NITI Aayog maps ease of doing R&D

Two NITI Aayog reports diagnose what slows Indian research and lay out how to repair the ecosystem.

What happened

• NITI Aayog released two linked documents in New Delhi on 9 April 2026: the flagship report "Ease of Doing Research & Development in India" and a companion "Survey Report on Ease of Doing R&D in India".
• The reports are the outcome of a roughly nine-month exercise that reached out to 400+ institutional leaders and drew insights from 850+ scientists across the country's research system.
• They were released by Shri Suman Bery (Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog) and Dr. Jitendra Singh (Minister of State, Science & Technology), with Dr. V. K. Saraswat (Member, NITI Aayog) present.
• The diagnosis spans four problem zones: funding mechanisms, institutional governance, regulatory frameworks, and research translation (the journey from lab to product or policy).
• The core prescription is a shift to a trust-based, outcome-oriented, facilitative research environment with far greater private-sector participation, including corporate funding routed through CSR.
• Domain voices at the launch included Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Prof. Vinod Kumar Singh (NASI), Dr. Shekhar C. Mande (INSA) and the Principal Scientific Adviser Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood (PSA).

Background & context

To read these reports correctly for the exam, the first thing to anchor is the body that issued them. NITI Aayog — the National Institution for Transforming India — was constituted by an Executive Resolution of the Union Cabinet on 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission that had run since 1950. This lineage is the single most tested fact about the institution, and it carries a sharp distinction: the Planning Commission allocated Plan funds to States and ran the Five-Year Plan machinery, whereas NITI Aayog is a policy think-tank and advisory body that does not allocate funds. It is the Centre's premier vehicle for "cooperative and competitive federalism" and a knowledge hub, not a disbursing agency.

Its structure is worth carrying as a checklist. The Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairperson; a Vice Chairperson (here Shri Suman Bery) runs it in practice; a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of Secretary rank, heads the secretariat; and a Governing Council of all State Chief Ministers, Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories, and select Union Ministers sits at the apex. Alongside sit full-time and part-time Members and ex-officio Members drawn from the Union Council of Ministers. Crucially, NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional body (it is not created by the Constitution, unlike the Election Commission or the Finance Commission) nor a statutory body (it is not created by an Act of Parliament, unlike the UGC or NHRC) — it rests purely on a Cabinet resolution. That executive footing is exactly why its outputs are recommendatory: these two R&D reports advise the government and the research ecosystem; they do not by themselves change any law or regulation.

The reports sit inside a wider policy push to lift India's research intensity. India's Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) has long hovered well below one per cent of GDP — far under the levels seen in the United States, China, South Korea or Israel — and a structural feature of the Indian system is that the government, not industry, finances the bulk of research, the reverse of the pattern in most advanced economies where the private sector dominates R&D spending. It is this imbalance the reports target when they press for private-sector and CSR funding. The documents also dovetail with the recently created Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — set up under the ANRF Act, 2023 to seed, grow and promote research and to crowd in non-government money — and with the broader ambition of an Atmanirbhar, innovation-led economy. NITI Aayog's role here is its classic one: not to run the labs, but to diagnose system-level friction and recommend reform.

For Prelims

• The two documents: "Ease of Doing Research & Development in India" (the main report) + "Survey Report on Ease of Doing R&D in India" (the companion evidence base), released 9 April 2026, New Delhi. (source-anchored)
• Method: ~9-month exercise · outreach to 400+ institutional leaders · insights from 850+ scientists. (source-anchored)
• Issuing body — NITI Aayog: National Institution for Transforming India; constituted by Cabinet resolution on 1 January 2015; replaced the Planning Commission (1950–2014). (curator-added)
• Nature: advisory policy think-tank — not a constitutional body and not a statutory body; its reports are recommendatory, not binding. (curator-added)
• Composition: PM = ex-officio Chairperson · a Vice Chairperson (Suman Bery) · a CEO · a Governing Council of all CMs + UT Lt Governors. (curator-added)
• Released by: Vice Chairman Suman Bery + MoS S&T Dr. Jitendra Singh, with Member Dr. V. K. Saraswat. (source-anchored)
• Four diagnosis zones: funding mechanisms · institutional governance · regulatory frameworks · research translation. (source-anchored)
• Prescription: trust-based, outcome-oriented, facilitative ecosystem + greater private-sector funding including CSR. (source-anchored)
• Ecosystem peer: complements the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), set up under the ANRF Act, 2023 to mobilise and crowd in research funding. (curator-added)

What it is NOT: NITI Aayog is not the Planning Commission renamed with the same powers — it has no role in allocating Plan funds to States. It is not a constitutional body (no Constitutional provision creates it) and not a statutory body (no Act of Parliament creates it); it stands on an executive Cabinet resolution alone. These reports are not a law, a scheme launch, or a binding regulation — they are advisory diagnostic reports. And NITI Aayog is not the body that funds research grants; that is the ANRF and the line science departments (DST, DBT, CSIR, etc.). Do not confuse the institution with its outputs: the entity is NITI Aayog; the news is its two R&D reports.

The full set to carry (Centre's economic/planning advisory architecture): NITI Aayog (2015, think-tank, executive) · Finance Commission (Article 280, constitutional, every five years, vertical/horizontal tax devolution) · the erstwhile Planning Commission (1950, executive, abolished) · the National Development Council (1952, executive, advisory). Knowing which of these is constitutional (only the Finance Commission) and which are executive (the rest) is the classic "how many of the following are statutory/constitutional" trap.

Why it matters

The reports address a problem India's policy class has named for years but rarely dissected at the level of day-to-day friction: a researcher's productivity is throttled less by the headline science budget and more by the process drag around it — slow and rigid funding release, procurement and import rules ill-suited to laboratories, audit regimes that punish honest failure in exploratory work, and weak pathways to move a discovery from bench to market or to policy. By surveying 850+ working scientists rather than only administrators, the exercise tries to capture the lived experience of doing research, which is what the "ease of doing" framing borrows from the older "ease of doing business" idea: reduce the transaction cost of the activity itself.

The significance for India's growth story is direct. A country aiming to climb global value chains and build deep-tech capacity in semiconductors, quantum, AI, space and clean energy cannot do so on a research base where the State funds almost everything and money moves slowly. Shifting toward a trust-based, outcome-oriented model — fund competent institutions on the strength of results rather than micro-policing every expenditure line — and pulling in private and CSR money is meant to both raise total R&D spend and change its character toward translation and commercial outcomes. The reports therefore feed straight into the larger questions of innovation governance, indigenisation and self-reliance that the exam returns to repeatedly.

For Mains