Policy: Free Indian science

As elections begin in India, Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson call for an end to the stultifying bureaucracy that has held back the nation’s science for decades.

India’s general elections this month and next could be among the most important since it gained independence in 1947. After ten years of a largely indecisive and an often scandal-ridden coalition government, there are strident demands for better governance, economic reform, the promotion of manufacturing and improvements in agriculture, health care and environmental management.

Sadly, science and its administration, once seen as central to Indian development, are not currently on the agenda, despite some trenchant critiques from scientists and science policy-makers^{1, 2}. Repeated government promises to increase the expenditure on research and development (R&D) to 2% of India’s gross domestic product have not been kept. R&D spend remains at about 0.9% of GDP — compared with 1.12% in Russia³ (down from 1.25% in 2009), 1.25% in Brazil and 1.84% in China² (see ‘Brick benchmarking’).

READ MORE: http://www.nature.com/news/policy-free-indian-science-1.14956