Every October, the Nobel announcements trigger a familiar conversation in India: Why does India, with its enormous pool of scientific talent, rarely feature among them? Perhaps the more useful question is: What are the countries that produce transformative science doing differently and what holds our scientists back?

The answer is not simply money, though money matters. The US spends about 3.4 per cent of GDP on research and development, Germany over 3 per cent, Japan more than 3.5 per cent and South Korea over 5 per cent. China is approaching 2.7 per cent. India’s gross expenditure on R&D is only about 0.64 per cent.

But the more revealing statistic is who funds research. In India, business contributes around 40 per cent of R&D expenditure, compared with roughly three-quarters in the US and China. Our research ecosystem therefore has both a scale and a private-sector participation gap. There is also increasing pressure on scientists to “develop technologies”, “build products”, “commercialise........

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