National Research Foundation to be established by HRD Ministry

In order to boost the research output of the country, the HRD Ministry is planning to set up an agency with a seed grant of Rs.500 crore to bolster the country’s weak research output.

Apart from its own seed grant, National Research Foundation (NRF) will also leverage more funds to support close to 500 collaborative research projects with top Indian institutions like IITs, NITs, IIITs, IISERs and prestigious international universities as well.

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India has to catch up in the international league when it comes to spending on research. As less as 0.85% of India’s GDP is spent on research. Whereas the USA spends 2.74%, Israel spends 4.11%, China spends 2.10% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on research as opposed to China which spends 2.10% and Japan spends 3.58%.

The number of patents filed in India is only four per million of the population. The figure is way behind other countries in the league like South Korea with 2,962 patents, Japan with 2,250 patents and China 396.

Also, of the 250 MoUs signed by various ministries, only 60 have started successfully. Some still await funds required to kick-start the collaborations.

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NRF will aim at establishing research priorities and secure 50% of the funds for research initiatives. It will also finance some of the research of Indian Council of Medical Research, Engineering Research Board and IMPRINT programme.

The HRD Ministry wants to ensure that NRF gets announced in the Union Budget 2017 that will be declared on February 1.