An annual budget of 10 billion rupees (close to US$200 million) is a good amount of money to create new funds for scientific pursuits in India. The fund is expected to come from an independent agency — National Science and Engineering Research Board (NSERB) — to promote basic research in science and engineering, similar to the US National Science Foundation. Scientists are hoping it would be fast and not like all other government funding bodies that believe in loads of paperwork and are characterised by huge time lags between application and grant.

Till now, Indian scientists had access to about 3.6 billion rupees from the Science & Engineering Research Council (SERC), the biggest government funding agency, apart from some other smaller ones, but only in select research areas such as health, agriculture, energy or biotechnology.

In the new regime, the prompt and smart institutes with good ideas will benefit. But they have loads of funds anyway, since they have always been prompt and smart. So who should benefit? There are concerns that the NSERB might end up feeding the fat babies and the undernourished will continue to remain neglected. Which are the institutes that should be given top priority when such new funds are generated? Are there any truly gifted institutes/universities in India that have not been able to make a mark just because their kitties have perpetually been empty?