COVID-19 augments the necessity to rebuild India’s research infrastructure to become self-reliant

COVID-19 augments the necessity to rebuild India’s research infrastructure to become self-reliant  

 It is very rare to see our politicians discuss about scientific research in public – well, this pandemic period has clearly made them do so. Recently, many eminent politicians rightly said that we have not invested enough in our health infrastructure and medical research in last 70 years and raised a very important question, why India depends on other countries for vaccine instead of being self-reliant? Our Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji focused on five key components- Intent, Inclusion, Investment, Infrastructure, and Innovation to promote self-reliance during his address for Confederation of Indian Industry’s on its 125^th anniversary. In today’s world, self-reliance can only come through Scientific and technological empowerment. As we have some fundamental problems in our research infrastructure, I would like to address those issues to our Prime Minister.

Firstly, our Government needs to understand the value of Ph.D. and postdoctoral scholars in different laboratories as they are the very driving force behind scientific progress. It is very unfortunate that those scholars do not get their salaries in time, in many cases they have to wait for more than a year to receive their salaries. This issue was raised several times before, but unfortunately the scenario never changed.

Secondly, the Government must realize the difference between scientific research and business. It takes time to answer questions with scientific data and it takes long time to generate credible data or model. You may make a machine within a couple of days if you know the background science but to know the working principle you need to invest in research for a longer period. In science, we can only publish 10 to 15% data and rest are used for standardization of protocols and to make hypothesis.

Thirdly, it is almost impossible to survive in modern research without adopting latest techniques to answer different questions. Unfortunately, the start-up fund in India for newly appointed faculties are not compatible enough to do quality research. For example, in Genetics people mostly do live imaging and testing genotype. At least once confocal microscope and two PCR machines are required to run a laboratory with five scholars. How do our Government expect our Scientists to provide excellent findings with one confocal microscope in central instrument facility shared by ten (often more) faculties? Isn’t it too much to expect from them without trying to understand their basic requirements?

Lastly, we are quite familiar with the election manifesto that is published before election. It is up to the people to decide how much every political party fulfils their promises, but at the same time it is true that in our country even without fulfilling 20% of their promises many political parties run government for years. Like election manifesto, Scientists apply for funding with their proposals. The saddest part is that even after carrying out 50% of the proposed work funding agencies often do not agree for renewal. It is extremely hard for any newly appointed faculty to get publishable data within first three years. Besides, new faculties in India has tremendous teaching load. In lieu of the above facts, government should consider supporting young faculties for at least 10 years and sanction extra fund for setting up a laboratory in the initial stages. Government should adopt some policies to support research before allowing the funding agencies to assess the progress of new faculties based on their publications. In Canada, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) provides a minimum compulsory funding based on credibility of the project to each Scientist to continue their research work for longer period. Many different countries have similar type of funds to promote scientific research. I do not think our country has similar approach.

Now, let me categorically put forth some hard facts to make the reader realize the difficulties faced by Indian Scientists to develop vaccine against COVID-19. India spends only 0.85% of its GDP on Research and Development while US, Canada Israel, Japan, Germany, and France spend 2.8%, 1.58%, 4.3%, 3.5%, 3.01%, and 2.1% respectively. All the above-mentioned countries spend 10-12% of their GDP on public health except Israel which spends 7.5%. With 1.3 billion population, we spend only 1.28% of our GDP on public health.

According to Economic survey 2017-18, India’s R&D budget presented by then former finance minister Arun Jaitley allotted 0.7% of GDP, an amount which is stagnant for past 20 years. Arun Jaitley underlined the need for doubling the efforts to make advancement in scientific research. Despite inadequate funding Indian Scientists made ground-breaking progress in various scientific fields, notably in space and defense.

In the context of the Corona pandemic, let me recount some recent success of our Biomedical researchers in tackling mosquito borne diseases, faster diagnostic tests for tuberculosis, designing new tool for autism screening and evolving future treatment strategies for neuronal disorders. When we talk about the vaccine program for COVID-19, we need to remember US invests over $3 billion, Canada invests $1.1 billion, European Union offered €80 million to Germany to develop vaccine. So, before we ask our Scientists to develop vaccine, Central Government must assure no paucity in fund allocation.

Despite funding constraints, our Scientists are racing ahead to develop vaccine against COVID-19. They have already developed and patented CRISPR and antibody-based COVID-19 detection system. The testing capacity increased from 25k per day to 1 lac sample per day. Our private pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are the largest manufacturers of medicines– including vaccines, yet they lack in R&D initiatives. However, they are partnering with the best private laboratories of Europe and USA to develop the vaccine against COVID-19. India has the research pool, but it is still short of creating the intellectual wealth. It is time to integrate research with manufacturing units. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy envisaged that besides doing research in laboratory we must step up the production of research products for the welfare of the people. Instead of asking Scientists tough questions, we should urge Government to adopt long term plans, increase funding for Research & Development and encourage young Scientists to do quality work.

In spite of the above-mentioned infrastructural deficits, number of Ph.D. enrolment and publications in science and technology are increasing in India which is a testimony to the extreme passion of our young generation for scientific research. A pragmatic attitude, research friendly policies, more research funds can surely help our Scientists to make rapid strides. We truly understand that it is not possible for us to have research funding on par with developed countries. But at least we should have a yearly plan to increase our investment on research by at least five times in next five years.

More political cooperation and goodwill are needed to reach this target. It is true that we have not invested enough in scientific research in last 70 years but at present we have a Government which has taken progressive steps like abrogation of Article 370, Ayushman Bharat to ensure health insurance for all, Jan Dhan Yojana, bank accounts for all and abolition of triple talaq etc – seemingly impossible in the last 70 years.

Our Honorable PM Narendra Modi Ji has been playing an extraordinary role and took many early steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He is encouraging our scientists to develop detection kits and vaccine. I believe this is an ideal time and opportunity to address the above-mentioned problems. Hopefully, this Government will bring some positive changes soon and encourage young Indians training abroad to come back and set up laboratories in India. Then alone, we will be able accomplish to realise our dream to become self-reliant, by establishing our country as a dominant force in global research and development frontier.

Published in : https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/covid-19-augments-the-necessity-to-rebuild-indias-research-infrastructure-to-become-self-reliant?fbclid=IwAR3ualKdlSvqnGjVO1MZ9SrDj2Jks1KBqep9FMvCwQ_i-ehaYRXyuSayxuk