Financial support for scientific research in Indian universities

My post on expenditure on R&D in India has produced some interesting reactions (one of which I have noted in an update on that post). Before addressing them, let me restate that post's key points:

• At US $ 6 billion, our overall R&D budget itself is quite small. For example, it is smaller than the R&D budget of a Microsoft or a General Motors.
• The Indian universities' share of this budget is just 450 million dollars! This figure is dwarfed by the R&D budget of a largish US state university such as UCLA (which spent about $785 million in the year 2005).

First, Subrahmanya points out another interesting comparison: "During 2007-08, the Higher Education Funding Council for England spends 1,413 million pounds ear-marked just for research in their universities. That is about Rs. 12,125 crores!"

Next, Confused suggests (in a comment) that a dollar-to-dollar comparison may not be appropriate since the purchasing power of a dollar in India goes about five times farther than it does in the US. In other words the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) factor for the Indian rupee is about five.

All I can say is that the PPP factor may be five (or even more) for many things, but it's probably close to one for R&D related expenditure. This is so because major pieces of equipment (such as an electron microscope or an NMR facility) cost the same in India as elsewhere. In fact, if you add the additional burden of customs dury (for imported equipment) and of the need to invest in elaborate uninterrupted power supply units, the cost of equipment is actually greater in India!

Much the same argument applies to expenses that go into running a lab: high purity chemicals, reagents, etc. They too cost the same in India as elsewhere. The ubiquitous "productivity-enhancing tools" that one finds in all labs -- PCs! -- also cost the same here as elsewhere.

In fact, the only thing that costs less -- far less -- here in India is the person doing the research: faculty, students or temporary staff! Of these, faculty and graduate students are already paid by the institutions where they work; the others -- temporary staff hired with project grants -- form a small part of the total project cost.

Finally, Nitin Pai's reaction is a little different:

The more bucks for more bang argument is true to a certain degree, and modern research requires high upfront investment. Yet the question that needs to be asked is not whether the government can allocate more funds for R&D (it probably can’t), but rather what is it doing to incent the private sector to invest in R&D work?

By "private sector ... invest[ment] in R&D work", it's possible that Nitin is talking only about corporate R&D and not the academic kind. If so, I really have no response. However, if he is talking about private sector support for academic R&D, I do want to respond to it.

First, I don't really care where the money comes from, as long as universities get more of it than what they are getting now! So, you have got ideas about incentivising private sector firms to fund academic R&D? Bring'em on!

However, even with incentives, I don't believe corporate support for academic R&D will ever become large enough to be considered significant. Indian companies spend very little on R&D and even less on basic science. While multinationals can -- and do -- fund academic research, their share too is unlikely to be large. And remember, their focus in their own labs is more and more on applied research and development; so it's unreasonable to expect them to fund basic science research in universities.

The world over, basic science is strongly dependent on government funding, and if anything, this dependence is getting stronger (even the Economist acknowledges this trend). Supporting basic -- fundamental or pre-competitive -- research requires a long-term view -- payoffs can be tens of years away! It is unrealistic to expect companies to be interested in such research -- whatever be their incentives.

Also, there are good reasons for supporting government funding of basic research. When companies make a basic science discovery, they hoard their newly acquired knowledge, or patent it to create roadblocks for others who might work with and extend that new knowledge. When governments (and philanthropic organizations) fund research, it gets into the public domain (and the demand for open access will only accelerate this trend) and spurs innovation. I see government funding of academic research as a positive thing.

In any case, for the foreseeable future, government will continue to be a major source funding for scientific research. If we want India to be seen as a big player in world-class scientific research, we'd better be willing to spend more money on it.