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Research funding and institutions
Private industry now pays for most of India's research for the first time, though India still spends a fraction of what China and the United States do. The money is arriving faster than the machinery to govern it: a ₹1 lakh crore fund whose first round drew conflict of interest questions, public grants concentrated in the IITs, and no common identifier that traces a rupee to a result.
What India spends on research
0.84%India's gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) as a share of gross domestic product, up from 0.64% in 2020-21
2.58% and 3.45%the same share for China and the United States
354researchers per million people in India
Who pays, and through what
- The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) funds research in universities and colleges, with a mandate to widen the base beyond the established institutions.
- The ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund lends to private deep tech firms and caps its own share of any project at half.
- It is meant to be a revolving pool, returning its capital to the Consolidated Fund of India.
The Indian Statistical Institute
- The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), founded in 1931 by P.C. Mahalanobis in Kolkata, is an Institution of National Importance run on the model of a society under its own Act of 1959.
- Once a governing body's composition and powers sit in an Act, altering them takes Parliament rather than the institution's own members.
What has happened
27 Aug 2026
The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) found public research money concentrated in a few institutions and spread across agencies that cannot see what the others fund.
- Close to 80 per cent of ANRF money goes to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
- It proposes a Unified Project Management System to plan, fund and monitor public research in one place.
- Without a persistent identifier and standard metadata on every grant, money still cannot be traced to results.
10 Aug 2026
An Indian Express investigation found that of the 22 firms approved soft loans in the RDI Fund's first round, 15 were tied by investment to members of the selecting panel.
- Its defenders answer that recusal and supermajority voting are the safeguards.
- They add that panel members' connections in deep tech are the point of having them.
The Indian Express, 10 Aug 2026: Trust is key, tech fund needs more guardrails (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 20 Aug 2026: Dear Editor, I Disagree: For deep-tech fund, members' connections are valuable assets (opens in a new tab)
6 Aug 2026
The Department of Science and Technology's R&D Statistics 2025-26 showed private industry paying for 51.8 per cent of India's research in 2023-24, ahead of government for the first time.
- Industry now employs more core researchers than the public sector.
- Part of the rise may be better measurement under new disclosure norms rather than new money.
6 Aug 2026
The Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2026 would repeal the Act of 1959 and make ISI a statutory body corporate.
- An eleven member Board of Governors and an Academic Council would run it, on the pattern of the IITs and the Indian Institutes of Management.
- Faculty and some Members of Parliament read the change as a loss of the autonomy ISI has had as a society.