Despite approving a Bill to set up a National Research Foundation (NRF) to boost scientific advancement in the country just eight months earlier, the Union government was silent on allocation for the institution or progress made so far in the interim budget for 2024-25.
Expressing concern, scientists speaking with Down To Earth (DTE) highlight the need to move the proposed institution from the planning phase and set up an administrative structure.
First proposed under the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2020, the NRF aims to centralise scientific research funding in the country. It would replace the currently established governmental funding agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Atomic Energy, Department of Biotechnology, Indian Council of Agriculture Research, Indian Council of Medical Research and the University Grants Commission.
In the Union budget for 2021-22, the Centre had announced that it would set aside Rs 50,000 crore for NRF over five years. However, the following year, it was allocated a budget of just Rs 1 lakh. Further in 2023-24, the Union budget allocated Rs 2,000 crore for the NRF, which was then revised to Rs 258.60 crore.
The Union Cabinet had approved the NRF Bill in June 2023, paving the way for its establishment and inviting focus on further steps being taken for its establishment. However, Sitharaman skipped any mention of NRF in her speech.
“It is disappointing. The revised estimate for 2023-24 does not make sense to me. The NRF does not yet have an administrative structure or direction,” CP Rajendran, adjunct professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, told DTE.
“I think it is still in the planning phase. We do not get any information on what is being done and what the status is,” added Dhrubajyoti Mukherjee, President of the Breakthrough Science Society, a non-profit social welfare organisation.
Shift in structure
The experts also highlighted a lack of transparency in establishing the governance structure of the proposed institution.
In 2020, the NEP had mentioned that the NRF would be governed independently of the government, by a rotating board of governors consisting of the “very best researchers and innovators across fields”. However, in June 2023, the government stated that the governing board would be presided over by the Prime Minister and the Union Minister of Science and Technology.
“They were initially talking about modelling the NRF around the National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the US federal government. Now, they are making it a government system,” Rajendran told DTE.
Earlier, in a July 2023 statement released by the Breakthrough Science Society, Mukherjee said, “Even the Executive Committee, which will govern the day-to-day functioning of the NRF, is to be headed by a government-appointed person (the Principal Scientific Advisor). Hence the NRF is not envisioned to function independently of the government.”
In the statement, Mukherjee highlighted that of the Rs 50,000 crore set aside NRF over five years (2023-28), some Rs 36,000 crore (72 per cent) was expected to come from the private sector. “Thus, the government is envisaging spending only around Rs. 14,000 crore over five years, i.e., around 2,800 crore per year. Anybody with some idea of the volume of research conducted in India knows that this amount is sorely insufficient even to maintain the present meagre level of support,” he said.
This is much less than Rs 7,931.05 crore allocated to the Department of Science and Technology, Rs. 2,683.86 crore for the Department of Biotechnology, and Rs 5,746.51 crore allocated for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research during the Union budget for 2022-23, he added.
Apart from the NRF, the interim budget was also not clear on the details for allocations for the other scientific departments. There is a need to wait for the full Union Budget that will be presented after the elections slated later this year, said Mukherjee.
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