New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to further strengthen India’s research capabilities in the form of the National Research Foundation (NRF) has been put on fast track and will complement the existing funding initiatives in the field of science, technology and innovation, a top official has said.
The NRF was announced by President Ram Nath Kovind in his address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament in June 2019 and aims to support research projects in state universities, colleges and other institutions.
The NRF was first mooted by the prime minister in his address to the Indian Science Congress in January 2019. We have now put it on a fast track. It will have a comprehensive way of dealing with funding, even large scale funding, because extra funds are coming in, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government Ajay Kumar Sood told PTI.
He said the NRF funding will be in addition to the existing funding agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
The funds provided by these agencies will remain. There is clarity about it. Some part of their funding can be spent in consultation with the NRF. Some part, maybe 10-15 per cent, that is being discussed, Sood said.
He said the NRF initiative, led by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA), will be a comprehensive way of dealing with funding and also coordinate with national missions.
Besides NRF, the Office of the PSA is also working on promoting deep technology entrepreneurship and National Open Access Strategy to provide better access to research journals.
In her Budget speech last year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had pledged Rs 50,000 crore for the NRF over a period of five years.
The Prime Minister’s Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) had in a project report on the NRF in December 2019 said that an absence of integrated planning and coordination was among the impediments to research.
While India’s multiple funding bodies supporting research across various fields have done an excellent job in nurturing components specific to them , the PM-STIAC had said, the lack of integrated planning and coordination means the whole remains less than the sum of parts .
The PM-STIAC report had outlined the rationale, scope, structure and objectives of the NRF.
The NRF would have 10 directorates one each for natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, environmental and earth sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, Indian languages and knowledge, health, agriculture, and innovation and entrepreneurship. (PTI)