​Quick fix: on India's Research Development and Innovation scheme

The Hindu

08-07-2025

The Union Cabinet recently approved a ₹1-lakh crore Research Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme that aims to incentivise the private sector to invest in basic research. The scheme will primarily consist of a special purpose fund established within the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), which will act as the custodian of funds. The funds will be in the form of low-interest loans. The ANRF is conceived as an independent institutional body, with oversight by the Science Ministry, to allocate funds for basic research and to incentivise private sector participation in core research. The involvement of the ANRF here is a novel move as the newly created organisation is meant to be the equivalent of a single-window clearance mechanism for funding research and development for universities and academic institutions. It is also expected to get about 70% of its budget from private sources. In sum, through the RDI and the ANRF, the government is looking to stake the bold claim that it has played its part and that it is now up to the private sector to come forward and reverse the ratio from where the government today accounts for about 70% of India's R&D spend. However, already incipient in the government's tall ambitions are traces of what has caused previous such schemes to falter. The first of these is conservatism.
It turns out that a condition for availing funds is that only products that have reached a certain level of development and market potential or, what are called Technology Readiness Level-4 (TRL-4) projects, would be eligible. There are nine TRL levels, a hierarchy that was first conceived by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1970s. TRL-1 represents a basic level of research and TRL-9 a state of advanced readiness. TRL-4 appears to be an arbitrary decision to support any promising research that has progressed halfway. Were there such a magic sauce, venture capital industries, premised on the fickleness of predicting the 'next big thing', would not exist. The scheme also seems to forget that technologically advanced countries have become what they are because of their military industrial complexes — where the spectre of war incentivises the development of technology that is risky and expensive but, over time, may prove to be of immense civilian value — examples are the Internet or the Global Positioning System. India continues to haemorrhage scientists to the West due to the lack of opportunities commensurate with their training. Finally, it lacks a deeply skilled manufacturing sector that can make the products that scientists conceive of. Budgetary allowances cannot overnight fix that which requires major surgery.