Nobel warning

Expecting (and demanding from) researchers -- particularly experimenters -- to spell out in every detail, what is to be expected out of their research program and its 'usefulness' is an efficient way to prevent crackpots from usurping research funds. It is also an effective way to dampen curiosity-driven research.

In his recent Nature piece, Serge Haroche, co-winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics for his, primarily experimental, work on quantum optics, warns:

During this long adventure in the micro-world, my colleagues and I have retained the freedom to choose our path without having to justify it with the promise of possible applications.

Unfortunately, the environment from which I benefited is less likely to be found by young scientists embarking on research now, whether in France or elsewhere in Europe. [...] Scientists have to describe in advance all their research steps, to detail milestones and to account for all changes in direction. This approach, if extended too far, is not only detrimental to curiosity-driven research. It is also counterproductive for applied research, as most practical devices come from breakthroughs in basic research and would never have been developed out of the blue.

Read more...

R&D Spending at US Universities

The National Science Foundation has released the data for 2010 (2009 data can be found here).

Unsurprisingly, Johns Hopkins tops the list with a research budget of just over 2 billion dollars of which over 85% is from federal funding sources. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is at #2 with an R&D spending of $1.184; The Universities of Wisconsin and Washington, at #3 and #4, respectively, join Johns Hopkins and UMichigan to form the rather exclusive Billion Dollar Club.

And the total R&D spending in all the universities exceeded $60 billion in 2010!

A few years ago, I tried to estimate the R&D spending of Indian institutions -- it's a difficult and imprecise exercise because we don't get disaggregated data on academic R&D spending exclusive of spending for higher education [if you know of a source of such data, please let me know]. I arrived at a figure of about 450 million dollars for all of India].

I don't know what India's academic R&D spending is now, some five years since that exercise. Perhaps it has doubled to about a billion dollars? Maybe it's two billion dollars now?

The NSF data on US universities are worth keeping in mind (Johns Hopkins is bigger than all of India!) when people pipe up with questions about when India will become a scientific superpower.

Unfair tax relief

Under the tax scheme proposed in the budget today, someone with a taxable income of Rs. 800,000 will enjoy a tax relief of nearly 35 percent -- he/she will pay Rs. 96.8 k as opposed to last year's 148.3 k.

For someone with an income of Rs. 500 k, the tax relief works out to 40 percent!

But, but ...

For people earning 160 k to 300 k, the tax relief is a nice round figure of zero percent.

In other words, a vast majority of tax payers (with incomes less than 300 k) will not see a single rupee of tax benefits, while their richer siblings will see pretty fabulous savings -- as much as Rs. 51,500 for those earning 800 k and more!

This would be a cruel thing to do even in a normal year. But this year is one that has seen pretty high inflation rates -- especially for food.

This is too bizarre for a government that claims to work for the Aam Aadhmi!

* * *

Data: See the table in this blog post for the data. The quantum of tax relief rises from zero percent (for incomes up to Rs. 300k) before maxing out at about 40 percent for 500k. From there on, it keeps falling steadily to, for example, about 35 percent at 800 k, and about 25 % at 1 million.

Budget highlights for higher education

The budget for higher education has gone up by a whopping 36 percent. Take a look at this summary (taken from Expenditure by Ministry/Department, which is a part of Expenditures - Vol. 1; all the budget-related documents are here; all the figures are in crores (10 millions) or rupees:

	2007-08	2008-09 (RE)	2009-10 (BE)
Total	6242.25	11340.00	15429.00
Plan	3127.50	6800.00	9596.00
Non-Plan	3114.75	4540.00	5833.00

[Keywords: RE stands for revised estimate, and is the best guess from the government about how much it spent in the previous year. BE is the intended allocation for this year. "Plan" stands for buildings, equipment, infrastructure, etc. "Non-Plan" stands for recurring, routine expenses -- salaries, maintenance, etc.]

As you can see, the allocation increased at a higher rate on Plan side (41 %) than on the Non-Plan side (28 %).

The details are also important; so, let's look at them (for which you have to go to Expenditures - Volume 2, and get the document for the Department of Higher Education):

1. Of the 15,000 crores, UGC gets the biggest slice nearly 47 percent, or 7366.65 crores (up 34 % from 2008-RE).

2. The next biggest slice -- nearly 35 % -- goes to Technical Education, which provides funding for the IITs, IIMs, NITs, IISc, etc.

3. The IITs appear to suffer a 5% decrease in allocation of 1605 crores in 2009, from 1685 crores in 2008. If you look at the details, the Plan side actually gets a whopping 23 % cut (685 crores in 2009, against 894 crores in 2008). This is worth exploring a bit more; my initial guess is that last year's allocation for the IITs included a sum for the new IITs, which probably went unspent.

4. NITs get 1299.90 crores, as against 1159 crores last year -- an increase of 12 %.

5. Some 400 crores is set aside for the setting up of new IITs. Similarly, a sum of Rs. 20 crores will go towards the setting up of new NITs.

6. IISc's allocation goes up from 209 crores to 224 crores -- an increase of just 7%. The Plan side stays constant at 75 crores.

