This Jun 28^th, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the introduction of the National Research Foundation (NRF) Bill, 2023 in Parliament. The Act will establish NRF, an apex body to provide high-level strategic direction of scientific research in the country as per recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP), at a total estimated cost of Rs. 50,000 crores ($6 billion) during five years (2023-28). The NRF is envisioned to strengthen research ecosystem in the country by providing high-level strategic direction for scientific research and supporting collaborations among the industry, academia, government departments, and research institutions. This national agency is planning to increase research across the nation’s thousands of universities, colleges, institutes and laboratories.

 

The webinar discussion drawn mixed reviews from the distinguished panel of experts from academia, think-tank, industry, and scientific administration. Although they welcomed the proposal of creating a new “apex body” for Indian research and agreed with the government’s interference or decision at the top level about what research areas but not on what research projects, which needs to be decided by the peers.

The question is whether current funding for robust educational and more practical based programs in the first tier educational institutions is enough or should they get more for integrated researches, equipment, supplies, and space are still some of the challenges, said Udayan Ganguly from IIT. Arabinda Mitra added we do not have basic infrastructure to teach and do research in the second tier educational institutions. They would like have better infrastructures at these institutions along with grants.

The panelists were also skeptical about attracting the envisioned funding, 70% of which is supposed to come from private industry. For them, the goal seemed little unrealistic and expressed their concern that the foundation might fall prey to political interference. Due to this the knowledge based research funding should not go down. Private funding should come in and how to share it is very critical. We need to put some mechanism with 2 years window on how to distribute funds.

Another question discussed was India lagged far behind other large nations in spending its gross domestic product (GDP) on research, and in the quality of research papers and patents, it produces. Collective response echoed that to reverse trend, a powerful new research agency, similar to the National Science Foundation in the United States, which would help coordinate science policy and consolidate and expand funding, including peer-reviewed grants to academic researchers.

Keeping focus on the national interest, funding for scientific and stem research is necessary but much of the social science research funding comes from foreign agencies and this may become problematic under new act was the concern of Poonam Muttreja. Arabinda Mitra in his response said that it may have FBI exempt but we may have difficulties in reporting on collaboration challenges, how institutions are going to work, and clarity forced by institutions, what works and what does not work etc. Naushad Forbes shared his reflections on priority areas of researches and said that one challenge with funding in India is the quality of peer reviewing. Not sure, that is the best model, or a new program is needed, or whether the traditional management will deliver that as NRF should be administered in that model.

Moderator, Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School & Faculty Director, Mittal Institute at Harvard did a wonderful job in facilitating an amazing conversation among the panelists on India’s aim to invigorate science with hefty new funding agency. Interesting questions from the audiences were also answered  by the panelists very diligently. He concluded the session by saying it has been difficult to fully assess the NRF proposal until it is passed by India’s parliament. Public should have given a chance to debate on the proposal before they could put it into the parliament.