Science in India: Progress towards becoming Vishwa-Guru & the Indian Council of Agricultural Research

Science in India: Progress towards becoming Vishwa-Guru & the Indian Council of Agricultural Research

India spends 0.65% of its GDP (~2.6 trillion) on research and development (R&D) continuously after 2014. However, it was 0.81% of GDP in 2005-06. State and Central Government share has shrunk from 35% (in 2010) to 24% (in 2018) and steadily going down. Of the total R&D expenditure, ~37% goes to the health and defense sector and only 2% towards education (https://dst.gov.in/sites/default/files/Research%20and%20Deveopment%20Statistics%202019-20_0.pdf).

 India in comparison to other major economies: As per statistics of 2018 (Tab. 1), USA (2.83% of >20 trillion GDP), China (2.14% of >13 trillion GDP), Japan (3.28% of ~5 trillion GDP), Germany (3.13% of >4 trillion GDP), UK (1.7% of >2.8 trillion GDP), France (2.19% of ~2.8 trillion GDP), Italy (1.39% of >2 trillion GDP), South Korea (4.53 of >1.6 trillion GDP), Canada (1.54% of >1.6 trillion GDP), Russia (0.98%  of >1.5 trillion GDP) and Australia (1.8% of >1.3 trillion GDP), Israel (4.94% of >0.4 trillion GDP). Though India is the 6^th biggest economy in the world it is at 13^th place in total expenditure on R&D. If we consider per-capita expenditure on R&D, India stands at 19^th place with an expenditure of about Rs. 900 per person per year much behind Switzerland spending Rs. 2.16 lakhs per person on R&D in the country.

Major areas of R&D Expenditure in India: As per statistics for 2017-18, of the 17 billion US$ R&D budget of India, major shares go to DRDO (~32%), space research (~19%), ICAR (~11%), atomic energy (~10%), CSIR (~10%), DST (~7.5%). Of the research funding, 24% goes for basic and 37% for applied research. (https://dst.gov.in/sites/default/files/Research%20and%20Deveopment%20Statistics%202019-20_0.pdf).

According to scientific manpower and infrastructure ICAR is one of the biggest organizations funded publicly. National Agricultural Research System (NARS) under DARE/ICAR consists of 103 Agricultural Research Institutes, 75 Agricultural Universities, 82 All India Coordinated Research Projects/Network Projects, and 11 Agriculture Technology Application Research Institutes ably supported by a network of 721 Krishi Vigyan Kendras. For about Rs. 14065 crores allocated to Agriculture R&D, ICAR received about 7846 crores in 2020 and about 500 crores went to other DARE activities. There are about 5000 scientists out of a total of 17000 employees in the ICAR system.

    From Table 2 it is evident that by spending one rupee on purchasing consumables for research ICAR spends about 10 rupees on administration. My experience says that this expense on administration is largely to safeguard the one rupee from misuse spent on the purchase of the consumables. A great organization with great management by great managers. From the facts, it may be inferred that either scientists in the organization are wasteful or dishonest, and saving that one rupee (the Golden coin) spent by scientists on the purchase of consumables is more valuable than anything else in the organization.

    

    Some more revelations from the annual account audited report of ICAR for 2019-20 are also interesting (https://icar.org.in/sites/default/files/Eng-ICAR-Annual-Account-Audit-report-2019-20.pdf):

1. ICAR earned Rs. 1.9 Crores in form of royalty from research and publications in 2019-20

2. ICAR spent Rs. 4.1 Crores as legal expenses in the same year.

Inference: For earning 48 paise of royalty from research and publications India's one of the Greatest and largest research organizations (ICAR) spends 100 paise on advocates and lawyers as legal expenses probably to safeguard 48 paise. One of the RTIs revealed that ICAR does even not know exactly how many legal litigations are pending and ongoing with ICAR.

    If we further descend to see Institutional performance in budget utilization in the leading institute (as per the statement of the Director on 13-01-2022), the ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute as an example, holding 202 scientists on the roll, of the 340 crores allocated annual budget for 2020-21, >75% went for salary, 13% for administrative expenses and less than one percent (0.935%) i.e., 3.2 crores was spent on research related consumables. In short, for making a research material purchase of one rupee we spend 14 Rs. on administration. The institute awards each year's research degree (Masters and Ph.D.) to 180  students on average, i.e., the total number of researchers in the Institute is 202+180= 382 i.e., less than 84 thousand are available for purchasing research consumables. The quality can be imagined but can't be measured, only 105 research papers are published in 2021 in journals considered worthwhile by the ICAR itself by the Institute holding 166 young scientists and 180 research scholars. 

    Though I am not an expert on administration, it is interesting to note that administrative expenses in ICAR are almost 1.5 times more than operational expenses on research. There are 5000 scientists in ICAR, per scientist expenses on consumables are well below 1.5 lakh per annum while a scientist gets more salary per month than the money available to him for doing research per annum.

            Is there not a need to minimize the administrative charges to increase real expense in research in form of the ability of a scientist to purchase more chemicals and other consumables to do better research?

Is there a need to reduce the number of scientists to reduce expenses on salary in ICAR? The ICAR is an amazing system where scientists are recruited in the same manner of recruitment of soldiers. At the time of recruitment, neither the recruiter nor scientists know what works, for what project, and with what objectives the recruitment and recruits need to justify. In lack of clarity, a lot of scientific manpower goes to waste for years together, I have my example, after my recruitment as principal scientist I was not given a workplace for years unless I asked the Director-General of the ICAR (What for I have been paid the hefty salary per month?).

One very interesting phenomenon or fact with ICAR is that it prepared a hefty draft to double farmers’ income in just three years without increasing its own agriculture income from lakhs of hectares of land with NAARS even by 10% per year despite having 5000 scientists and 17000 employees.

I understand the situation may not be much different in other research organizations in India. I understand that there is a need for large-scale restructuring of the research system in India but it is not possible with political will.

This situation needs a change regarding funding and research management if we have to give the pace to Indian Research in the Public Sector.

Besides research funding, one more move of the Indian Govt is pertinent to be mentioned. There will now be fewer awards to Scientists of India for doing Research, wiping off about 100 award categories for research.