National Research Foundation’s chance to bridge India’s science-society gap Premium

The National Research Foundation, India’s new research funding agency with a Rs 50,000 crore budget, aims to boost research and innovation.

The National Research Foundation (NRF) is a new research funding agency that the Union Cabinet recently approved. It has a budget of Rs 50,000 crore over five years and was set up to help boost research and innovation in India by providing more funding, streamlining the research funding process, and strengthening linkages between academia, industry, society, and government.

Following the announcement, there has been discussion among scientists around the kind of research that the NRF should fund such that the outcomes are innovative solutions to practical challenges. This is a difficult task due to an academic culture that is mainly directed by internal academic priorities and incentives, but not generally related to social problems and challenges.

One prominent narrative on funding rationales is that the ‘relevance’ and/or the ‘utility’ of research work should not matter. This has been echoed in the NRF debate, with some commentators arguing that, since scientific advancements often arise unexpectedly, research shouldn’t be prescriptive or directed. Other experts have highlighted the importance of forging ties between academic scholars and other key players within the science, technology, and innovation (STI) system. This includes liaison with line ministries and the relevant industrial sectors right from the inception of the problem statement. Finally, a few experts have emphasised the importance of including societal stakeholders in thinking about both the issues and research pathways that STI should address.

The first argument rests on the unpredictable and accidental nature of many discoveries and contends that – in the words of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 advocacy paper ‘Science: The Endless Frontier’ – we ought to let “the free play of free intellects … dictated by their curiosity” drive innovation.

This linear, or pipeline, model assumes that new knowledge will automatically lead to new technology and innovation, fueling economic growth and addressing market gaps in knowledge creation. So the government should invest in scientific research because scientific breakthroughs will ‘naturally’ find their way into practical applications, via private sector innovation.

Many important technologies have benefited from discoveries driven by curiosity, including genome-sequencing, medical diagnostics, and several materials used in construction and various goods.

But this argument has long been challenged. In his 2016 essay ‘Saving Science’, Arizona State University professor of science and society Daniel Sarewitz wrote that many key inventions in postwar U.S. were the product less of curiosity and more of the technological demands of the Department of Defense (DOD). Sarewitz contended that the DOD’s engagements with science illustrated that the “free play of free intellects” was not the main path followed in most instances of innovation.