What do our research labs need?

Why do we see so many Indian students flocking to foreign universities in search of higher education? One of the reasons is that India lacks the necessary infrastructure required for students to excel at research. The United States, Singapore and Hong Kong are some of the countries that are considered hubs for research. In these countries, there is immense collaboration between universities, multi-national corporations and research agencies. Research agencies cannot thrive on their own; they need ideas and inputs from scholars and faculty members before research is carried out and results are shared with corporations for sale in the market. This is what Indian research labs need to work on. For example, Silicon Valley in California, US, is home to many silicon chip innovators and manufacturers. Research labs in Silicon Valley are able to tap into the top brains of Stanford University and use that knowledge to nurture Hewlett Packard, Xerox and other hi-tech firms.

Apart from strong collaboration, research labs in India need to upgrade their equipment to compete with leading research agencies in the world. Currently, the government spends more than 60 percent of its education budget on elementary education. In an attempt to get more children educated, the government is channelling most of its funds to elementary schools, leaving less than 10 percent of the education budget for higher education. By channelling more funds to universities for research purposes, and by tapping on public-private partnerships, the government will be able to build research divisions with state-of-the-art infrastructure. Today, students in India are losing out to competition from developed countries because they do not have access to quality software and research tools.

Research labs, be it in the fields of science or technology, are plenty in the country. We have research institutes that focus on national defence, pharmacy and medicine, social sciences, aerospace, law, mathematics, and sciences. But the government is unable to provide proper opportunities for great minds in these fields. Lack of proper direction and management in these research agencies has resulted in their downfall. India can learn a lot from the US. Recently, US President Barack Obama proposed US$110 million in the 2014 federal funding for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, which will look into how the brain is affected by health conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease. For this project, several universities, research agencies and corporations have been pooled together. This is what India needs – proper guidance and management.

Economic growth of a country largely depends on research initiatives undertaken in the country that ultimately increase competitiveness of local firms. This is what India needs. There are hundreds of research labs in India that have no proper management to guide and train great minds in the country. With the right equipment, infrastructure, collaboration and guidance, India’s research agencies and labs will be able to set a new record for the world.