- The Core
- Posts
- How science has stagnated on Modi's watch
How science has stagnated on Modi's watch
There is little reason to believe that a third term for Modi will result in the revival of Indian scientific research and innovation
Good morning! In April this year, the secretary of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) tweeted about how two of India’s premier scientific institutions cracked the Surya Tilak conundrum. The essence is that the Centre wanted the sunlight to fall directly on the forehead of the idol at Ayodhya’s Ram Temple. This was to happen at noon every year on the occasion of Ram Navami, which follows the lunisolar calendar. Apparently there are some complex astronomical calculations and mirrors involved, but the DST secretary’s tweets attracted brickbats from those who criticised the blurring of lines between science and religion. Such criticisms have been rife for several years, given the government’s muted spending on science and technology despite all the paeans. Today’s story is about just that. Plus: our picks of the week’s best longreads.
If you enjoy reading us, why not give us a follow at @thesignaldotco on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.
Venni V Krishna
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/f88e914c-3d6e-4945-ad7c-e16361dccfa0/2eb9fd58-8204-450c-9483-dec14c339e32_1280x1280.jpg?t=1720176735)
When Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister in 2014, there was expectation his election would awaken the dormant potential of Indian scientific research and innovation.
While several initiatives were announced in subsequent years, the spending on science research and innovation remained stagnant.
The Principal Scientific Advisor to the government acknowledged recently that "if you look at any commonly used indicators to measure the scientific strength of a country, we are far behind, well below the global average”.
He said there was a need to improve indicators such as Gross Expenditure on R&D, the number of researchers per million population, women in science, the number of patents, and others.
After a decade of policy discussions aimed at increasing the gross expenditure on R&D, the government in 2023 established the National Research Foundation with a budget provision of nearly USD$6 billion for five years. However, only USD$30.9 million was allocated to the foundation in the national budget for 2023-24.
Over the last decade, India, in fact, has witnessed a throwback to the uncritical glorification of ancient knowledge to the detriment of science education.
The removal of certain rational and scientific themes — such as the Periodic Table, water conservation, air pollution and resource management — from the curriculum has caused alarm in the scientific community.
The exclusion of Darwin from the syllabus, for example, is not an innocuous change. It represents a setback for the teaching of science and poses a threat to scientific temper.
The optimism which greeted Modi’s ascension to power has evaporated.
And the future, if he returns for a third term, does not seem promising.
The most fundamental requirement for advancing science and innovation is adequate gross expenditure on R&D as a proportion of the GDP.
India's expenditure on R&D as a proportion of GDP has remained relatively stagnant, actually decreasing from 0.8 percent in the 1990s to 0.65 percent in 2023. Despite successive governments since 2000 reaffirming their commitment to allocating 2 percent of GDP for R&D, this has always fallen short.
To comprehend the extent of India's regression in scientific progress, a comparison with China is illuminating.
In the early 1990s, both India and China invested similar amounts in R&D, each allocating around 0.7 percent of GDPD. Remarkably, during this period, India's scientific publication output, as gauged by the ISI database, exceeded China's, with nearly 10,000 papers per year compared to fewer than 6,000 for China.
However, by 2020, China had outstripped India's scientific output threefold, attributed to a substantial increase in R&D investment, which had escalated to 2.2 percent of GDP by 2021.
In contrast, India's investment stood at 0.65 percent of GDP in 2023. An analysis of the R&D budget structure reveals that over 65 percent is allocated to three major strategic sectors: defence, nuclear and space, leaving a mere 35 percent for civilian R&D.
The lack of sufficient investment in R&D has hindered governmental efforts to realise the science and development agenda across various flagship programs, with the exception of Digital India.
That program has had some successes, such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platforms that allow free and fast money transfers using fintech apps. These platforms processed over USD$1 trillion in transactions in 2022 and India now leads the world in real time digital payments. Another success story is Aadhar, which emerged as India’s personal identity platform covering over 1.2 billion people.
Despite a big announcement in 2015, not a single model 'Smart City' — sustainable and inclusive cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of 'smart' solutions — has been established.
National budget estimates from 2022 to 2024 clearly indicate that a dozen science missions, ranging from quantum technology to telecommunications (including 5G and 6G), are struggling due to inadequate funding.
In 2024, India, therefore, finds itself nowhere near the global frontiers of science and technology.
Modi arrived in office with a grand vision for science and innovation – articulated not only in his speeches at the Indian Science Congress Association’s annual events but also in his government’s policy pronouncements.
He made clear commitments to eliminate bureaucratic hurdles in laboratories, reduce red tape, and increase transparency to inspire the scientific community. He followed up by announcing key policy initiatives, along with additional budget allocations for their implementation.
He wanted India to be among the top three science producing countries. In 2020, the government even introduced the National Education Policy, which declared India's aspiration to become a leading force in science and technology.