7. IISERs get 215 crores against 175 crores last year -- up 22 %.

8. IIMs get 120 crores, up 8 % from last year's 111 crores.

Finally, there's a provision for Rs. 810 crores (it was 368 crores last year, and 451 crores in 2007-08) for something called the National Mission for Education through Information and Communication Technology. All of it comes under Plan expenditure. I wonder what it does -- 810 crores is a lot of money! All I could find about this mission is a bunch of documents and web pages on the Sakshat website.

Budgetary quotes

Given P. Chidambaram's fondness for quoting Saint Thirvalluvar -- in chaste Tamil, followed by an English translation -- in his budget speeches (some seven of them in two regimes), I was fully prepared for some serious Bengali stuff to be unleashed in today's Budget speech. While there were absolutely no Bengali quotes, the language was present right through the speech in the form of our Finance Minister's charming accent.

So, we had to settle for Kautilya who's the source of not just one, but two quotes :

• In the interest of the prosperity of the country, a King shall be diligent in foreseeing the possibility of calamities, try to avert them before they arise, overcome those which happen, remove all obstructions to economic activity and prevent loss of revenue to the state.

• Just as one plucks fruits from a garden as they ripen, so shall a King have revenue collected as it becomes due. Just as one does not collect unripe fruits, he shall avoid taking wealth that is not due because that will make the people angry and spoil the very sources of revenue.

Mahatma Gandhi manages to provide one quote:

Democracy is the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources of various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all.

And, oh, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gets one, too, right at the beginning of the speech:

It is a mandate for continuity, stability and prosperity. It is a mandate for inclusive growth and equitable development.

Other rhetorical flourishes that made me smile:

• At the end of this process [of creating a simple, trust-based system of taxation], I hope the Finance Minister can credibly say that our tax collectors are like honey bees collecting nectar from the flowers without disturbing them, but spreading their pollen so that all flowers can thrive and bear fruit.

• Although there is a school of thought that legal consultants do not provide any service to their client, I hold my distinguished predecessor in high esteem and disagree!

Then there was this bit of unintended humour:

The financial sector is the life blood of any economy. Our Government’s approach to the banking and financial sector has been to ensure robust oversight and regulation while expanding financial access and deepening markets. The merit of this balanced approach has been borne out in the recent experience, as the turbulence in the world financial markets has left the Indian banking and financial sector relatively unaffected. Never before has Indira Gandhi’s bold decision to nationalise our banking system exactly 40 years ago - on 14th of July, 1969 - appeared as wise and visionary as it has over the past few months. Her approach continues to be our inspiration even as we introduce competition and new technology in this sector.

Is this stuff some boiler-plate, or worthy of serious consideration?

In a box item (in Section 8 of Chapter 10) entitled "Education Reforms: Some Issues," this is what the Economic Survey (2009) has to say:

Education in India comes under the concurrent list and thus both the Central and State Governments are involved leading to multiple controls and regulations by the governments and statutory bodies. There is an urgent need for replacement of bureaucratic controls in education by professional regulators along with private-public partnership to ensure universal primary education. Competition in tertiary and secondary education is also equally essential. Rating the quality of educational institutions and all education service providers (private and public) may be helpful. Entry of registered societies (non-profit) and publicly listed (education) companies in all fields of education, subject to the regulatory framework which ensures quality and reasonable pricing may be encouraged. Government’s higher education funds should be focused on promoting scientific and technical education and encouraging R&D in all subjects. Education societies acquiring land at concessional rates or other assistance from the government should pass on the benefits to the students. There is a mad rush for higher education at prestigious institutions like IITs and IIMs. A large number of private coaching institutions are thriving on this phenomenon. Parents are incurring huge expenditure on their children to get coaching from the tutorial colleges to compete for engineering or management entrance examination. At the same time, there is heavy pressure on children which may adversely affect their physical and mental development. There is a need to streamline the admission procedure to such institutions while at the same time ensuring that quality of student intake does not suffer. Intake should be based on entrance examination which tests the aptitude to grasp knowledge and not the knowledge itself. Besides, the number of institutions could be increased through entry of private players while ensuring that they are professionally regulated so that their curriculums/degrees are internationally accepted.

The Economic Survey, I think, is supposed to lay out the current government's thinking on where the country is and where it should be heading. Since it comes from the Ministry of Finance, I guess its pronouncements in the economic sphere would be generally considered weighty.

But how about its vague statements in other spheres? I'm talking about sentences like these: "rntry of ... publicly listed (education) companies... may be encouraged," or "number of institutions could be increased."

How important are such non-Finance pronouncements? Does the Ministry of Human Resource Development, for example, take them as guidelines when it formulates its policies?

Links ...

1. Prof. S. Ranganathan at Materialia Indica: A brief history of materials - 1: Metallurgical heritage of India.

2. Abraham Lincoln, the "sound-bite machine"!

3. Graeme Wood on Lalu Yadav. The Indian Railway King: How did India’s Huey Long become its Jack Welch? [Link via Reuben Abraham]

4. From this page: the Budget Speech. Since it's only the interim budget, it lacks a lot of details. And in any case, it'll likely see a lot of changes when a new government comes in. So, an analysis is probably not worth our effort now.

