Biju Dharmapalan
The recently approved National Research Foundation (NRF) Bill, 2023 will be a landmark decision in facelifting Indian science. The passage of this bill will allow for the creation of a National Research Foundation (NRF) to nurture, grow, and promote R&D and encourage a culture of research and innovation across India’s academic institutions. The National Research Foundation (NRF) is supposed to facilitate cooperation between various sectors, including the private sector, academic institutions, Government agencies, and research organisations. Even though Indian researchers do world-class research and are at the top in the number of scientific publications, there is hardly any industrial contribution to our research. This has badly affected the credibility of our scientific community. Most of the time our researchers do research either to fulfil the minimum requirements of their doctoral program or to satisfy the needs of the funding agencies. Public respects science only when scientific research finds application in their daily life. They are not at all concerned whether a scientist has high-impact publications or not. During covid-19 pandemic period, public perception towards the scientific community has seen a major shift primarily because of great contributions from our researchers. Farmers keep on looking at ICAR institutions for new improved varieties of crops. Whatever great things our researchers do in their labs, if it’s not delivered to community people they start criticizing the scientific community. It’s not always possible for scientists to develop products out of their research. For example, many labs that are undertaking fundamental research, especially in areas like ecology, systematics, cell biology etc. may not directly contribute to the development of products. But these types of research also have wide applications for humanity and we need to promote researchers working in basic science.
The research will have reach only when some industry takes the research output for developing a product. Whether it is the ‘Chitra Heart-valve’ developed by Sree Chitra Thirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology or ‘Jeevani’ developed by Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute or any product that we see in the market, e.g., food products, medicines, home appliances etc, is the output of scientific research. Premier research institutions and universities have long been collaborating with industries, in fact, many companies closely monitor the discoveries from these labs. But for lesser-known institutions finding an industrial partner is mostly a difficult task, even if they do credible research. With the new National Research Foundation, this gap will be minimized. Out of the allocated Rs 50,000 crore for the National Research Foundation the Government plans to raise ?36,000 crore through investments from industries and philanthropists, while the remaining amount will be funded by the Government. The industrial collaboration will not only bring financial support to the institutions but also helps in generating more employment opportunities in research and development.
Even though industrial collaboration will bring a lot of benefits to the scientific community, the government should check the overinfluence of industries in research. Most of the time industries will prefer to support research that involves a marketable product. This may change the research culture in the country affecting basic science research, that may not produce a product immediately. The Government should give strong support to people who are working on basic science research also. Basic science research is the fuel to run the applied research. Without a strong foundation in basic science, neither the country nor the industry can prosper. Many Nobel-winning discoveries were carried out as basic research, but later they found applications in a wide range of areas. The policymakers should make sure that the industrial collaboration envisioned in NRF should not hamper our strong research foundation in basic science, the fruits of which we enjoy today in various fields of our life.
(The author is Science communicator & columnist)
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