Cabinet approves to set up National Research Foundation to boost R&D

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the creation of the long-awaited National Research Foundation (NRF), an omnibus research funding agency, that seeks to distribute a corpus of Rs 50,000 crore in the next five years.

The cabinet cleared a new bill whose passage in the Parliament would pave the way to form the NRF as a common kitty with funding contributions from the government, industry, public sector enterprises, philanthropic organisations, foundations, and international agencies.

The governing board headed by the prime minister and the executive council chaired by the principal scientific advisor will decide on distributing the fund in accordance with India’s research priorities.

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“Between 2023-24 and 2027-28, the NRF will disburse Rs 50,000 crore, of which Rs 14,000 crore will come from the government and the rest Rs 36,000 crore from other agencies,” Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said here after the Cabinet meeting.

The Department of Science and Technology’s existing funding body—the Science and Engineering Research Board, which was established by an act of Parliament in 2008 — will be subsumed in the NRF.

The 16-member NRF governing board will have ministers of science and technology and education as ex-officio vice presidents. There will be prominent researchers, industry members, representatives from existing science councils, the prime minister’s S&T, innovation advisory council, and an expert from the fields of humanities and social sciences on the board.

The concept of the NRF emerged from the National Education Policy of 2019 to address widespread concerns among scholars that less than 1 per cent of India’s 40,000 plus higher education institutions are engaged in research.

India has only 15 researchers per 1,00,000 population, compared to 111 in China and 423 in the US. Only 15.8 per cent of India’s research papers appear in the top 10 journals, compared with 27.6 per cent of Chinese papers and 36.2 per cent of US papers.

“...Our university system needs an injection of research funding, our students need exposure, and our research needs to be internationally competitive and linked to society and industry. The NRF aims to do all of this,” K Vijayraghavan, a former PSA to the government, told DH.

Union Science Minister Jitendra Singh said the NRF would seek to provide more funding to the state universities to encourage research and set up infrastructure.

“Currently, the IITs get 65 per cent of the SERB funding while state universities get 11 per cent. This imbalance will have to be addressed by the NRF,” the minister said.