Draft 5th National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy

On January 1, 2021, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) released the draft of the fifth National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP).

According to the DST, the fifth National STIP 2020 aims to capture the aspirations of a new and future-ready India. The policy seeks to achieve it through active participation, shared responsibility and equitable ownership of all stakeholders, as well as by transforming the national science, technology, and innovation (STI) landscape maintaining the delicate balance between fortifying India’s indigenous capacity and nurturing meaningful global interconnectedness.

The policy contains progressive and radical proposals to bring about changes not only for the scientific research community but also for ordinary Indians who interact with science. The policy seeks to bring about profound changes through short-term, medium-term, and long-term mission mode projects by building a nurtured ecosystem, which would promote research and innovation on the part of both individuals and organisations. The main objective of STIP 2020 is to identify and address the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian STI ecosystem to catalyse socio-economic development of the country. The policy expects to make the Indian STI ecosystem globally competitive.

The policy is guided by the following vision:

(i) To achieve technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers in the decade to come.

(ii) To attract, nurture, strengthen, and retain critical human capital through a ‘people centric’ STI ecosystem.

(iii) To double the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers, gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD), and private sector contribution to the GERD every 5 years.

(iv) To build individual and institutional excellence in STI with the aspiration to achieve the highest level of global recognitions and awards in the coming decade.

Key Proposals

1. Establishment of a National STI Observatory

• The STIP 2020 would lead to the establishment of a National STI Observatory, which would act as a central stockroom for all kinds of data related to and generated from the STI ecosystem.
• It would include and open centralised database platform for all financial schemes, programmes, grants, and incentives existing in the ecosystem.
• It would be centrally coordinated and organised in distributed, networked, and interoperable manner among relevant stakeholders.

2. One Nation, One Subscription

• A forward-looking, constructive, all-inclusive Open Science Framework would be built to provide access to scientific data, information, knowledge, and resources to everyone in the country.
• This would include all those who are engaging with the Indian STI ecosystem on an equal partnership basis.
• All the data used in and generated from the publicly-funded research would be made available to everyone under FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) terms.
• A dedicated portal would be set up through the Indian Science and Technology Archive of Research (INDSTA) to provide access to the outputs of such publicly-funded research.
• Apart from this, full text of the final accepted author versions of manuscripts supported through public funding would be deposited to an institutional or central stockroom or repository.
• This policy would create pathways for the government to negotiate with journal publishers for a ‘one nation, one subscription’ policy. This would enable all individuals in India to get access to all journal articles for one centrally-negotiated payment.

3. STI Education through Skill Building, Training, and Infrastructure Development

• The STIP 2020 would help improve STI education and make it inclusive at all levels as well as more connected with the economy and society.
• STI education would be developed through various processes including skill building, training, and infrastructure development.
• ‘Engaged Universities’ would be created to promote interdisciplinary research to address community needs.
• Higher education research centres (HERCs) and collaborative research centres (CRCs) would be established to provide research inputs to policymakers and bring together stakeholders, such as industries, startups, R & D institutions, etc.
• Online learning platforms would be developed using information and communication technology (ICT) to address the issue of accessibility and promote research and innovation at all levels.
• Teaching-learning centres (TLCs) would be established to upskill faculty members who would in turn improve the quality of education.

4. Encouragement for Industry Clusters and Incentives for Collaborative Research and Development

• The DST aims to expand the financial landscape of the STI ecosystem. An STI unit, with a minimum earmarked budget to pursue SIT activities, would be set up in each department/ministry in the central, the state and local governments, public sector enterprises, private sector companies, and startups.
• Extramural funding would be diversified and enhanced to double the share of extramural R&D support of the central government agencies in the GERD in the next five years.
• Each state would earmark a percentage of the state allocation for STI-related activities under a separate budget head.
• Foreign multinational companies (MNCs) would collaborate with domestic private and public sector entities on projects aligned to national needs and priorities.
• STI investments would be increased through boosting fiscal incentives, enhancing support to the industry, especially the medium, small, and micro enterprises (MSMEs), for pursuing research through innovation support schemes and other relevant means on a need basis.
• Hybrid funding models with enhanced participation from public and private sectors would be created through the advanced missions in innovative research ecosystem (ADMIRE) initiative.
• To ensure systematic governance of the expanded STI financing landscape, an STI development bank would be set up in order to facilitate a corpus fund for investing in direct long-term investments in select strategic areas on various projects, commercial ventures, technology diffusion, licensing, etc.
• General financial rules (GFRs) would suitably be amended for large-scale mission mode programmes and projects of national importance and to facilitate ease of doing research.
• Efficient disbursement, communication, monitoring, and evaluation mechanisms (time-bound peer reviews along with technical and transactional audits) would be set up to support conducive investment.

