Investment in S&T and Innovation in India

Abstract

Investment and expenditure on S&T (and on R&D) in India has been rising over the years. Computation of such spending is difficult because agencies ranging from public to private invest or spend, on several items that may not be directly accounted for under the respective heads of either R&D or S&T. Moreover, there are several types and tiers of public agencies in the federal setup who are engaged in investment in S&T. Further, there are other modes of public funding especially as through the banking system or fund-based systems targeted to S&T or R&D. Finally, apart from the foreign investment/engagement in R&D the domestic private sector invests in S&T based innovations that are not accounted for under the head R&D. In this context this section attempts to capture the extent and modes as well as structures of such spending/investment. Investments made in Research and Development by the developed countries and even by a few developing countries such as China and Brazil, are as percentages of respective GDP higher than made by India. A closer observation of China’s investment in R&D however reveals that they have considered many additional parameters under ‘development’ head in their calculation of the total investments in R&D. While calculating R&D in India, developmental expenses have often been excluded, such as private sector expenditure on non-R&D innovation-expenses has been excluded from the R&D head.