Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of State for Science & Technology Jitendra Singh on Thursday said that India ranks 6th globally in R&D investment in terms of US$ Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
He said as per the latest available statistics, India’s spending on Research and Development (R&D) is consistently increasing in the last 10 years and has nearly tripled from Rs 39,437.77 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 1,13,825.03 crore in 2017-18.
Dr Jitendra Singh informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a question that the Government has been making sincere efforts to enhance the R&D expenditure and create adequate opportunities for researchers that include the competitive extramural funding schemes.
He said the government has taken several steps to increase opportunities for research students pursuing PhD and Post-Doctoral research.
The minister said that the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) has recently taken a decision to increase the number of Post-Doctoral Fellowships (PDFs) from 300 annually to 1000.
In addition, the SERB-Ramanujan Fellowship, SERB-Ramalingaswami re-entry Fellowship and SERB-Visiting Advanced Joint Research Faculty Scheme (VAJRA) have been devised to promote brain gain by attracting bright researchers of Indian origin to work and contribute to STI (science, technology and innovation) ecosystem in India.