firm cannot capture all of its value and will spend less on basic research than a country needs. That is why every state funds science, and why the real test of a science system is not how much it spends but how well it carries an idea from a laboratory to a factory. India built strong mission laboratories early and has always been weaker at the second half of that journey, which is the thread that runs through every issue in this note.

The core

Who does science

• Advice sits at the top. The Principal Scientific Adviser, an office created in 1999, coordinates science across ministries, and the Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC), set up in 2018, advises on priorities and runs the national missions such as quantum, artificial intelligence and deep ocean research.
• Departments run the laboratories. The Department of Science and Technology (DST, 1971) makes science policy and funds research across fields; the Department of Biotechnology (DBT, 1986) funds life sciences and supports start ups through its company, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC); the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, 1942), under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, runs a chain of national laboratories for industrial research; and the Ministry of Earth Sciences runs weather, ocean and polar science.
• Strategic science is kept close to the Prime Minister. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE, 1954) and the Department of Space, which runs the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO, 1969), report directly to the Prime Minister, and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO, 1958) works for the armed forces. This arrangement gave them steady money and freedom from routine procedure, which is why they deliver.
• Sector councils serve one ministry each. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) serves health and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) serves agriculture, so their research is tied to a user from the start.

Who pays for it, and how money is measured

• Gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) is the total a country spends on research in a year, from all sources, and it is compared across countries as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). India's GERD was about Rs 1.27 lakh crore in 2020-21, which is about 0.64 per cent of GDP, far below the 2 per cent target set in 2003 and repeated since.
• The state pays most of it. In 2020-21 the Central government funded about 44 per cent, State governments about 7 per cent, higher education about 9 per cent and public sector industry about 4 per cent, while private industry paid about 36 per cent. In the leading research economies the shares are roughly reversed, with business paying two thirds or more.
• Researchers are few. India had about 262 full time equivalent researchers per million people in 2020, against several thousand per million in the leading economies, and women were under a fifth of them.

The new funding architecture

• The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), created by the ANRF Act 2023, is a single national funder for research in universities and laboratories, chaired by the Prime Minister, and it absorbed the Science and Engineering Research Board. It was planned at Rs 50,000 crore over five years, of which about Rs 14,000 crore is government money and the rest is expected from industry and philanthropy. Its stated aim is to take research into the state universities, where most students are but little research is done.
• The Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme, approved in July 2025 with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore, gives long, cheap loans and equity to private firms for projects past the laboratory stage. It sits inside the ANRF as a special purpose fund and works through second level fund managers, so that the state shares the risk of scale up rather than of discovery.
• One Nation One Subscription, approved in November 2024 at about Rs 6,000 crore for 2025 to 2027, buys national access to major scientific journals for all government higher education and research institutions, so a student in a small college reads what a student at an Indian Institute of Technology reads.

Dimensions

• Economic. Productivity growth in the long run comes from new technology, so a low GERD caps how far an economy can grow on its own designs; the Economic Survey of 2017-18 made this argument and asked for spending to be doubled.
• Strategic. Space, nuclear and missile technology were denied to India after 1974 and 1998, and the mission laboratories that answered those denials are the reason India can launch, enrich and defend on its own; the indigenisation note carries these cases.
• Social. Research shapes daily life through high yield seeds, cheap vaccines, weather forecasts and digital payments, and Article 51A(h) makes developing scientific temper a fundamental duty of every citizen.
• Federal. Most universities are run by States, which spend little on research, so a national funder that reaches State universities is also a correction to the federal imbalance in science.
• Human. Talent leaves when laboratories lack equipment, careers are insecure and procurement is slow, and the loss compounds because good researchers train the next generation.
• International. Science is now diplomacy: joint missions with the United States and Japan, the Vaibhav fellowships for researchers of Indian origin, and sharing of digital public goods all use science to build partnerships.

