Far back in time, science, like monasticism, attracted people who were singularly driven by a passion for seeking the truth. Largely ignored by the rulers and the state machinery of those days, science was either supported by the enlightened and munificent elites or by the investigators themselves from their personal funds. The times have changed since, and we have never had so many people supported by the state, whose purported purpose of work is to understand the world better. Thus, knowledge generation of the natural world has become a highly competitive endeavour among the nations and science funding has often been touted as a marker of social advancement.
India’s R&D expenditure
With very little participation from the private sector in the country that includes some of the richest by global standards, curiosity-driven basic research in India is primarily sustained by direct funding from the government. Still, it remains static in India and hovers between a paltry 0.6 to 0.8% of GDP over a decade, way below the United States, China, Japan, the European Union countries and South Korea. While India’s global R&D expenditure remains static at 1-3% of the global total, the U.S. and China accounted for 25% and 23%, respectively. This trend of under-funding is also reflected in the low proportion of qualified researchers available in India, considering its huge population.
