{"id":31436,"date":"2018-10-27T13:31:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T08:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=31436"},"modified":"2018-10-27T13:31:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T08:01:58","slug":"big-discoveries-have-small-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/big-discoveries-have-small-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Big discoveries have small origins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Big discoveries have small origins<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Economic Survey 2017-2018 has called for doubling research and development expenditure from its current level of about \u20b91 lakh crore, amounting to 0.8% of the gross domestic product (GDP).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Economic Survey: \u00a0Transforming Science and Technology in India. <\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Highlights<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As per the Survey, investments in science in India &#8211; measured in terms of Gross Expenditure on R&amp;D (GERD) &#8211; have shown a consistently increasing trend over the years.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, as a fraction of GDP, public expenditures on research have been stagnant over the past two decades. It is also well below that of major nations like US and China<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Survey also states that private investments in research have severely lagged public investments in India. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The Problem:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The issue of diminishing funds for exploratory small-scale science research has escaped amidst the debate based on comparative GDP figures.<\/li>\n<li>Seminal innovations often result from the efforts of scientists working alone or in small groups with a tight budget rather than in well-funded mega projects.<\/li>\n<li>In India, as elsewhere, a significant fraction of the science budget goes to mission-oriented projects in the areas of defence, space, nuclear and environmental sciences.<\/li>\n<li>The mission-oriented work in these areas need not be diluted to favour small research grants.<\/li>\n<li>The operational missions are important but so is the research ecosystem that provides human resources and feeds the innovation pipelines connected to these missions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way Forward:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Enhanced competitive research grants for the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, and universities will help address the needs of a larger pool of scientific talent and will also bring in returns by way of publications, patents and innovations<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Economic Survey has highlighted the issue. It has stated that India \u201cgradually move to have a greater share of an investigator-driven model for funding science research\u201d.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Report has also called for expansion through more resources and creative government structures.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big discoveries have small origins Context: The Economic Survey 2017-2018 has called for doubling research and development expenditure from its current level of about \u20b91 lakh crore, amounting to 0.8% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Economic Survey: \u00a0Transforming Science and Technology in India. Key Highlights As per the Survey, investments in science in India&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/big-discoveries-have-small-origins\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Big discoveries have small origins<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704728723},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}