Policy Wise

Over at Nanopolitan, Abi raises the issue of the abysmally low budget allocation for government sponsored research and development in India. In response, Nitin points out that R&D should be left to private enterprise. Some interesting discussions in the comments section of both blogs (part of this write-up is essentially reposting a comment left on Nitin’s blog).

Personally, I agree partially with Abi’s follow-up post, contending that private sector by itself cannot promote healthy research, especially research in basic sciences. This is true not just for India, but world-wide. Even during the hey-days of Bells Labs and PARC, basic research in a corporate environment was limited to a few companies with deep pockets. Also, corporations are beholden to their bottom line and shareholders (nothing wrong in that) and therefore, fundamental research that do not promise quick pay-offs will usually be their last priority. On the other hand, the National Institutes of Health in the US, have demonstrated how government investment can lead to both successful basic biomedical research as well as development of treatments and biotechnology products. It is worthy to note that under the NIH grants system, investigators are highly encouraged to patent discoveries and earn money through their work. The system is not 100% efficient, and it required an eventual corporate involvement (Craig Venter and Celera) to accelerate the human genome project, but the doubling of NIH budget in the late 90s was a great boost for the biomedical research in the US .

[To some extent, researchers in the US already complain that not enough attention is paid to basic scientific questions. While applying for biomedical grants, you almost always have to show some kind of connection (however tenuous) to future clinical applications.]

Having said that, government sponsored R&D in India suffers from some critical problems. There is the obvious ‘not enough money’ argument that set this discussion rolling. The NIH’s budget for 2006, which had most of the US scientific community grumbling as inadequate, was $28 billion. Compare this to the paltry $600 million 2007-2008 budget allocation for Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) combined (or even the $6billion figure from Abi) ! Of course, India is not a rich country, and if we compare the budget allocated to the University Grants Commission for higher education (pdf link) – a little less than billion dollars – the figure for R&D seems proportional.

But an important question is, how much of it’s GDP is India using towards research ? Using Abi’s figure, India’s total spending on R&D is about 1% of the GDP – compare this with 1.3% for China in 2002 and ~2.5% currently for the US ! So the Indian government is spending its money elsewhere. I leave astute readers to figure out where, but will point out that there exists a department within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare devoted to the study of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) with a ‘07-08 budget allocation of ~560 crore rupees (pdf link). The allocation for Biotechnology with all it myriad expenses, meanwhile, is only a little more at 694 crores !

More than the absolute dollar amounts of the current funding, meager as they may be, there are couple of significant issues regarding their efficient usage and allocation.

Firstly, there is little accountability of the tax-payer’s money used for research. In the US, if you do not produce tangible results with your grant in five year time-frames (determined by metrics such as publications, peer-appreciation, conference presentations, patents etc), you lose the support. Does not matter if you are an young investigator starting out or someone who has been in the field for over 30 years – the ‘publish or perish’ mantra is strongly enforced. Funding is taken much more for granted in India, especially once you have established yourself – all it takes is your name to obtain more money.

Secondly, it is not just lack of money, but proper distribution and usage. Certain institutes, laboratories and even researchers use political connections to usurp a lion’s share of the funding and then misutilize such funds. Speaking from personal experience, I have seen dust gathering on biomedical instruments that are supposed to be “National Facilities” with the principal investigator diverting funds for its upkeep to their own research. In some cases, scientists even appropriate money or resources such as PCs for personal use. Even worse, it seems like some of the budgeted funds were never even utilized.

Efficient allocation of resources, proper accounting and emphasizing merit over everything else – these simple policies need to implemented first for establishing a strong research environment in Indian institutes.

(Thanks to co-blogger Confused for helping me navigate through some figures and also for pointing out various links).