India’s research funding needs output tracking, not just spending records
Argument
India’s research system can account for where public money is spent, but not what it produces, and the authors argue that gap leaves duplication, weak oversight and lost value in public R&D spending.
Data Impact
Their case turns on a simple measurement problem. Agencies such as SERB, DST, DBT, ICMR and ANRF mainly receive end-of-project reports and financial utilisation statements, which record spending but not the full range of outputs. The authors argue that a linked system built on persistent identifiers, trusted repositories and interoperable databases would make publications, datasets, software, patents and other results searchable and traceable back to each grant.
Limits
The piece treats the UK, France and Wellcome Trust as working models, but it does not show how easily their systems could be scaled to India’s larger, more fragmented funding landscape.
UPMS is only a grants-management platform today; the authors’ dashboard idea would require an additional layer of infrastructure and agency discipline that the current rollout has not yet demonstrated.