Empty Grants to Exhausted Scholars: The Real Challenges of Doing Research in India

India wants to make research easier. Researchers say the first thing that needs fixing is everything that happens between getting a grant and actually doing the research.

NITI Aayog has released two reports, “Ease of Doing Research & Development in India” and the “Survey Report on Ease of Doing R&D in India”, with the stated aim of creating a more efficient and innovation-driven research ecosystem. But conversations with researchers, academics and scholars suggest that the problem is not simply how much money is allocated to research. It is how that money is distributed, released and eventually used.

For one associate professor at a central university, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the numbers tell only part of the story. The researcher has secured around seven funded projects since 2012, totalling approximately ₹2 crore.

“People think ₹2 crore is a big amount. But spread over 14 years, it is just peanuts,” the professor says.

A large portion of that money goes towards manpower, laboratory infrastructure, equipment and chemicals. In molecular-level biological research, the costs can be particularly high. The professor estimates that chemical purchases alone can require around ₹15 lakh a year for research at a level comparable with countries such as China, the US or Korea.

“What people don’t realise is that research demands a lot of money. We have to establish the lab, purchase equipment and chemicals, and pay the students working on the project,” the professor says.

And even when a project is sanctioned, the money may not arrive in a manner that makes research easy to execute.

The professor says the newer centralised payment mechanisms have created another layer of difficulty. Instead of researchers having access to sanctioned amounts through an auditable university account, payments can now be routed through centralised systems directly to vendors.

The practical consequence is that researchers may have to spend first and wait for reimbursement.

“I have to shell out ₹50,000 from my pocket, submit the bills and then wait for the funding agency to send the money,” the professor says, referring to contingency expenses. Travel costs can work in a similar way.

For a researcher handling multiple projects, this can mean having a sizeable amount of personal money blocked in the course of executing projects. It also affects the way vendors deal with research institutions.

“Because the payment is no longer in our hands, vendors know they may have to wait. So they charge more,” the professor says. “Ultimately, that extra cost comes out of the project itself.”

The delays can also affect research students who depend on project funding. The professor says there have been instances where project staff have waited months for their salaries while researchers are simultaneously required to keep experiments and paperwork moving.

“You are handling the experiment, the students, the reports and the administration all at the same time. Our mind is the mind of a researcher, not of an office job,” the professor says.

That administrative burden is one of the central concerns raised by Prof Abhimanyu Rana, R&D Director, BML Munjal University.

“Researchers still spend a considerable amount of time navigating procurement processes, utilisation requirements and multiple layers of institutional approvals rather than focusing on the research itself,” he says.

The problem begins even before a grant is sanctioned. The central university professor estimates that seven or eight proposals may result in only one approval, with each proposal taking weeks to prepare.

“If we write seven or eight proposals, one might get sanctioned. Writing a proposal itself takes two to three weeks,” the professor says. “In that time, we could have written book chapters or reviews. Instead, we spend that time writing proposals.”

There is also the question of who gets funded.

The professor argues that funding tends to favour established institutions and that newer central universities and other institutions are often further down the chain. “The sufferers are the downstream people,” the professor says, arguing that when the overall research funding pool is small, institutions with greater visibility and networks are more likely to secure a larger share.

“There is scope for improvement with respect to greater predictability around the disbursement of committed funds and clearer communication on timelines. There can also be greater clarity and consistency around grant processes,” says Dr. Saurabh Mahajan, Head CoE Life Sciences, Atria University.

Dr Sadaf Kalam, researcher and academic from Hyderabad, also believes universities need greater support. Recalling her own research experience at the University of Hyderabad, she says laboratories can have excellent infrastructure but still struggle when funding is inadequate.

She also points to a larger problem: the time it takes to build meaningful scientific outcomes.

“Research is not something where you put in an input and get an output immediately. If you file a patent for a particular drug, it might take five, 10 or even 20 years. The government should understand that research is not a one-time process,” she adds.

The consequences are beginning to be felt by young researchers as well. Kalam says students are increasingly attracted to sectors where they can start earning sooner, while scientific careers require years of education followed by postdoctoral work, often without job security.

But money and bureaucracy are only part of the story.

A research scholar who dropped out describes another problem within India’s academic system: the power relationship between a PhD scholar and their guide.

“Many scholars say that their supervisors or guides delay reviews, providing little to no feedback,” the scholar says. The researcher also alleges that some scholars are made to perform household or office-related work and even contribute to research papers published in professors’ names.

Psychologist Mrudula Akki says such relationships can have a profound effect on young researchers.

“What should have been a guide mentoring another researcher has turned into a power dynamic,” she says. “When the scholar’s PhD is effectively in the guide’s hands, that power can be misused.”

The result is not simply emotional distress. It can directly undermine the purpose of research.

“When their motivation and their belief that they can contribute to this body of work is killed, they start questioning why they joined the PhD in the first place,” Akki says.

She believes that frustration, lack of accountability and pressure to produce work at any cost can eventually affect the quality of research itself.

“When less than mediocre work is acceptable, those who want to do good-quality research feel discouraged and demotivated,” she says.

For researchers on the ground, therefore, making India a better place to conduct R&D cannot stop at increasing the research budget. The money has to reach researchers on time, procurement has to become less cumbersome, institutions need greater accountability and scholars need academic environments where they can actually do the work they signed up for.

Dr. Saurabh says, “Researchers also spend considerable time filling out detailed and repetitive forms, sometimes down to specifying milligrams of chemicals required for a multi-crore grant application. There is significant scope to simplify and streamline these processes, including through greater use of technology, so researchers can spend more time focused on the research itself.”

The real measure of an easier research ecosystem, they argue, may ultimately be quite simple: how much of a researcher’s time is spent researching, rather than trying to get the system to let them research.