In his second term, a dozen frontier "science missions" were announced to advance science and capitalise on innovations in AI-enabled technologies, machine learning and supercomputing, frontier electronics, quantum technologies, electric mobility, geospatial policy, a manned space flight through Gaganyaan, data protection and cloud computing, the graphene and green energy technologies. Again, the success was limited.
Such grand ambition needs skilled scientific manpower as well as financial resources. The lack of substantial R&D investments in universities, for example, has severely hindered their ability to compete globally.
While China boasts more than seven universities in the top 50 and 100 rankings, only a couple of Indian institutions (such as the IITs and Indian Institute of Science) have managed to secure ranks between 200 and 400. The lack of autonomy and relative freedom of expression has also significantly impeded scientific research and creativity in universities.
The internationalisation of higher education in the new education policy and the vision of building world-class universities remains elusive. Instead the policy clearly articulates its emphasis on "the rich heritage of ancient and eternal Indian knowledge and thought.”
Under these constraints, one cannot assume that a third term for Modi will result in a radical revision of India’s science and innovation agenda.
Venni V Krishna is Honorary Professor, University of New South Wales and concurrently Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Australia
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
ICYMI
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/7c93c346-dda7-4841-a72d-fbb1ea1c2d57/fd9ca6fc-1acc-4d39-bc13-ae0c92866357_500x282.gif?t=1720176737)
Nailed it: Anxieties over job displacement due to automation or emerging technologies aren’t new. They bubbled after the invention of the printing press, during the Industrial Revolution, with the advent of the internet, and during the outsourcing boom of the early aughts. The common thread linking all these disruptions is that new technologies always create new jobs. What kinds of occupations, then, can we expect to see as a result of AI upending the labour market? The answer lies in a fascinating theory called the ‘manicure economy’. Every time there’s a threat to ‘human’ occupations, the economy creates new ones that demand interpersonal skills, something machines aren’t adept at. Consider that manicurist and skincare specialist jobs grew fivefold in the US during the outsourcing boom, or that personal tutors and private cooks became whole new professions in the same way dotcom-related everything did. The feature also explains why women and middle skill job workers will have an advantage in the AI age. Lesson: it literally pays to have social fluency.
No dodge, this: There are many ways to sell the India story, but infrastructure is the juiciest of all. That’s what Infrastructure India Plc (IIP), a London Stock Exchange-listed company floated by a bunch of British executives to ride the BRICs wave in the naughts, appears to be. When things went south two years after its 2008 listing, a couple of American executives, Tom Tribone and Rahul “Sonny” Lulla, who were running Guggenheim Global Infrastructure Company, a Cayman Islands offshoot of financial services giant Guggenheim Partners, stepped in. Guggenheim is co-owned by Mark Walter, who owns major stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chelsea Football Club. What followed is a tale of millions of dollars from Guggenheim-owned entities flowing into IIP and then to Lulla and Tribone as management fees. IIPs barely makes any money but the company’s valuation, on the basis of which the fees are paid, continues to rise. Several investors have lost their investment in the process. Police are on the company’s tails too. This Bloomberg investigation says that at last count, Guggenheim entities have about $320 million stuck in IIP.
A game of shares and loans: The best thrillers are made of power games and power-hungry people. But the best real-life stories of greed are often tucked away in stacks of boring paperwork. Dig into them, and one finds the many creative ways in which Indian ‘gurus’ and business owners siphon away money and avoid paying taxes, and even successfully fool seasoned bankers (for a while). This investigation by The Reporters’ Collective uncovers one such case of Baba Ramdev, the celebrity yoga guru and face of Patanjali Ayurved. The story digs into the financial statements of Patanjali group’s nonprofit firm Yogakshem Sansthan (among other entities) to show two things: (a) Patanjali claimed to plough profits into charity but its charitable trusts did no work, and (b) these trusts acted as fronts to transfer money without paying taxes or revealing who owns what in the group. The transactions discussed in the story move around in circles, indicating dubious financial intent. But will Baba Ramdev and Co. ever be brought to book themselves?
Protect the waters: In March 2021, the Ever Given, one of the largest container ships ever built, spent six agonizing days wedged in the Suez Canal. The megaship’s grounding froze up to $10 billion of global trade, highlighting the critical role of these maritime shortcuts. Fast forward to 2024, and the risk of these straits clogging is even higher. Take the Danish Straits, where nearly half of Russia's oil exports slither past Denmark's shores. With the US cracking down on Russian oil shippers, Russia has started deploying decrepit, aging ships to dodge sanctions. If one of those ships meets an accident and triggers an ecological disaster, Denmark will have no choice but to padlock the waters, potentially sending energy prices into the stratosphere. This Bloomberg Businessweek analysis identifies six such global trade "choke points" that could cripple the world economy if they get jammed.
Reply