New Delhi, India – Paras* and his family were supposed to have the financial difficulties over by enrolling in one of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) schools. Instead, things have only worsened due to the federal government’s long delays in dispensing Paras’s monthly fellowship allowance of 37, 000 rupees ($435).
Paras is a research fellow at the IIT looking for solutions to the world’s growing infectious disease crisis. His fellowship is a result of the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST) funding program INSPIRE.
But delays in the scheme’s payment have meant that Paras was not able to pay the instalments on the laptop he bought for his research in 2022. His savings plans and credit score fell, too.
In a drought-stricken region of western India, Paras’ parents are farmers, and their income depends on a frequently subpar harvest. So, he has resorted to borrowing money from friends, including as recently as between August and December, he told Al Jazeera.
Paras is not the only one. Nearly a dozen top institutes in India are currently and former researchers, according to the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) initiative. The interviewees studied at institutions such as the IIT, a network of engineering and technology schools across the country, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, another network.
Without a stipend, all had gone from three to nine months.
According to them, the fellowship’s deterioration and procedural lapses have resulted from these delays in funding and insufficient funding.
Many researchers recently took to social media to complain, tagging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh.
Many of us who are pursuing PhDs under DST-funded fellowships have been receiving their stipends for more than a year, according to Sayali Atkare, an INSPIRE fellow, who posted a LinkedIn post. Many young researchers are now experiencing significant financial and emotional stress as a result.
Last year, India ranked 39th in the Global Innovation Index of 133 countries, up one spot from the year prior. In terms of innovation, it leads lower-middle-income nations like Vietnam and the Philippines. Malaysia and Turkiye are the two countries with the highest incomes, followed by China.
The federal government termed the ranking an “impressive leap” in a news release. According to the statement, India’s “growing innovation potential” has been backed by government initiatives that prioritize technological advancement, business ease, and entrepreneurship.
Modi praised India’s expanding research potential at a federal government conference in April. Under his leadership in the past decade, the government has doubled its gross spending on research and development from 600 billion rupees ($7.05bn) to more than 1, 250 billion rupees ($14.7bn), while the number of patents filed has more than doubled – from 40, 000 to more than 80, 000.
The government has made numerous efforts to ensure “talented individuals face no obstacles to advancing their careers,” Modi said, including double the spending on R&, D (research and development), double the number of patents filed in India, and the creation of state-of-the-art research parks and fellowships and facilities. > ,
However, an analysis of government documents, budgets and interviews with researchers reveals that the government is more focused on commercial research, primarily product development led by start-ups and big corporations. It doesn’t provide much funding for research conducted at the nation’s top universities.
For instance, a program that provides interest-free loans to private companies conducting research in sunrise domains like semiconductors made up of 70 percent of the Science and Technology Department’s annual budget for the current fiscal year.
At the same time, the government has made misleading statements about its investments in the country’s research institutes, including with schemes like the INSPIRE fellowship, where funds have actually been cut instead of being increased as touted by the government.
Pay issues, delayed funding, and poor pay
The INSPIRE scheme offers PhD and faculty fellowships to “attract, attach, retain and nourish talented young scientific Human Resource for strengthening the R&, D foundation and base”.
Top-ranking postgraduate students and doctoral researchers are eligible to receive fellowships to conduct research in fields ranging from climate science, biochemistry, neuroscience, cancer biology, biotechnology, and renewable energy.
PhD fellows are eligible for a monthly salary of 37, 000 rupees ($435.14) to 42, 000 rupees ($493.94) for living expenses under the scheme, as well as a salary of 20 000 rupees ($235.21) per year for research-related expenses, such as paying for equipment or traveling to work.
Faculty fellows are offered teaching positions with a monthly salary of 125, 000 rupees ($1, 470) and an annual research grant of 700, 000 rupees ($8, 232).
653 fellows enrolled in the PhD fellowship program between 2024 and 2025, and 85 were in the faculty fellowship program.
