The launch of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) and its emphasis on private funding in R&D has led to concerns over the corporatisation of research. In this detailed post, Samridhi Chugh explores the implications of this shift in government approach, its impact on curiosity-driven research and what India can learn from the world in forging successful industry-academia partnerships. Samridhi is a final-year student at the Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, and a graduate in Journalism from Lady Shri Ram College for Women. With a passion for the dynamic intersection of law, media and technology, she is particularly interested in exploring intellectual property and tech policy. Her previous posts can be accessed here. [Long post ahead].
Funding the Future: How the ANRF’s Skewed Approach has Reignited the Debate on the Corporatisation of Research
By Samridhi Chugh
On a pivotal occasion on September 10, the central government hosted the inaugural meeting of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation’s (ANRF) Governing Body, under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. The meeting largely involved high-stakes agenda setting with the PM stressing the need for innovative and localised solutions for the existing socio-economic problems at both global and grassroot levels. He also emphasised the need to eliminate hurdles stymying the growth of research and proposed initiatives to enhance infrastructural advancements, such as the introduction of a central R&D dashboard.
In what is being viewed as a turning point for India’s innovation ecosystem, the cropping up of the ANRF and its proposed vision has also stirred several controversies with concerns revolving around its potential for corporatising research processes and outcomes. In this post, I delve into the implications of the ANRF’s private funding model, the potential risks of research commodification and what India can learn from the global experience of balancing private sector interventions with public interest in research.
About Anusandhan National Research Foundation
The government established the ANRF under the Act of 2023 to revamp India’s research landscape by offering strategic direction and encouraging collaboration between industries, academic institutions, government departments and research organisations. Replacing the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) and based on the recommendations of National Education Policy (NEP), the ANRF comes with a proposed budget of Rs 50,000 crores for its five-year outlay (2023-2028). Its focus includes resolving infrastructural issues, supporting critical research projects and bridging the gap between academia and industry to enhance national research capacity.
However, its industry-centric orientation also brings in glaring issues to light, including the fact that 72% share of the above slated budget is to be exclusively accrued from non-governmental sources (more on this below). Further, concerns around the lack of critical representation of Indian industrial stakeholders or public universities in the ANRF’s 15-member Governing Board have been also raised, questioning its overall implications for the country’s multifaceted research and innovation fabric. The development has also reignited the persisting debate on the corporatisation of publicly important research, which makes it potent for us to analyse it in some detail.
The Proposed Funding Model Amidst a Bleak Research Ecosystem
As per the Economic Survey 2023-24, India has shown considerable growth in research output with more than 1.03 lakh patents granted in FY24 compared to under 25,000 in FY20. However, as highlighted by Roshan John and Praharsh Gour here, these numbers might not necessarily indicate good news, given the concerns of external pressures and diluted standards and safeguards driving their surge. Similarly, while the number of published research articles rose by 44% from 2019 to 2023, many of them have been classified as poor in quality by experts.
At the same time, while the government announced a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crores exclusively dedicated to research and innovation in the Interim Budget 2024, its R&D investment seems to have remained stagnant at just 0.64% of GDP, having not shown much progress for years now. This also remains far below the share of investment in countries like China (2.41%), the US (3.47%) and Israel (5.71%). Additionally, India’s private sector contributes only 36.4% to R&D, significantly lower than China’s 77% and 75% in the US.
These figures are important to contextualise the beginnings of the ANRF which has been established in the foreground of the current government’s push for self and corporate-financed research. Initiated in the 2015 ‘Dehradun Declaration’ which encouraged labs to market patents and self-finance work without state-support, the increasing shift of approach towards the corporatisation of scientific research appears to have crystallised with the passage of the ANRF Act in 2023.
At the very outset, the government made it clear last year that of the aforementioned proposed budget of Rs. 50,000 crores for the ANRF, Rs. 36,000 crores (72% of the total funding) will be sourced from a blend of “non-government sources, industry & philanthropists, from domestic as well as outside sources.” Accompanied by its recent emphasis (criticised here) on making research more “marketable”, with ANRF-led interventions touted to be focused on ‘prototype development’, the government now increasingly appears to be withdrawing from the arena, hence, paving the way for private market players to take up the financial baton.
The Implications of Corporatising R&D
Currently, nearly 65% of funds towards R&D in India flow from state coffers. While this makes it essential to boost industrial and private sector investment, a prospective financial dominance of private corporate bodies may also lead to many adverse implications for R&D as a public good.
On one hand, the development seems to be an inevitable consequence of the existing need to catalyse collaborative R&D practices. Some experts argue that lack of commercialisation and marketability of research limits its real-world impact, supporting robust industry-academia partnerships to facilitate a feasible, practicable, dynamic and productive research and innovation ecosystem. In a similar vein, Pavan Rao makes the case for private funding in research, particularly in exorbitant fields like pharmaceuticals, where government support is often inadequate. He emphasises the “positive spillover effects” of funding “superstar” entities in these sectors, which benefit the broader scientific community through intricate networking.
Critics of private-funded research, on the other hand, have continually highlighted the risks of researchers being influenced by corporate sponsors, leading to biased methodologies or results as well as the potential loss of public trust. They have also laid stress on the potential sidelining of curiosity-driven science. Basic research, also known as blue-skies research—research purely for the sake of knowledge—is often not outcome-driven or yields immediate commercial results. In the fray for profits, it risks being neglected as institutions tend to focus on projects that promise quicker financial returns. Australian scholar Brian Martin has shed light on the potential bias that may emerge from grant schemes favouring entrenched researchers, insiders, dominant groups and conventional approaches, stifling organic and unorthodox focus on innovation.