In practice

• Output is rising faster than input. India is among the three largest producers of scientific papers in the world and the sixth largest filer of patents, and resident Indians now file more patents in India than foreigners do. It ranked 38th in the Global Innovation Index 2025, up from 81st in 2015, and it does well on output for the money spent.
• Mission mode works. The Green Revolution through ICAR and the agricultural universities, the launch vehicles of ISRO, the nuclear fuel cycle of DAE and the Covid vaccine Covaxin, built by Bharat Biotech with ICMR's National Institute of Virology, all came from a clear goal, a single agency and steady money.
• National missions follow that model. The National Supercomputing Mission (2015), the Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems mission (2018), the Deep Ocean Mission (2021), the India Semiconductor Mission (2021), the National Quantum Mission (2023) and the IndiaAI Mission (2024) each set targets and fund a few hubs.
• Schemes for people. Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) draws school and college students into research, Vigyan Dhara (2024) merged DST's schemes for institutions, research and innovation into one, and the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar replaced the older science prizes in 2023.

Issues and way forward

• Too little private research. Indian firms compete mostly on cost and buy proven foreign technology rather than risk their own, so the private share stays near a third; the RDI scheme, tax incentives for research and public procurement that rewards Indian design are the answers proposed in the draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of 2020.
• The valley of death. Laboratories produce prototypes that no one funds to scale, because the work is too risky for banks and too applied for grants; patient capital through the RDI fund, technology transfer offices in every major institute and joint teams of scientists and users from the start are the remedies.
• Universities do little research. Most teaching institutions have heavy teaching loads, few PhD students and no research money, so the ANRF's promise to reach State universities is the test of whether research spreads beyond a few elite campuses.
• Rigid procedure. Buying equipment through general purchase rules, slow grant releases and short contracts drive good researchers abroad; autonomy of the kind ISRO and DAE enjoy, extended to research grants, is the long standing recommendation.
• The leaky pipeline for women. Women earn a large share of science degrees but are under a fifth of researchers, mostly because careers break around marriage and childcare; DST's Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme and its Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) fellowships and the Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) pilot address this.
• Measuring the right thing. Counting papers rewards quantity, while the country needs licences, products and solved problems, so funders should measure what research is used for, not only what is published.

Common confusions

• DST and DSIR. The Department of Science and Technology funds and makes policy for science in general, while the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is the parent of CSIR and deals with industrial research and its commercial use.
• ANRF and the RDI scheme. The ANRF gives grants, mostly for discovery in universities, while the RDI scheme gives loans and equity to firms for work that is close to the market, though the RDI fund is housed inside the ANRF.
• GERD and the science budget. GERD counts research spending by everyone, including firms and universities, while the science budget is only what Central science departments receive, and much of it pays salaries rather than research.
• Basic and applied research. Basic research seeks understanding without a set use, such as the Raman effect, while applied research aims at a product, such as a drought tolerant seed; a healthy system needs both, because applied work draws on a stock of basic knowledge.
• Invention and innovation. An invention is a new idea or device, and an innovation is that idea in use at scale, which is why a country can lead in patents and still lag in products.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: gross expenditure on research and development, private share of research, mission mode, Anusandhan National Research Foundation, Research Development and Innovation fund, technology readiness level, valley of death, research to market gap, patient capital, One Nation One Subscription, scientific temper (Article 51A(h)), brain drain, translational research.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: India spends about 0.64 per cent of its GDP on research and development, against more than 2 per cent in China and over 3 per cent in the United States, and only about a third of that comes from private firms (DST, 2023).
  • Introduction with a source: The Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958 declared that the key to national prosperity lies in combining technology, raw materials and capital, of which technology is the most important.
  • Conclusion: India's mission laboratories show that the country can do world class science when goals are clear and money is steady; the ANRF and the RDI fund now have to carry the same discipline into universities and private firms.
  • Conclusion: The measure of a science system is not papers published but problems solved, so the next decade has to close the gap between the laboratory and the factory.