5. Development of Research and Innovation Excellence Frameworks

• The STIP 2020 aims to create an apt and accountable research ecosystem by promoting translational as well as foundational research in India in accordance with global standards.
• To enhance the quality of research along with promotion of engagements with relevant stakeholders, a research and innovation excellence framework (RIEF) would be developed.
• To enhance the operating and safety protocols related to R&D, a set of proper guidelines would be formulated. In order to recognise social impacts along with academic achievements, research culture would be reoriented.

6. Strengthening of the Overall Innovative Ecosystem

• The policy envisions strengthening of the overall innovative ecosystem by fostering S&T-enabled entrepreneurship and improving participation of the grassroots levels in the research and innovation ecosystem.
• The policy plans to establish an institutional architecture to integrate traditional knowledge systems (TKS) and grassroot level innovation into the overall education, research, and innovation system.
• Collaborations between grassroot level innovators and scientists would be facilitated through joint research projects, fellowships, and scholarships.
• Grassroot level innovators would also be supported for registration, claiming the intellectual property right (IPR), filing of patent, or any type of legal claim with the help of higher education institutes (HEIs).
• Advanced tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning would also be used for curation, preservation, and maintenance of heritage knowledge.

7. Achieving Larger Goal of ‘AatmaNirbhar Bharat’

• The STIP 2020 proposes to promote technology, self-reliance, and indigenisation to achieve the larger goal of ‘AatmaNirbhar Bharat’.
• For this, a two-way approach of indigenous development of technology as well as technology indigenisation would be adopted and focused in alignment with national priorities, like sustainability, or and social benefit, and resources.
• International engagements would be facilitated to gain essential know-how towards creation and development of indigenous technologies. A technology support framework would be created to facilitate this development.
• A strategic technology board (STB) would be constituted to act as a link connecting different strategic departments.
• A strategic technology development fund (STDF) would be created to incentivise the private sector and HEIs.
• Spin-off technologies resulting from the larger projects would be commercialised and used for civilian purposes.
• Knowledge and evidence driven approach would be used for identifying critical sectors for the development of disruptive technologies.

8. Mainstreaming of Equity and Inclusion

• The STIP fifth draft suggests renewed impetus to the mainstreaming of equity and inclusion within the STI ecosystem.
• An India-centric equity and inclusion (E&I) charter would be developed for tackling all forms of discrimination, exclusions, and inequalities in STI leading to the development of an institutional mechanism.

—An inclusive culture would be facilitated through equal opportunity for women along with candidates from rural remote areas, marginalised communities, and differently-abled individuals.

—Equal opportunities would be provided to Divyangjans (persons with disabilities), irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds.

—Enhanced representation of women (at least 30 per cent) would be mandated in selection/evaluation committees. Discrimination of individuals on the basis of their age would be addressed.

—Consideration of experienced women scientists for leadership roles and regular gender and social audits in academic and professional organisations.

—The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ+) community would be included in gender equality conservation with special provisions to safeguard their rights and promote their representation and retention in STI.

9. 9. Mainstreaming Science Communication and Public Engagement

• The STI policy has come up with a structure to work towards mainstreaming science communication and public engagement through the development of capacity building avenues through creative and cross-disciplinary platforms, research initiatives, and outreach platforms.
• Locally relevant and culturally-context-specific models would be developed along with promoting cross disciplinary research in science communication.
• To improve the process of teaching science, the engagements between science communication and science pedagogy will be facilitated.
• Entertainment platforms such as television (TV), community radio, comics, etc. would be used to take science to the last mile.
• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups will be involved in the process through popular science programmes and citizen science projects at local and regional levels for this purpose.
• Science media centres would be established at national and regional levels to connect scientists with media persons and science communicators.

10. International S&T Engagement Strategy

• Engagement with the Indian diaspora across the world would be intensified.
• This would be done through attracting the best talent back home through fellowships, internship schemes, and research opportunities expanded and widely promoted across different ministries. Appropriate facilitating channels would be created for remote contribution as well.
• An engagement portal, exclusively for the Indian scientific diaspora, would be created. ‘S&T for Diplomacy’ would be complemented with ‘Diplomacy for S&T’.
• International knowledge centres, preferably virtual, would be established to promote global knowledge and talent exchange. The number of S&T counsellors would be increased with redefinition and revitalisation of their roles.

