Opinion K Srinath Reddy on National Research Foundation: Energising the sciences

The raison d’ etre for NRF is explained in the detailed project report of 2019 — an endeavour to “ensure that the overall research ecosystem in the country is strengthened with focus on identified thrust areas relevant to our national priorities and towards basic science without duplication of effort and expenditure”. The report also highlights the fact that India has been lagging behind countries like the US, UK, Japan, China and South Korea in research funding, researchers per million population, publications and patents. The NRF is expected to galvanise the research enterprise in the country to bridge these gaps and raise Indian science to global peaks of excellence, while focusing on areas of high relevance to the country.

The world over, scientific research is needed to identify and measure the magnitude of the obstacles that hinder society’s progress, elucidate the causes that stymie solutions and develop interventions that are problem solving and barrier breaking. We live in an era where many complex adaptive systems are operating, whether in health, environment, food systems and nutrition, sustainable urban design or communication technologies. These systems often connect and coalesce to challenge society, as we are seeing in the current period of “pan-crisis” where health, environmental and financial crises are superimposed.

Siloed disciplinary approaches will not provide the needed solutions to complex challenges nor will they aid their effective implementation. Several disciplines have to work together to develop evidence informed, context relevant, resource optimising, culturally compatible and equity promoting solutions. For example, public health policy needs to be shaped by research that provides convincing evidence of scientific credibility, financial feasibility, operational steer-ability and political viability as the hallmarks of any proposed measure. That is indeed true of many other sectors.

Many sections of society are also needed across different sectors to effectively implement those solutions after they are identified. Even innovative technologies fail to cross the secondary translational barrier to reach the intended beneficiaries. Public health has seen such “technology pileups” the world over, in programmes from medicated bed nets for warding off mosquitos to vaccines for several infectious diseases. Implementation needs to align social and behavioural sciences alongside biomedical sciences to achieve success. NRF aims to provide the unifying platform for such multi-disciplinary research and multi-sectoral implementation.

While promoting multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative research, NRF also seeks to minimise duplication. Several ministries and scientific agencies have their own research funding streams. NRF should go beyond those discipline-restricted channels to support inter-disciplinary research which is currently underfunded. For example, transformation of primary health care calls for confluence of public health, social and behavioural sciences, management, digital technologies and health economics, apart from bio-medical sciences. Inter- and trans- disciplinary research needs a mandate matched by resources. NRF can provide both.

During a period of rapid socio-demographic and economic transitions, child nutrition too calls for strategies that avoid all forms of malnutrition — undernutrition, obesity and micro nutrient deficiencies. Air pollution and climate change are environmental threats which call for science led solutions. As linear approaches in research and siloed strategies for implementation are no longer adequate for addressing many such problems, NRF must promote the advancement and application of “complexity science” which is now growing in importance across the world.

NRF should promote multi-institutional, inter-disciplinary research to address prioritised areas of India’s development, by funding both commissioned task force research and investigator-initiated collaborative research. Mindsets for engaging in multi-disciplinary research must be created early in scientific careers, by inviting young researchers (such as post-docs from different knowledge domains) to collaborate on problem solving research in identified areas where progress needs to be speeded up or solutions are currently unavailable. Undergraduate and postgraduate college students too can be stimulated to do collaborative research projects across departments and conduct inter-disciplinary seminars.

Existing government research agencies should also align themselves to the mandate of inter-disciplinary, problem solving research that advances our development agenda, while continuing to support scientific research that augments knowledge within their specific disciplines. These individual streams will contribute to the knowledge pool which NRF will draw from to irrigate inter-disciplinary research. Currently, existing scientific agencies should ensure that strong institutional capacity for conducting research is built, which can collectively contribute to the mission of NRF.

NRF calls for collaboration between different sections of the academia, government and industry. The private sector is viewed as a key partner, to infuse corporate and philanthropic funding that is expected to amplify the government’s own committed contribution and also to infuse new ideas and stimulate innovation. Private sector contributions are expected both through untied funds to assist NRF’s initiatives as well as project specific funds through identified sponsorship. Engagement of state governments and state level institutions too will be vital if India’s capacity for conducting locally relevant scientific research is to be enhanced.

Community too should be represented through civil society organisations. Such participation is essential, for identifying people relevant priorities for the research agenda, engaging in participatory research, monitoring and evaluating implementation and its impact as well as in supporting implementation through community mobilisation. Only then can the scientific enterprise become a “jan andolan” or people’s movement.

The writer is a cardiologist, epidemiologist and Distinguished Professor of Public Health, PHFI