March for science

The table above contains data on funding provided by the 2018-19 budget proposal to the various Indian scientific programs and departments as a percentage increase over the funding from the revised estimates of the 2017-18 budget and then adjusts for inflation. While there are robust increases for the Department of Space and for agricultural research, the other numbers do not back the soaring rhetoric. The net funding for the CSIR shrinking sticks out in particular as that agency runs 38 research laboratories across the country and pays the salaries of Junior and Senior Research Fellows who qualify through the CSIR NET examination to pursue PhD. A similar fate befalls the Department of Health Research which is supposed to help rid India of tuberculosis by 2025. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy also faces a net reduction in funds available despite all the noise made by the Modi government about prioritizing renewable energy (this is tempered by the fact that the allocation for renewable energies saw a large increase in 2016). Overall, though, these numbers, taken in conjunction with the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations means that the actual amount available for R&D in the country has shrunk as a substantial amount of the sanctioned funds have to be relocated to support the salary increases.

This is par for the course for this NDA government which has disappointed the scientific community in each of it’s five budgets. In fact, in it’s first budget after being voted into power in 2014, the government’s total increase in the budget for science was only half the rate of inflation at the time. This was followed in the 2015 budget with more austerity with increase in science funding barely keeping pace with inflation. While the 2016 and 2017 budgets did increase funds in science, they were hardly generous and kept the total allocation around 0.7% of GDP. The 2018 budget has merely extended the pattern.

In real terms, these numbers mean a resource crunch in research laboratories all over the nation and a lack of necessary infrastructure. This lack of resources has led to the term “jugaad” being associated with Indian science. And while it is true to some extent that the ingenuity that characterises “jugaad” is desirable in the context of scientific research, it can only work up to a certain point. The success of the Mangalyaan cannot be flogged to justify the perpetual underfunding of science. Besides, there are several systemic flaws that simple “jugaad” cannot address.

India had about 218 researchers per million population in 2015. This number is much lower than the number in developed economies or even other BRICS member countries such as Brazil or China (ref. Fig. 1). While the lack of educational infrastructure at every level is a major contributing factor to this statistic, some of it can also be attributed to the lack of resources at the research level. This contributes to the oft-mentioned phenomenon of “brain-drain” where students trained within the Indian system move abroad to work in research. Multiple governments have paid lip-service to the idea of reversing brain drain. In fact several new research institutions and central universities and fellowship programs have been established which seek to draw Indians working in R&D abroad back home. However, the chronic underfunding of science in India makes it a distinctly unattractive proposition to do research in the country. The IISERs are a case in point. They were founded with the idea of being elite institutions for study of and research in the basic sciences in India. But building a high quality institution for research and education requires more than just words; it requires committed funding to build infrastructure, fund research projects and thus attract researchers and students. IISERs have floundered since their founding; not least because of a lack of interest from the government. In fact funding for IISERs went down from Rs. 720 cr. in 2016 to 600 cr. in the 2017 budget. This lack of interest from the Government is on display elsewhere as well. The government only appears interested in announcing new institutions and schemes instead of trying to improve the ones that already exist. While the addition of educational infrastructure is welcome, it is reduced to a sham when most of the new institutions do not even have their own campus, and therefore, no infrastructure.

One may try to speak in defence of the Government’s record in science by making the point that salaries of early career researchers has gone up on the watch of this Government. It is true that the JRF and SRF monthly stipends have increased from Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 18,000 to Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 28,000 respectively. However, these increments were the result of a long struggle by early-career researchers in the country. And even then the increase hardly meets the demands of the researchers which included the stipend being adjusted annually to account for inflation, And even now, it is often the case that the fellowship amounts are not paid on a monthly basis and get delayed for months at a time. Moreover, in the CSIR NET exams conducted immediately after this increase in the stipend, the number of JRF fellowships awarded was drastically reduced so that the increased salaries would not lead to increased spending, rendering the whole process rather counter-productive.

More recently, the government has announced another scheme to prevent brain-drain: 2,000 PhD scholars from IISc and the IITs shall have their monthly stipend hiked up to Rs. 70,000. For one, this fails to address the lack of infrastructure that is the primary reason behind brain-drain. Secondly, it reinforces an unfounded idea of academic elitism that students in India internalise over the course of growing up. Equal pay for equal work is a simple concept that everyone agrees should be a principle governing workers. Yet, we tolerate gross inequity in the pay of PhD students in institutions across the country based on whether or not they have qualified in some exam or the other. Good work is done by students in institutions other than IISc and the IITs yet they are not eligible for high pay. At the other end of the spectrum we have PhD students in universities being paid a monthly stipend of Rs. 8,000 while doing a full time PhD if they haven’t qualified in for the CSIR JRF. This cannot be viewed as anything other than exploitation of labour - because PhD students are engaged in productive work and often end up working arbitrary hours. If the government is serious about supporting scientific research in India, then it needs to address these issues.

One of the ways the government has sought to address these issues is by encouraging private funding in higher education and research. FDI in education and defence has opened avenues for this purpose. India has traditionally had a much lower contribution to research funding from private sources (~35%, including R&D done by companies) compared to other economies. Given this tradition the introduction of more private funding of research can be disastrous on several counts. Firstly, companies would invest in applied research at the cost of basic research and research in the basic sciences is already severely underfunded. Applied research has a greater potential for productivity but it is basic research that underpins applications. The CSIR was directed to obtain 50% of its funding from private sources in 2015 and has since sold patents and licensed out technologies to draw investments. This is fundamentally problematic as research done in a public institution with public funds will end up enriching a private corporation. And the push for private funds has already led to questionable research with regard to an anti-diabetic drug developed using Ayurvedic herbal techniques. Secondly, public funding of scientific research institutions actually allows for greater social equality among the researchers. This has been clearly seen in Latin America where countries with greater proportions of public funding of scientific research have seen greater gender equality among researchers and vice versa. In India, the situation with regard to equal representation of the genders among researchers is far from ideal, but improving. More importantly, public funding allows students from relatively underprivileged backgrounds and traditionally disadvantaged castes to get into research. The control of the purse inevitably leads to control over policy. I make the assumption that private funders will not necessarily have social justice aims in their mind when dictating policy. This may not be universally true but is borne out in practice when we look at how private higher educational institutions in India function. They are exclusive enclaves of privilege. In order that the area of scientific research does not begin resembling those private institutions, we must ensure that control of the purse and by extension, policy, remains in public hands.

Developing scientific temper is one of the fundamental duties of every citizen of India and as such, the State should be expected to aid the individual in this pursuit. Yet, the Indian state appears to be determined in putting hurdles in the path of aspiring Indian scientists. While I have focused almost exclusively on the policies of the current NDA government in this piece, and while ministers in this government have made outrageous claims, the problem of funding for research in India is an old one and has not been rectified by successive governments. It is imperative that this problem be rectified at the earliest by initiating a spell of sustained and substantial public investment in scientific research in India. For myriad reasons, several students in our country want to pursue research and it is incumbent on us as a society to provide them the necessary tools. It is understood that research in a country can contribute to solving the problems endemic there or give rise to technologies that can improve the standard of life. I have laid out data that clearly shows the extent to which science is underfunded in India. The only way to change the situation is to make the government sit up and take note of the plight and the demands of researchers. To this end, we have to mobilize further and keep up the pressure on our representatives in the government who make policy in order that they do not think of science and research merely as an afterthought.