A faculty member at an institution in eastern India said, “I was unable to attend an important annual meeting in our field because it required travel.” He has not received his payments since September 2024.
We’ve made endless phone calls and written countless emails, most of which leave the message unanswered or are met with ambiguous responses, according to Atkare, a PhD student who wrote about the government’s failure on LinkedIn. Even some government officials “reply” rudely.
Another INSPIRE PhD fellow told us of a running joke: “If they pick up the phone, you can buy a lottery ticket that day. Your lucky day is today.
Abhay Karandikar, DST Secretary, acknowledged the delays in funding in May and promised to fix them right away.
Karandikar told the Hindu newspaper that he was “aware” of the disbursement crisis but said that from June 2025, all scholars would get their money on time. “Every issue has been resolved,” the statement read. He said, “I don’t anticipate any issues in the future.”
Al Jazeera requested a comment from the science and technology minister, the DST secretary and the head of the department’s wing that implements the INSPIRE scheme, but has not received a response.
Dodgy math
To launch Vigyan Dhara, or “the flow of science,” in January, the federal government folded three R&, D-related initiatives to ensure “efficiency in fund utilisation.” The INSPIRE scheme had been funded under one of those schemes.
But chaos has resulted in chaos instead of efficiency.
DST requested new bank accounts from institutions during Vigyan Dhara, which caused delays in the payment of INSPIRE fellowships.
New Delhi also said that it had “significantly increased” funding for the Vigyan Dhara scheme, from 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) in the last financial year to 14.25 billion rupees ($167.58m) in the current financial year.
That math, however, was not accurate. The 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) is what the government earmarked for the scheme, which was only launched in the last quarter of the fiscal year. The three schemes’ annual budget, which was replaced by Vigyan Dhara, totaled 18.27 billion rupees ($214.93 million). In effect, the allocation to the current budget decreased by 22%, from 18.27 billion to 14.25 billion ($167.58 million).
Overall, the budget for Vigyan Dhara’s constituent schemes decreased by 67.8% from the previous fiscal year, which was the same as the previous fiscal year, which was the same as the budget for the remaining schemes, which was the same as the budget for the remaining ones, which was the same as 167.6 million rupees.
According to Al Jazeera, DST officials did not respond to a request for information on Vigyan Dhara’s budgetary allocations.
Commercialisation of research
The Indian government, on the other hand, allocated 200 billion rupees ($2.35 billion) to the new R&D and innovation (RDI) initiative targeted at the private sector.
This money is a larger 1-trillion-rupee ($11.76bn) corpus that India’s finance minister announced to offer low- or no-interest rates.
These changes in schemes are intended to make India a “product nation”, get more patents filed in India, and curb the brain drain, as Union Minister Aswini Vaishnaw and DST officials explain in different videos.
However, the researchers’ issues at state-run organizations continue to be unresolved.
“The government throws around big terms, but those toiling in laboratories are suffering”, said Lal Chandra Vishwakarma, president of All-India Research Scholars Association.
“Stipends should be paid in the same way that central government employees are paid. He argued that subscribers should receive their money on a consistent basis each month.
In the current scenario, most fellows Al Jazeera spoke to said that they would prefer a fellowship abroad.
“It’s not just about money; it’s also about the ease of research, which is much better in Europe and [in] the United States.” There is a lot of staff there. In India, you get none of that”, said a professor at an IIT, who supervises an INSPIRE PhD fellow who faced funding issues.
Researchers told us that researchers who are heavily funded in the private sector should downplay their funding costs to increase their chances of getting funded by government research projects.
If we lose the first few years as a result of cost-cutting, we are behind our colleagues abroad, the IIT professor said.
“Once we submit necessary documents, like annual progress reports, DST takes at least three months to release the next instalment. A theoretical mathematician who works on a PhD said, “It’s standard.”
“As of right now, I would advise only people with high-income backgrounds and privileges to work in academia.” Not because that’s how it should be, but because for others, it’s just so hard”, the IIT professor said.
Source: Aljazeera
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