5. Brad Stone in NYTimes: Classroom computers now have a competitor: Do 'smart' phones in classrooms really make kids smarter?

How well has higher ed done in this budget?

First, get hold of the Expenditure Budget for Higher Education (Department-wise break up of allocations is available here). Let's take a look at the figures for IITs first.

Last year, the IITs were allocated a whopping Rs. 1111 crores under Plan spending -- this represents fixed, one-time costs for infrastructure, equipment, etc. This figure is referred to as the Budget Estimate (BE-07). But, they are estimated to have spent only 335 crores (Revised Estimate, RE-07)! If you look at this year's allocation, it appears to be way out of line with the actual performance: BE-08 is back up at 1020 crores!

The story is the same for IISc. The corresponding figures are 196 (BE-07), 40 (RE) and 130 (BE-08) crores. For the IIMs, they are 103, 43 and 88 crores.

So, what's going on?

This requires going back to what happened last year, when the allocations (BE) went up to 1111 crores from 253 crores in the year 2006. For IISc, the allocation of 196 crores was way higher than 85 crores in 2006. For the IIMs, the 2007 figure of 103 crores was nearly three times the allocation of 35 crores in 2006.

But this only pushes the question back by one year. What happened in 2007 that called for such huge increases in allocation for IITs and IIMs?

The short answer is: OBC reservation. Recall that this reservation policy was to be implemented by increasing the intake in all the Central Government institutions. The huge increases in 2007 allocations over 2006 were meant for taking care of this. However, the Supreme Court stayed the process of implementing the new reservation policy, and this enhanced allocation went unspent.

Thus, a fairer comparison should be in terms of the revised estimates of the previous three years; remember, RE is the government's best guess -- at the end of the financial year -- of how much was spent during the previous year. Let's look at the RE figures for 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08.

Institution	RE 2005-06	RE 2006-07	RE 2007-08
IITs	236	254	335
IISc	33	85	40
IIMs	32	35	43

Now, the picture is clear. Except for IISc, whose plan expenditure shot up to 85 crores during 2006-07, the other institutions seem to be following a trend. But, happily, it's also an upward trend that appears to be accelerating (again, IISc seems to be an exception here).

So, what's the deal with this year's allocations that are -- just like last year -- way out of line with the trend? Compared to what the IITs spent last year (335 crores), hasn't this year's Budget lavished them with 1020 crores?

The notes at the end of the Expenditure Budget says that the enhanced allocation "also includes a provision of Rs.771 crore towards implementation of Oversight Committee recommendations for meeting the requirement for enhanced number of students."

In case you are wondering what that Oversight Committee is all about, why, it's the same committee that made recommendations about implementing OBC reservations!

As Yogi Berra put it so well, "It's like déjà vu, all over again!"

* * *

I thank my colleague U. Ramamurty, who brought this stuff to my notice, for helping in untangling this stuff.

Mr. Speaker, Sir ...

It's just a bunch of stray observations under the garb of live blogging of the Budget Speech. Will look for stuff on S&T, higher education, research, etc, and anything else that sounds interesting.

11:00. The speech begins. PC takes pride in presenting his fifth consecutive Budget under the UPA regime. Also mentions 12 consecutive quarters of impressive GDP growth rate of over 8 percent. The first 4 years of UPA has seen 8.8 percent growth.

11:05. Lots of thousands of crores are being mentioned. My head spins.

11:10. PC quotes from a book on Indira Gandhi. So soon in his budget speech!

Education budget will go up by over 20 percent. SSA, Mid-day meal program get big increases.

Some 600 crores for Model Schools. Elitism!

National Merit cum Means scheme. 1 lakh scholarships. Corpus goes up now to 15,00 crores.

11:15. Knowledge is power! 1 new IIM, 3 IISERs, and 1 IIIT were set up. 16 Central Universities, 3 new IITs, 2 new IISERs will be set up. And several more, too.

Innovation for ... (INSPIRE) Scholarships for encouraging students to study and stay in science. 85 crores.

Interconnect all educational research institutions. 100 crores to the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) for the National Knowledge Network.

11:25. NREGA gets more money (16,000 crores), with a promise to meet any additional demand.

Potable water system for each school in water deficit areas. 200 Crores.

11:30. A bunch of interesting proposals targeting the Minorities. Predictably, some noise emanates from the Opposition, but dies down soon.

Immediately following this, PC is talking about gender budgeting. 54 departments, apparently, are doing this. PC points to the Budget documents for more details.

Child specific programs receive some 34,000 crores.

11:35. Lots of agriculture related issues are being discussed and addressed. HUGE amounts of money (lakhs of crores!) are being bandied about. Sadly, I have no idea about many of the things PC's talking about. I better shut up, for now.

11:40. Still more agriculture.

