INDIA: A GLOBAL HUB FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
India has an exceptional opportunity to become the Research and Development (R&D) Hub for the world. With a few more reforms, India is tantalizingly close to becoming that place of excellence in research. Once India reaches the threshold, then the opportunities will cascade through the entire economy and society bringing new levels of productivity and prosperity.
Culture and Ecology
The most critical element is human resources. Here, India is blessed in many ways. India has a tradition of learning, science and discovery. Astronomers, experimenters. mathematicians, philosophers, poets, and thinkers have made documented contributions. This intellectual tradition has been enriched over the centuries by waves of immigration and related new cultures, faiths and ideas. India’s tradition of curiosity and exploration has been most recently validated when the large Indian diaspora has been making outstanding contributions in societies like the US. So, we know that India has a rich pool of curious men and women who would be at the forefront of research and development. Then what would it take India to become a Research and Development power-house?
Societies must organically support a research and innovation ecology. It must be part of the cultural fabric of the society. There are several inputs that facilitate the creation of this underlying fabric.
One input into this ecology is integration of learning and discovery. Curiosity is fundamental to both learning and discovery. That’s why we must house both teaching and learning, and research and discovery in the same place. Accordingly, we must integrate teaching and learning, and research and discovery in colleges and universities – even in Schools. Structurally, the British had segregated teaching and research, and independent India – for decades adopted that approach. That’s why India established outstanding universities and separate and independent research laboratories. Such division deprived the society and the individuals of the huge synergy between the two. Surely, India has come to realize that learning and discovery are interwoven. Increasingly, the society and the government are working towards a facile and natural integration of teaching and research and learning and discovery. That’s wonderful but the pace of this integration must accelerate dramatically.
A second input is democratization of quality education and learning. India has made great progress through private and deemed educational institutions. But, here, too we need more aggressive progress. For instance, while India has about 1,000 universities, the US has about 1,400 universities for a population one-third of India. Philanthropic and private initiatives will have to lead.
A third input into creating this ecology is encouraging for-profit-firms/organizations to innovate and improvise. How do we do this? By designing appropriate central and state tax incentives, by permitting some level of price flexibility, and by crafting statutes that protect and encourage intellectual property.
A fourth input is designing ways to encourage organic and seamless transfer of data, information and knowledge between educational institutions, research centers, and for-profit corporations.
Government Funding
The Indian Government has a critical catalyst role to play in fostering Research and Development. It does not have to be vast investment. Investment of about 1 to 2 percent of GDP will be most impactful. Here, we don’t have to reinvent the wheels. We have a very successful real-world example in the United States.
The US government has been the most important catalyst element in making the US perhaps the most innovative society. Prior to World War II, federal R&D funding was generally small and focused on specific items of direct interest to the federal government such as exploration of federal lands. Since then, federal funding has expanded to include research related to public health concerns, national security, and some limited efforts to help U.S. business, including research on aeronautics and standards. Total R&D funding increased from a little over $5.5 billion in 1947 to about $71.4 billion in 1998, in 1998 dollars. The current funding is about $120 billion. A major feature of federal R&D funding in the last 50 years has been the steady and growing support of basic research. While much federally funded basic research is performed in support of agency missions, most is performed at the nation’s universities primarily to advance knowledge for its own sake.
The US government invests in R&D through a variety of agencies such as National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Health (NIH), Departments of Defense (such as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and Energy (Energy Research and Development Administration.)
The architecture for the US government’s investment was laid out by Vannevar Bush of MIT. Bush was appointed as the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and in this capacity he produced a land mark report (“Science, The Endless Frontier”) in 1945.
So, we need a similar marshalling of resources by the Government of India. Fortunately, the Government may have found its own Bush Report in the New Educational Policy Report (produced by Dr. Kasturi Rangan committee.) The NEP calls for establishment of a National Research Foundation, which will be the vehicle for investment in R&D.
Private Endowments
Government funding is limited. It is private philanthropy that has offered universities the critical investment in research and development. Universities receive small and big donations from its alumni and others to construct and sustain new medical, scientific, engineering, and other academic facilities, and endowment support is particularly important for the support of research programs housed in the research facilities. Donors also make gifts to establish long-term funds to support areas of medical research such as cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, as well as research in areas such as chemistry, physics, and engineering.
For instance, Harvard University has an endowment of about $32 billion and MIT about $17 billion. MIT’s annual budget is over $2 billon. One-third of the budget comes from federal research funding, another one-third from the investment of endowment, and the final one-third from tuition fees.
The Universities in India must start capital campaigns to build such endowment capital. The federal and state governments can encourage private philanthropy to donors of university endowment funds.
How do we break the circuit given the limited resources?
India has access to relatively limited financial resources. For instance, the United States is a $21 trillion economy (with about 330 million citizens) and India a $3 trillion economy (with about 1,200 million citizens.) So, this mass prosperity translates into more resources for everything including for innovation and improvisation. For India to grow into a large and prosperous economy, research and development are very critical catalysts. And for substantial financial input and support for R&D, we need a large economy. So, we are caught in a bit of circular posture.
But we can break the circuit by focusing on areas of research and development where the value-addition is very high but where the financial input does not have to be large. The convergence and democratization of computing and communication power have made this a realistic possibility.
For instance, India can(and should) focus on research and development – in colleges and universities, in research laboratories, and in corporate world – in the following domains: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Convergence of computation and modeling; Design in computing; In-Silicone modeling; Social Sciences; Space and defense services.
In each of these cases, the backbone of R&D are data, computational algorithms, and design and modeling technologies. Here, we will impact a cross-section of disciplines in academe and industry in a very material manner: Consumer Goods and Services; Communication, Defense, and Space; Engineering and Technology; Healthcare; and Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences. After a certain threshold, research and development will cascade and flow organically and seamlessly.
