India’s significance is rising on the world science research stage but it is also facing issues that is undermining the research ecosystem.
What are the positives?
UNESCO Science Report 2015 has pointed out that India has become a hub for low cost innovation.
India has continued building its capacity in low cost engineering.
Such an approach has helped in making products affordable to the masses and has also enhanced its export profile.
It progress encompasses various domains like - space technology, pharmaceuticals and IT and more recently, aviation parts.
Global Patent Share – India stood 7th in terms of the number of patents filed by residents and non-residents domestically.
The top 6 countries are China, US, Japan, South Korea, EU, Germany.
But notably, patents have grown much faster with income in countries like China, Korea, and Japan.
Scientific publications - It has been growing at an impressive 10%.
In terms of scientific output per dollar spent on research puts India on par with the best in the world.
This suggests that India is an innovation hub, at least in pharmaceuticals, computer software and automobiles, where the private sector is in lead.
What are the concerns?
The Indian share in the number of patents sealed in India has fallen from 40% in 2001-02 to 15% in 2015-16.
Meanwhile, the number of patents granted by the US Patent Office to Indian applicants has been on the rise, most of them being MNCs.
The surge in FDI and R&D activity has led to MNCs accounting for over 80% of patents issued to Indians by the US patents office.
This raises questions whether FDI has led to technology assimilation in India, something that China managed to ensure over the last three decades.
On technology transfer, there is a lack of coordination between science and technology policy and the Make in India policy.
How has the funding been for R&D?
Central and state governments together set aside Rs. 56,000 crore towards R&D in 2016-17, while the private sector spent about Rs. 43,000 crore.
While the private sector seems to have a clear roadmap for the researches it undertakes, the state needs better targeting for its work.
Indigenous technology development has been sparse except in strategic areas such as space, atomic energy and missiles.
Electronics import which accounts for above $40 billion annually is a measure of a lack of technological self-sufficiency.
The amount spent as a % of GDP in R&D fell to just 0.69% in 2016-17.
India produced only 15,300 PhDs in science, engineering and medicine fields which is only one-fifth of what china and US did.
There is contestations that fellowship stipend is also being cut, which dissuades researchers apart from starving critical projects off funds.
Another issue is the unduly prioritising certain niche domains like traditional medicine over other domains of research.
What is the weakness in our education sector?
Quality of research has to catch up with ideas that relate to larger issues in science or society, which has proven difficult.
The difficulty is primarily due to the weaknesses in our educational framework, which is more accentuated in the science stream.
The university system is in near collapse, due to the dismal state of humanities, and with it the lack of the crucial inter-disciplinary ambience.
Compartmentalisation - A considerable partition is emerging in research and teaching, with research being considered superior, which is affecting both.
As teaching has largely come to be perceived as a distraction to research, there has been a constant push of talent out of classrooms.
These attitudes, along with the fact that large grants has been flowing to projects that promise technological outcomes, basic research has suffered.
Government has constituted “Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research” (IISERs) for reviving an inter-disciplinary approach.
But, this is largely a half hearted effort, as higher education accounts for just 4% of public R&D spending.