11:44. Indebtedness of farmers and Radhakrishna Committee report are mentioned. PC's tone softens. Debt waiver scheme is announced. Lots of cheers, countered by lots of noise as well. Even before details are out!

Here are the details. Agricultural loans are covered (more noise/cheers; Speaker admonishes them with "Is this the kind of respect you show to our farmers?"). Marginal and small farmers will get a complete waiver of these loans. (More noise. Serious noise. Speaker: "This cannot be allowed. Please sit down. ... What is this, you are not listening? Kya baat hai ... This is not responsible behaviour!")

11:50. Still a lot of noise. PC has read just two sentences in the last 7 minutes.

60,000 crores for debt waiver scheme. PC promises that its implementation will be done in the three months.

11:55. Moving on ... Subject turns to investments. FDI is about 12 billion US dollars.

12:00 noon. PC announces his intent to get manufacturing to grow at double digit rates. This is followed by announcements about Power, Highways, Coal, IT, BPO, industries. Textiles and handloom sectors follow. Again, I know very little about what the issues are.

12:05. PC is talking about banks now. Time to go quiet again ...

12:10. Demographic dividend. Youth need kills, if we are to reap its benefits. PC's talking about Skills Development Mission, upgrading ITIs, etc.

12:14. Public Distribution System. Haryana and Chandigarh will introduce smart cards for the delivery of PDS. Presumably, this is an experimental scheme.

12:16. Defence gets some 105,000 crores. Up from some 90,000 crores. This is accompanied by promised for more.

Global warming and green technologies are being discussed. No specific proposals.

Sixth Pay Commission will submit its proposals within the next month! Yay!

12:18. University of Mysore, Delhi University and another institution in Maharashtra (I didn't get it) will get a special grant, just like the 100 crore grant announced by him in 2005 for IISc.

12:23. For 2007-08, Revenue Deficit is at 1.4 percent against 1.5. Fiscal Deficit is 3.1 against 3.3 percent.

Projected revenues will be some 600,000 crores. RD is projected at 1 percent, and FD at and 2.5 percent.

12:25. Taxes!

Tax/GDP ratio is 12.5 percent for the current year. PC credits information systems. He also credits his luck!

Lots of boring stuff on reducing customs duty on this or that. Phosphoric acid will attract a customs duty of 5 percent as opposed to 7.5 percent. I'm so happy!

12:30. Helicopter simulators will attract a smaller duty now. Fantastic.

12:32. Excise duties. More details. Small cars will attract 12 percent from 16 % now. So will two wheelers. Wow!

Nifty is down by some 1 %.

12:35. Services taxes. More new services will come under the tax net.

12:37. Direct taxes time! Boldness pays. Moderation begets compliance. Fairness begets ...

Rs. 150,000 is now the exemption limit. Everyone -- every tax payer -- benefits by at least Rs. 4,000. For women, the exemption limit is 1.8 lakhs.

1.5 lakhs to 3 lakhs will attract a 10% tax. For 3 to 5 lakhs, it's 20 percent. It's 30% for incomes above 5 lakhs.

Wow, this is BIG. I can see NIFTY start to zoom from now on.

In all the excitement, I missed some announcement about incentives for outsourcing of R&D activities.

12:45. Short term capital gains tax go to 15 percent. Wow. This is bad for NIFTY!

PC announces some complex fine tuning on Securities Transaction Tax.

Some stirring words about India regaining its old glory, when it, together with China, commanded nearly a half of the world's GDP. Clearly, we are nearing the end. It's time for a Kural now.

Oops. Those stirring words are not his. They are from Jawaharlal Nehru! Oh, well.

12:49. There it is. A Kural about the mark of good governance.

12:50. The end.

* * *

Okay, the Budget documents are where the real action should now move to, but they are not up yet. Until they are up, so long!

The Biggest B of them all

I don't know about you, but to me it has always been the Budget, whose 2008 version will be presented in the Parliament today at 11:00 a.m. in a speech by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.

The day before this event, a report card of sorts is presented to the nation, and it's called the Economic Survey. It has, among other things, the government's candid assessment of how well the country did during the last year, and where we are today. While it does contain some stuff about what the government's priorities should be for the coming year, it leaves the stirring words (and a huge amount of boring details) to the Finance Minister's speech, and to the Budget itself.

Given my own interest in higher education, let's see what this year's Economic Survey has to say about this sector. The section on education (all of two pages, pdf) is in Chapter 10. Social Sectors. While I leave it to you to find out what it says about primary and secondary education, I want to extract here its content on higher education:

10.27 There has been significant growth in higher education during the academic year 2005-06. According to the University Grants Commission (UGC), enrolment in various courses at all levels in universities/colleges and other institutions of higher education in 2005-06 was 11.34 million as compared to 10.50 million in the previous year. Out of this, the number of women students was 4.58 million constituting 40.39 per cent. There has also been a significant expansion of central institutions of higher education in recent years (Box 10.6). With the increased demand for higher quality education, training of teachers has become even more important and out of box thinking is required to ensure adequate supply of quality teachers.

