A national survey on the status of research and development in the country has shown that the gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) has more than tripled from Rs. 24,117 crore to Rs. 85,326 crore in the decade from 2004-05 to 2014-15.

It is estimated that it could have further gone up to Rs. 94,516 crore in 2015-16 and crossed the Rs One lakh crore mark in 2016-17 reaching up to Rs.1,04,864 crore.

The Survey conducted by the National Science and Technology Management Information System (NSTMIS) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has also shown that the per capita R&D expenditure has increased to Rs. 659 (US dollars 10.8) in 2014-15 from Rs. 217 (US dollars 4.8) in 2004-05 and that GERD was mainly driven by the government sector with central government accounting for 45.1 %, state governments 7.4 %, public sector industries 5.5 % and institutions of higher education 3.9 %. The private industry accounted for the balance 38.1 %.

Significantly, the share of business enterprises, from both public and private sector, has been showing an increasing trend. Their share of 43.6 % in 2014-15 was found to be fairly higher than the situation in just five years earlier: in 2009-10 their share was just 34.2 %. The study has revealed that public sector R&D was led by defense related industries and fuel industry, while the private sector R&D was dominated by drug and pharmaceuticals and transportation.

However, the composition of R&D expenditure in India contrasted sharply when compared with select developed and emerging economics. The survey compared the levels of participation of the government, business enterprises, and institutions of higher education in R&D in India with those in 13 other countries – USA, UK, Spain, Russia, Korea, Mexico, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, China, Canada and Australia.

It found that India topped the list with regard to the government’s participation in R&D but hit the bottom in terms of participation of institutions of higher education. Government’s participation in R&D in the other countries ranged from seven percent in U.K. to 38 % in Mexico, as against India’s 55 %. In contrast, the share of institutions of higher education in R&D in the other countries varied from seven per cent in China to 40 % in Canada, as compared to India’s a mere four per cent.

Another significant finding of the survey is that as much as 81.3 % of R&D expenditures incurred by central government sources came from just eight major scientific agencies : Defence Research and Development Organisation led the table with a share of 37.8 %, followed by Department of Space (16.6%), Department of Atomic Energy (11.6 %), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (11.4 %), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (9.5 %), Department of Science and Technology (7.7 %), Department of Biotechnology (2.9 %) and Indian Council of Medical Research (2.4 %) during 2014-15.

Further, it has shown that women’s participation in extra mural R&D projects has increased significantly from a mere 13 % in 2000-01 to 29 % in 2014-15. In absolute numbers, 1.301 women Principal Investigators had availed extramural R&D support during 2014-15 as against just 232 in 2000-01. In terms of personnel directly engaged in R&D activities, there were 39,388 women (13.9 %) as on April 1, 2015, out of the total 2.82 lakh personnel. It has also revealed that out of the total of 27, 327 doctorates awarded in the country, 15,246 or 56.4 % were from the S&T disciplines during 2014-15. India occupied the third rank in terms of PhDs awarded in S&T after China (30,017) and USA (26,520).

The number of researchers per million population in India has more than doubled from 110 in 2000 to 218 in 2015 and India’s R&D expenditure per researcher was as much as 1,78,000 in terms of ‘purchase parity price on dollar basis’. This was higher than that of Russia, Canada, Israel, Hungary, Spain and UK.

Besides, it has found that extra mural R&D support by Central Government agencies has increased from 1,358 crore in 2009-10 to 2,002 crore in 2014-15. Its share in the national gross expenditure on R&D was 2.3 % during 2014-15. The Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology were the two major players contributing nearly 66.4 % of the extra mural R&D support in the country. The academic sector received 58 per cent of the total extramural R&D support during 2014-15.

The survey, among other things, has pointed out that while India spent 0.69 per cent of its GDP on R&D in 2014-15, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa in the BRICS grouping spent 1.24 %, 1.19 %, 2.05 % and South Africa 0.73 % respectively. The ratio was less than 0.5 % for Pakistan and China, at 0.29 % and 0.1 per cent respectively.

It has also highlighted that India’s scientific publication output has shown a rising trend during the past decade with the database of SCOPUS showing that research output from India has increased by 68 per cent from 62,955 in 2009 to 106,065 in 2013 and the database of SCI showing an increase of 31.5 % from 39,672 in 2009 to 52,165 in 2015.

SCOPUS and SCI, the survey noted, have put the growth rate of scientific publications at 13.9 % and 7.1 % for the period from 2009-13, as against the world average of 4.4 % and 4.1 % respectively. Also, as per SCI database India’s share in global research publications had increased from 2.2 % in 2000 to 3.7 % in 2013 and as per SCOPUS database it has gone from 3.1 % in 2009 to 4.4 % in 2013. SCOPUS database ranked India sixth in the world in scientific publications ahead of France, Spain and Italy during 2013, it pointed out.

On patents, the survey has noted that a total of 46,904 patents were filed during 2015-16 and of them, 28 per cent or 13,066 were filed by Indian residents. As per WIPO report 2016, India is ranked 10th in terms of resident patent filing activity.

Sunderarajan Padmanabhan

Twitter handle: @ndpsr