11. STI Governance

• A decentralised institutional mechanism balancing top-down and bottom-up approaches, focussing on administrative and financial management, research governance, data and regulatory frameworks, and system interconnectedness, would be formulated for a robust STI governance.
• Appropriate mechanisms would be set up at the highest levels for the overall (including inter-sectoral, inter-ministerial, Centre-state and inter-state) governance of the STI ecosystem.
• A robust research and innovation (R&I) governance framework would be set up to facilitate, stimulate, and coordinate R&D activities across the sectors.
• A capacity building authority would be set up to help plan, design, implement, and monitor capacity building programmes at the national and state level.
• A strong STI collaboration framework to strengthen existing channels and create new ones for enhanced interconnectedness among all relevant stakeholders at the domestic and global levels would be created.
• This collaboration framework would also help in pursuing projects in alignment with the national priorities by promoting inter-institutional, inter-ministerial, inter-departmental, and cross-sectoral vertical and horizontal linkages, and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

12. Governance, Implementation Strategy, Monitoring and Evaluation

• The policy outlines the institutional mechanism for STI policy governance along with the implementation strategy and roadmap and monitoring and evaluation framework for the policy and programmes and their interlinkages.
• An STI policy institute would be established to build and maintain a robust and interoperable STI metadata architecture to serve all the aspects of STI policy governance and to provide the knowledge support to institutionalised governance mechanisms.
• The institute would conduct and promote nationally and internationally relevant STI policy research and strengthen the science advice mechanism at national, sub-national, and international levels.
• The institute would develop long-term capacity building programmes for STI policy through training and fellowships.
• An implementation strategy and roadmap would be devised for STI policy and programmes along with continuous monitoring and timely evaluation mechanisms.

Critical Evaluation of the Policy

The STIP draft 2020 was finalised and placed after a detailed 4-track formulation process based on consultations since May 2020—extended public and expert consultation; thematic group consultation; ministries and state consultation; and apex level multi-stakeholder consultation. The process involved nearly 300 rounds of consultations with more than 40,000 stakeholders, well distributed in terms of region, age, gender, education, economic status, etc. The STIP Secretariat was coordinated, supported, and guided by the office of the principal scientific adviser (PSA), NITI Aayog, and DST. According to the government, the formulation process by design was envisioned as a very inclusive and participative model with intense correlation among different tracks of activities.

The policy states that we need to retain best minds in India by developing people-centric STI ecosystem. It also states that the private sector’s contribution to the GERD should be doubled every five years. However, the 2020 draft policy fails to discuss what we have achieved on these fronts since the previous STIP 2013.

The idea of “open science” is a welcome suggestion. It involves setting up an observatory to host data repositories, a computational grid, communication platforms, and the works. The STIP 2020 also proposes an archive of all research, the promotion of Indian journals, sharing publicly funded research facilities and public libraries. The experts wonder whether setting up such an enormous observatory is practical.

The proposal to ensure equity and inclusion with respect to marginalised and discriminated groups into the S&T system is welcome. However, there is no reference to the extent to which such groups are already represented in S&T institutions. Since most of this exclusion begins earlier, in the family and in school, experts question on how this connects with other relevant public policies.

There is also ample talk in the draft STIP 2020 about building infrastructure, but there is no mention regarding the present state of infrastructure in the sector. For instance, ‘What is the state of the industrial labs set up under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)?’, ‘These labs were supposed to be halfway houses between academia and industry R&D. Have they been able to execute their mandate?’

The draft policy does not provide a background that assesses the issues that plagues the system currently. Some of the more significant problems that afflict India’s S&T ecosystem are:

(i) a large number of low-quality research candidates coming out of a school system that trains them with rote learning and not conceptual learning;

(ii) college education that simply continues this tradition.

As a result, the research cohort has a very long quality-tail; a work culture that chases metrics—number of papers, citations, impact factor, etc.—and often encourages publications in fake journals.

Critics feel that a policy is expected to create a prioritised list of issues and strategise the government’s response to them. But there is no prioritisation in the new draft policy because it establishes no sense of what is more important and what less. Instead, in its attempt to be comprehensive, it does not deal properly with significant issues.

When the STIP 2020 draft proclaims that a new fund would be established or a new body would be set up, it must at least describe where the funds for it would come from, how the new body would fit into the existing structure and who would be in charge of it. But this draft policy document gives vague detail regarding such matter.

Initiatives like ‘one nation, one subscription’ have been applauded by experts and critics. They feel that would be good if the government can work out this deal with journal publishers, so that the resulting ‘national’ subscription is comparable in cost to the total aggregated cost of journals across the country.

Experts welcome the fact that policymakers are considering alternative mechanisms of governance of the financial landscape. It is also that they realise the administrative burdens of researchers and the problem of journal paywalls. The promise to explore international best practices of grant management has also been praised by experts.

It is to be seen that the 5th draft of STIP 2020 put up on the website of the DST for public opinion has received a lukewarm yet mixed response from the experts and critics. Though it is broadly directional and lacks in specifics, still it has several interesting ideas. It has to be observed how the government prepares the final draft of the STIP 2020 incorporating the comments, suggestions, and recommendations received from the public.

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