This document also has a section (Box 10.6) highlighting "recent expansion of higher educational institutions":

• Two State Universities in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura were converted into Central Universities and a new Central University has been established in Sikkim. With this, all the eight States in the North-eastern Region have at least one Central University each.
• Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, which was earlier a Deemed University, has been converted into a Central University.
• Two Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) were established during 2005-06 at Kolkata and Pune, and a third one at Mohali in 2006-07. Two more IISERs have been approved at Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram during the Eleventh Plan.
• The 20 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) were earlier being managed by individual registered societies. They were brought under a common statutory framework during 2007-08 by enacting the National Institutes of Technology Act which came into force on 15.08.2007.
• The seventh IIM, namely the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management, has been established at Shilong in 2007-08. It will admit the first batch of students in 2008.
• The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design & Manufacturing, Kanchipuram, has also come into being during 2007-08.

I looked around, but could not see anything specific on scientific and technological education and research.

Budgets from the 1950s

The first of a promising series of articles by Vikram Doctor takes a look at India's Budgets from 1947-60. This period saw at least four finance ministers: R.K. Shanmukham Chetty, John Mathai, C.D. Deshmukh and T.T. Krishnamachari. The budgeting careers of all these gentlemen ended through resignations. Deshmukh's tenure was the longest: he presented six Budgets in all.

This period saw the setting up of the Planning Commission (whose wrangles with the Finance Ministry eventually led to Mathai's resignation), and its increasing hold over India's economy. The tax rates kept going up, and new taxes were introduced: Wealth Tax and Expenditure Tax. The fifties were a time of big dreams and bigger projects: dams, steel plants, and heavy industry. And they were also a time of growing ties between India and the former Soviet Union and its satellites.

All in all, the piece has some fascinating history, as seen through the prism of Budget speeches. Do read the whole thing. I can't wait for the next article in the series!

Budget highlights for higher education

For political reasons, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram spent a good part of his budget speech on reviving and rejuvenating agriculture, easing rural credit, and enhanced allocations for education and health. On higher education, he had just two not-so-substantial references:

112. As in the last two years, I propose to make a special grant of Rs.100 crore to recognise excellence. Government has selected the Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, and each will be given Rs.50 crore.

181. I have a proposal regarding the cess for education. While the cess of 2 per cent on all taxes to fund basic education will remain, I propose to levy an additional cess of 1 per cent on all taxes to fund secondary education and higher education and the expansion of capacity by 54 per cent for reservation for socially and educationally backward classes.

This might give one the impression that higher education didn't get the attention it deserves. Is this impression correct? Let's look at some figures from the detailed allocations for the Ministry of Human Resource Development (taken from this page (pdf), which can be accessed by clicking through these pages). In doing so, let's concentrate on the so-called 'plan' expenditure which is meant for infrastructure and equipment ('non-plan' expenditure is for meeting recurring or running costs, and it typically increases in line with inflation):

UGC has seen its plan allocation rise by a whopping 86 percent from Rs. 1140 crores to Rs. 2124 crores. For the IITs, plan grants have more than quadrupled from 253 crores to 1111 crores! For the IIMs too, the story is similar: a three-fold increase from 35 crores to 103 crores. And allocation for the IISc, has more than doubled from 85 crores to 196 crores. By any yardstick, these are BIG increases.

The explanatory note at the end of the document makes it clear that these huge increases are meant to help these institutions prepare for a larger student body. You may recall that the government gave a commitment that when the 27 percent OBC reservation is implemented, it would 'protect' the number of seats in the general category. This commitment implies that the number of seats will go up -- over three years -- by 54 %. The explanatory note has some information about how much of the huge increase is for meeting the government's commitment. For the IISc, for example, Rs. 90 crore (out of an increase of 111 crores) is meant for preparing for the larger student intake.

These allocations do not include the plans for three new IITs, for which a separate provision of about Rs. 80 crores has been made. Interestingly, this document also mentions that the government plans to set up three new IISERs -- one each in the Northern, Central and Southern regions. This is the first time I am hearing about them. The government plans to spend 125 crores on IISERs (including the three new ones).

Many institutions that are under the Central Government receive their funding through ministries other than the MHRD. For example, TIFR comes under the Department of Atomic Energy, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research comes under the Department of Science and Technology. You will have to look at the detailed budget allocations for these respective Departments/Ministries for information about these institutions.

Overall, however, the unmistakable conclusion ought to be that this has been a good budget for higher education. In a later post, I will look at the grants for scientific R&D.

* * *

Related links:

Indian Express story by Shubhajit Roy: The quota effect: 156% hike in funds for higher education in this Budget.

Toi story: Education gives, quota takes away.

In defence of DRDO

Remember the Indian Express' very harsh spotlight on the functioning and performance of DRDO, the Defence Research and Development Organization? You may also recall a partial response by the DRDO chief, Dr. M. Natarajan.

