The budget for the ministry of science and technology in the 12th Five Year Plan is set to witness a three-fold increase. The minister of state for science and technology Ashwani Kumar pointed out that the ministry’s budget will increase from Rs33,000 crores in the 11th Five Year Plan to almost Rs90,000 crores.
“While the budget allocation will be Rs78,500 crores, another Rs10,000 crores have been set aside for special projects,” Mr Kumar said. The minister added that two per cent of the GDP would now be allocated for research in science and technology against the current spending of 0.98 per cent.
But Mr Kumar emphasized there was a need to ramp up investment from the private sector in research and development investment. “In majority of countries, the private sector contributes two-thirds of total expenditure in research in science and technology, while the public sector spends less.
In India, the majority of funding has come from the government. This needs to be changed.” Future research would be in the fields of nano sciences, neuro sciences, material sciences, biotechnology, genomics and in the development of clean technologies, the minister said. Mr Kumar expressed concern that presently most of the patent filing in India was being done by foreign companies.
“Patents from India have plateaued and unless we introduce a culture of commercialization of technology, we cannot expect to get more patents,” the minister said candidly.
But scientists question whether this increased research and development budgetary allocation will help trigger more research. Several scientists within the government stressed that the relationship between the government and the scientific community has deteriorated.