These concerns resonate deeply in India, given its unique socio-economic realities, diverse research landscape and the consequent need for inclusive scientific progress. In the now-ANRF-driven context, similar concerns have also been shared by scholars like Binay Panda and C.P. Rajendran. Firstly, while basic research is one of ANRF’s expressly declared focal areas, its tilt towards applied research may result in the commodification of research outcomes. Secondly, as Rajdendran pointed out, private funding, even in the USA, is mostly concentrated in cost-heavy sectors like pharmaceuticals and IT. The Indian government’s apparent withdrawal from the fiscal side of research, even across other critical sectors, such as social sciences, economics, climate change, etc., may also have larger implications, including compromised and politically motivated outcomes. All this can potentially come in the way of research serving fundamental public interests effectively.
Issues surrounding IP rights management and disputes between public and private entities, regional disparities in funding and conflicts of interest in sectors where private entities hold financial stakes in research outcomes also pose significant challenges. Moreover, uncertainties persist around the terms under which industry stakeholders will contribute to the ANRF’s forecasted 72% private funding share, as highlighted by Prof. Panda, which will need to be addressed at the earliest possible opportunity. Panda also emphasises that the very bureaucratic nature of research collaborations in India, along with the lack of market-oriented training among academicians, may deter private investors in the first place and be detrimental to ANRF’s long term vision and success.
Learning from Global Experiences
Amidst its new-found zeal to overhaul its R&D infrastructure, India can certainly take cues from its successful global counterparts. In attempting to allocate a lion’s share of research funding to private sponsors, it should not disregard the inherent need to foremostly enhance the inherent focus on state-led investments. Nations leading scientific research consistently develop and update their research ecosystems through efforts that, while forging partnerships with the private sector, do not wither away substantial state-led interventions.
As per a recent NITI Aayog report, Germany invests 3% of its GDP in R&D, driving institutional and collaborative innovation in sectors like automotive engineering and renewable energy. Japan invests 3.5%, focusing on academia-industry partnerships in electronics and biotechnology, while Singapore allocates over 2% of its GDP through its RIE Plans, with a parallel thrust towards fostering research collaborations and talent development.
An illuminating instance of the success of state-funded research can be located in the rise of Apple Inc. Mariana Mazzucato, in her book, ‘The Entrepreneurial State’, argues that Apple relied heavily on state-funded research in the US, which contributed even more to it than Steve Jobs’ vision and leadership. Public investments in technologies like the internet, GPS and touch-screen displays, financed by agencies like DARPA, were crucial to developing core components of Apple products, in the absence of which the iPhone may not have even come into existence.
In a very recent policy report, Mazzucato, Doyle and Burgsdorff have further argued for a more enhanced role of public financial institutions in leading R&D aid as “lenders of first resort” and promoting innovation within “mission-oriented” industrial strategies. By restructuring investments to share both risks and rewards with the private sector, they can foster innovation aligned with a range of social and environmental goals. The authors also insist that the transformation of these institutions to facilitate cross-sectoral collaborations in R&D can lead to a “multiplier effect” on domestic GDPs from the amount invested at the first instance.
Similarly, Sun and Cao in their article also attribute the transformation of China into a nation focused on innovation to its Medium and Long-Term Plan (MLP) for Science and Technology (2006–2020). They highlight how the government-led MLP helped amp up indigenous innovation and R&D investment, with its aim to increase national R&D expenditure to 2.5% of GDP and reduce reliance on foreign technology. While they acknowledge that some of these goals were met, they reveal that the state-led model, while effective in achieving large-scale national projects, may be less efficient in areas needing market-driven innovation. However, China’s current policy of technological independence, enshrined in the new MLP (2021-2035), has further pushed it towards “self reliance and improvement.”
On the Path to Reconciliation
From the above discussion, it is clear that, barring China and a few other nations, the broad global focus is tilted in favour of gradually scaling strategic private-public partnership regimes to bolster national research efforts. As also previously highlighted by Prashant Reddy T. and Saranya Ravindran and by Swaraj Paul Barooah and Anupriya Dhonchak in their previous posts on SpicyIP, even in cases where research is exclusively funded by the state, transparency and accountability remain significant concerns. This was evident from the experience during the Covid-19 pandemic when the lack of clear regulatory frameworks, insufficient disclosure of public-private partnership agreements and the absence of effective “march-in” rights hindered the government’s ability to control and share IP, especially in areas like vaccine development. The final resolution may, thus, lie in attempting to strike a reconciliatory balance.
UGC Chairman Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar addressed the existing challenges that impede the growth of public-private collaborations in funding research, such as the different perspectives of academic institutions and industrial entities towards research objectives and outcomes. Laying focus on a tailored approach to global experiences, he argued that the two sides will have to forge a “symbiotic relationship” marked by open dialogue, flexibility and trust building.
While this approach is significant, it is also imperative that any potential collaboration is first transparently laid out and analysed by taking into account all possible considerations, given the wider socio-economic stakes involved in the R&D sector in India. What is critical is that the government’s recent shift towards private-funding should not completely pave the way for the commodification of research through profit-oriented market strategies. Principles like transparency, accountability and public interest oriented innovation must be clearly marked as guiding principles to ensure guardrails are in place.
To be able to reap the fruits of an expanding research ecosystem, India must adopt a balanced approach by establishing clear guidelines for public-private partnerships, maintaining government support for basic research and developing robust conflict-of-interest policies. Focusing on continuous monitoring, evaluation and stakeholder involvement in these collaborations would help ensure the benefits, while mitigating risks of corporatisation and preserving the essence of research for public good.