Now, R. Ramachandran, one of the best science reporters in India, pitches in with his perspective in an op-ed in the Hindu. But it is strange that Ramachandran's defence of DRDO starts with this:

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the money spent on the DRDO is a total waste. How is a mere one-twentieth of defence expenditure responsible for the apparent vulnerability of the armed forces to perceived threats? Or more precisely, compared to Rs.500-1000 crore of annual defence procurement based on DRDO technologies, imports have been around Rs.10,000-12,000 crore. (The current annual budget for capital acquisitions for defence is about Rs.35,000 crore.) Surely, the nation's defence ill-preparedness cannot be attributed to the "wasted" 2-3 per cent of annual procurement. Why is there no political or media focus on the 90-95 per cent of the annual defence expenditure and the manner in which it is being spent?

Ramachandran goes on to discuss some of the financial and operational constraints faced by DRDO. However, two things don't gell with each other. The value of defence goods coming out of DRDO's work is less than a 1000 crore per year over the last 20 years or so (Rs.14,800 crore for the period 1985-2005). Compare this to the actual DRDO budget for the last year: my figure is about 3000 crores, and Ramachandran seems to indicate that it is about 5000 crores. This is a pretty big gap.

While I was appalled that some in the defence services were willing to accuse DRDO of 'destroying' our defence-preparedness, it is equally appalling to see the DRDO side responding with insinuations that our defence people (who make purchase decisions) are motivated by things other than the best interests of the nation. Here's a quote from Ramachandran's piece:

... Any demand placed on the national defence R&D system should reflect such an assessment. Unfortunately, many of the Services' demands would seem to be derived from foreign vendors' sales pitches — what have come to be termed BBC (Best of Brochure Claims) in DRDO circles — and their lobbying network of arms dealers, agents (very often ex-service personnel), and middlemen operating in the country. As a result, system specifications (which constantly keep changing) placed on defence R&D would seem to mirror not the actual dynamics of the security environment of the country but the dynamics of technological evolution of the global defence industry, which the DRDO is expected to realise fully.

Clearly, the two arms of the same establishment -- the services and R&D -- must first stop sniping at each other in public. This sort of nasty insinuations -- veiled questioning of the other party's patriotism -- can do a lot of damage. They must sit together and sort things out.

NKC wants 1500 universities

The National Knowledge Commission [update: the website address has changed] has weighed in on our higher education system:

India will need 1,500 universities to attain a gross enrolment ratio of at least 15 per cent by 2015. This is a key observation made by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) in its note to the Prime Minister on higher education.

Stating that opportunities for higher education "are simply not enough in relation to our needs," the NKC has called for a massive expansion of opportunities.

As of today, there are about 350 universities. "This number is simply not enough with reference to our needs in higher education or in comparison with China, which authorised the creation of 1,250 new universities in the last three years," the commission has noted. It pointed out that only seven per cent of the population in the 18-24 age group has access to higher education.

NKC's note to the Prime Minister (is this note online, by any chance?) makes familiar demands on certain things. Government expenditure of 1.5 percent of GDP on higher education, for example (I don't know where we stand today). On certain other things, it has made some new suggestions (they are 'new' for an official body, but they have been around for a while now):

While the focus should be on setting up new universities, some clusters of affiliated colleges could be turned into universities, a move that will require changes in the regulatory mechanism. For this, the NKC has suggested creation of an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education.

At the same time, it says, some universities are much too large for ensuring academic standards and good governance. "We need to create more appropriately scaled and more nimble universities. The moral of the story is that we need not only a much larger number of universities ... but also smaller universities which are responsive to change and easier to manage."

It will be interesting to watch how our Prime Minister responds to these preliminary suggestions.

Barrels of whine ...

It's sad when someone in a position of power decides to berate his/her society for celebrating the 'wrong' sorts of people and things. It's not clear why Prof. C.N.R. Rao has chosen this form of protest:

When we see what has happened in the last few years to cities such as Bangalore, my worries become real. Bangalore is slowly losing its soul. We see large numbers of young people busily moving around, making money from BPO, IT, and other service sectors, but there is hardly any concern about other matters. There is still a chance for us to develop a country of a different kind.

M. Natarajan's response ...

... to the series of articles in the Indian Express (I have collected all the links here) trashing the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). In a conference on defence finances, M. Natarajan, the chief of DRDO, made a number of remarks that answer -- only obliquely, of course -- some of the concerns. There's one place where he even talks about "uninformed reporting". Do read this Hindu report on his speech.

Harsh spotlight on DRDO

Update: Here are the links.

Articles:
1. Big picture
2. Missiles
3. Main Battle Tank
4. Combat aircraft
5. Who audits the DRDO ?
6. DRDO's human resources
7. Some success stories
8. Advice from V.K. Aatre, DRDO's ex-Chief

Editorial (13 November).

Column by Vinay Shankar who was "director-general, artillery, during the Kargil conflict" (15 November).

Milind Deora's column comparing DRDO with DARPA of the US (21 November 2006)

The Indian Express has an ongoing series of articles (links in the sidebar) by Shiv Aroor and Amitav Ranjan strongly criticising the functioning of Defence Research and Development Organization. The immediate provocation is DRDO's request for an "assured grant' of Rs. 10,000 crores (about 2.2 billion US dollars) every year for the next 15 years.

