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Right now, information about the use of public funding for research lies scattered across dozens of separate agency databases, in inconsistent formats, and often as free text rather than structured data. Representative image.
| Photo Credit: Talha Hassan/Unsplash
A recent report by NITI Aayog, about ‘Ease of Doing R&D in India’ revealed some uncomfortable truths about India’s R&D ecosystem. Together with a companion survey with inputs from more than 400 institutional leaders and 850 scientists, it reported that close to 80% of funding under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — the flagship research funding body — is concentrated in the IITs. This is despite ANRF’s mandate to support a wider base of universities and research bodies than the traditional funding model has managed.
There are also concerns that multiple Central agencies are possibly funding similar research areas, resulting in overlap and what the report calls “inefficient” use of public money.
These findings point to a common underlying gap: India does not have a system that can tell funders, researchers or the publics who is being funded, by whom, for what, and whether that funding has already been given elsewhere.
NITI Aayog’s response to this gap is the Unified Project Management System (UPMS) — a system to streamline the planning, funding, monitoring, and evaluation of public R&D projects across Ministries and Departments.
