Budget 2024 Brings Good News For Scientists: Huge Corpus To Fund Research

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget announcement of a scheme to boost scientific research has won the hearts of the country's scientific community. In the interim budget, which comes months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the government announced a plan for long-term funding of research. 

"The new corpus is a much-needed and very welcome announcement," Dr Abhay Karandikar, an engineer and Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, told NDTV. He added that the patient capital is needed for the country's deep-tech start-ups to succeed. "It will help rev up the science, technology and innovation ecosystem, propelling India to become a developed country by 2047 and that can happen only with a solid foundation of science and technology," he said.

Where this new corpus will be anchored is not clear yet.

Announcing the corpus under the subhead 'Research and Innovation for catalyzing growth, employment and development', Ms Sitharaman said former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had given "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan" slogan. "Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee made that 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan'. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi has furthered that to 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan', as innovation is the foundation of development," she said.

"For our tech-savvy youth, this will be a golden era. A corpus of rupees 1 lakh crore will be established with 50-year interest free loan. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology. A new scheme will be launched for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting 'atmanirbharta'," the minister added.

Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State Science and Technology, said, "The corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore announced in the interim Budget to promote innovation and startups coupled with a new scheme for deep tech startups in defence and an exclusive biomanufacturing scheme to supplement bio-startups and bio-economy, all this point to PM Modi's clarity and conviction to optimally utilise science and technology for achieving the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047".

A top scientist from the Department of Science Technology welcomed the announcement and called it a "completely new idea" that will help feed the Anusandhan National Research Foundation effort that hopes to boost the country's science and technology using local talent.

The past year has been a year of seismic changes in India's science and technology ecosystem. The government set up a new body that will oversee research and development with a projected outlay of a whopping Rs 50,000 crore.

The Parliament last year passed the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Bill, which paves the way for setting up the apex body. The objective of this foundation is to provide high-level strategic direction to the scientific research in the country as per recommendations of National Education Policy (NEP).

Speaking in the Parliament, Union Science Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said the Anusandhan National Research Foundation will define the stature of India in 2047 and catapult us to the league of developed nations, pioneering new research in new frontiers.

"This is a Bill which is going to have a long-term effect, long term outcomes and all of us, each citizen of India, including those sitting on the other side, are going to be stakeholders. To that extent, this is possibly history in making," he said.

"It envisages spending of Rs. 50,000 crore for five years, out of which Rs. 36,000 crore, almost 80%, is going to come from non-government sources, from industry and philanthropists, from domestic as well as outside sources," he said.