Using parliamentary testimony (and leaked reports), Aroor and Ranjan pound on the organization relentlessly for sloth, drift, delay, cost overruns, and misleading the country (with its slogans on self-reliance). They cite examples from DRDO's flagship programs: "the ... guided missile programme, the Arjun tank, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA Tejas), the Samyukta communication system and Kaveri jet engine."

This sentence sums up the entire series of articles:

... if there’s one thing this behemoth of 50 laboratories with a staff of about 33,000 has developed to almost perfection, it’s this: wrapping itself around the flag to hide a record of delay and non-delivery in virtually all major weapons programmes.

Ouch!

* * *

Thanks to a good friend for the e-mail alert.

Just how much does India spend on Science and Technology?

I was looking for some information regarding the allocations for science and technology in this year's budget. I was hoping for someone to have written about it, and thanks to reader Pradeepkumar, I got it in this news report by T.V. Padma at SciDev.net. This is how her report opens:

India has increased its annual science and technology budget by 16 per cent to 200 billion rupees (US$4.5 billion), and will upgrade research programmes at three major universities.

In his article in Science a year ago, R. A. Mashelkar (CEO of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) gives a figure of US $ 6 billion (about 27,000 crore rupees) as India's R&D budget. Now, Padma quotes a figure of about US $4.5 billion as India's 'science budget'; she further says it went up 16 percent. This is all confusing, to say the least!

Now, 200 billion (20,000 crore) rupees (or 270 billion -- 27,000 crore -- rupees, if you go with Mashelkar) is a lot of money. Where is it being spent?

So, let me step back a bit, and look at the available information, with which we can get a sense of where the money is going. Most of the following information is from the ministry-wise data that you can download from this page in the budget website of the Finance Ministry.

Atomic Energy, Space, Defence

First, we have the three Big Guns: Atomic Energy and Space and Defence R&D (DRDO). The three have been allotted 5505, 3610 and 3000 crores, respectively (up from last year's figures of 3752, 2675 and 2798 crores, respectively).

While the DRDO's figure is for R&D, the other two probably include a lot of things other than R&D. A cursory analysis of this page shows that Atomic Energy spends about 2000 crores to support various R&D labs and academic institutions such as TIFR. For the Department of Space, separating R&D allocations from non-R&D ones is a pain, so let's take it as about 3610 crores.

Agriculture, Science, Technology

The next biggest player in the R&D arena is agricultural research and education. It received 2160 crores this year (up from 1900 crores last year).

Up next is the Ministry of Science and Technology, which has three components: Departments of Scientific and Industrial Research (1750 crores, up from 1501 crores), Science and Technology (1746 crores, up from 1446 crores), and finally, Biotechnology (534 crores, up from 402 crores).

HigherEd, Professional Education

In addition, there are allocations for higher education through the Ministry of Human Resource Development (this page). Under this category, the allocation for university and higher education (read: UGC, the Universities Grants Commission) is 2774 crores, up from 2278 crores, and that for technical education (IITs, IIMs, IISc, etc) is 1718 crores, up from 1414 crores.

Then there is medical education and research, through the Ministry of Health. Under this head, we have 1436 crores, up from 1308 crores.

Others!

Finally, there is a whole bunch of other ministries (Petroleum, Coal, Steel, Information Technology, Railways, Ocean Development, ...), each with its own R&D budget; my understanding is that their contribution to the total S&T kitty is not all that significant (less than 20 percent?).

Okay, let's put it all together.

2000 : Atomic Energy
3000 : DRDO
3610 : Space
2160 : Agriculture
1750 : CSIR
1746 : DST
0534 : Biotech
2774 : UGC, etc.
1718 : Tech. Ed.
1436 : Medicine

This comes to 20,728 crores. The R&D expenditure of other ministries, as I said, is not large. In addition, we must also add R&D budgets of companies (in both public and private sectors). Again my understanding is that their budgets are less than 15 % of the total R&D spending in the country.

***

Oh, well, that was an interesting exercise. Let me just park all these figures here, so that I can get back to them when I need them. Blogs can be used as brain backups, can't they?

***

CaveatsThe figures for UGC and Space are aggregate figures; For Space, it includes a whole lot of non-R&D stuff, and for UGC, it includes non-S&T expenses. And, of course, the last two figures include expenses on education as well, not just on R&D.

In particular, separating the R&D component from that for education (in the budgets for UGC, technical, medical and agricultural education and research) is important. A big chunk of it is probably just for education at the undergraduate level. Moreover, education, as a separate budget-head, gets inputs from several other sources as well. In particular, the state governments [and students -- their parents, actually! -- in private institutions] carry a fair share of the spending for higher education. Unless we find a way to separate the two out, we won't be able to arrive at accurate estimates for R&D, nor for higher ed!

***

Thanks to reader Pradeepkumar for the link to the article by T.V. Padma.

Chidambaram, Budget-05, IISc, 100 Crores

In this year's budget speech presented to the Parliament on 28 February 2005, our Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram devoted an entire paragraph to IISc! Here it is, in the the subsection titled "Institutions of Excellence":

92. On January 6, 2005, the Prime Minister spoke about his intention to set up a Knowledge Commission to look into the issue of building quality human capital. Government believes that investments in institutions of higher education and Research and Development organizations are as important as investments in physical capital and physical infrastructure. What we need are world class universities, and we must make a beginning with one institution. We must have a university that will be ranked alongside Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard and Stanford. I am happy to inform the House that we have selected the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, which enjoys a high reputation as a centre of excellence in research and development. We shall work to make IISc, in a few years, a world class university. I propose to provide an additional sum of Rs.100 crore as a grant for this purpose.

Here are my views as an IISc insider (I do plan to post my views as a citizen a little later). Needless to say, I am thrilled that IISc has been given extra money, because I do feel that there are important things that need to be done in our Institute that cost money -- for example, infrastructure: quality of electric power, internet connectivity and bandwidth, and housing for faculty and students. A second and rather indirect benefit is that this recognition of our academic excellence by our pay-masters will also help us in attracting good students and good faculty. This will start a virtuous cycle that could take the Institute higher and higher still.

After listing some of the benefits for our Institute from this 100 Crore grant, I must point out here that I resent the comparisons to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Stanford. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against these great universities. IMHO, every institution -- ours is no exception -- should constantly strive for greater levels of excellence, without worrying too much about where it is in some pecking order. To evaluate academic performance based on a silly worldwide comparison is just that - silly. Similarly, I think the sentence about making IISc "a world class university" is also silly. To me, what really matters is, not whether we are world class, but whether we make concerted efforts to become better than what we are today (See [1] below).

Finally, let us turn to this question of how the media and the common folks have responded to this special treatment of the IISc? I have not done any exhaustive search, but the print media have been either gushing or gently positive about our Institute. This Outlook story really gushes. This story at ZDNet India (originally from Business Standard) says some good things, and draws important connections between attracting good students, and the emergence of MNC research centres in India (GE, GM, Daimler Chrysler, etc). Times of India, on the other hand, has carried a series of generally positive short reports about various facets of our Institute (Sorry, I have only two links! Their website is so poorly organized, I have not been able to get the links to the others). However, these Times reports contain egregious factual errors! For example, one of them said we don't have an electron microscope and the 100 Crore grant will help us get one! Another gave generously inflated numbers for (a) our annual expenditures and (b) our research publications! See footnote [2] below.

What about the others, including the common man and woman? I suggest that you check out this blog post by Amit Chakrabarty (and the readers' comments) over at the Zoo Station and the comments at the end of the Outlook story. There are quite a few negative remarks there. For example, Amit ends the post with this:

A more meaningful criticism of the IISc is what I alluded to earlier: it's been far less successful at building its brand name than the much younger IITs. As a very young prof working far away from India I can hardly lay claim to knowing the solution but it's clear to me that the 100 crore gift can only help. For starters, perhaps the IISc would consider hiring someone to create a professional website for the institute that actually announces this generous gift? Come on, IIsc! It doesn't take Nobel prize winners to get your website up to Oxbridge standards.

For some (justifiable) envy and disdain among our brethren in our country's grossly underfunded universities, take a look at this Indian Express story (which probably appeared in its Pune edition). Here is a rather understated quote from this story:

While most agree that it is but befitting that IISc get the first crack at upgradation, the reluctance in putting a finger on university-strengthening measures hasn't gone unnoticed.

Let us be clear: all our actions, not to mention our academic performance, will be keenly watched. Any misstep on our part will be used as a stick to beat us (and the parties of the present Government) with.

Finally, I hope our Government will get its act together and start making serious efforts to improve our education system at all levels: primary, secondary, higher secondary, college and research. Particularly in the last two categories with which I am most familiar, our Government should really ensure that institutions, and undergraduate institutions and universities in particular, get adequate funding to make education at these levels modern and truly "world class". Now, that is a goal that our Government should really like!

[1] This editorial Economic Times (7 March 2005; unfortunately, you have to keep clicking next page, until you get to page 3 that has the third editorial titled "Style over substance". See footnote [3] below.) is another example of such silliness. According to it, the recent achievements of Sania Mirza and Narain Karthikeyan are all really not worth celebrating. These editorialist worthies do not seem to realize that these people have achieved what no other Indian has achieved so far, and that, by itself, is a great cause for celebration. I would really pity the sons and daughters of these editors: if they adopt the same standards in their personal lives, their children are probably getting pained by them for not doing anything "world class".

[2] For the record, according to our own internal documents, our budget for the financial year 2004-05 was about 82 Crores of non-plan and 27 Crores of plan expenditures, and about 40 Crores of externally funded research projects. Similarly, our publications number about 1200 per year, and is about 10 % of the national figure for all of India in the fields of science and engineering.

[3] Can you imagine a newspaper website that cannot even separate individual articles in a day's editorial? Indiatimes does it: it puts all the editorial articles in one single page; and asks you to keep clicking "next page". These guys don't know a professional website from a horse's behind; I promise you that I will not buy their shares when they do their IPO!