The Quest to be a Science Superpower: Where India’s Research Is and What It Will Take to Get Ahead
Recent assessments of India's research ecosystem examine whether the country is on track to become a genuine global scientific power, weighing publication volume against research quality and funding intensity.
India's Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) rose to a record ₹2.45 lakh crore in 2023-24, with R&D spending as a share of GDP increasing marginally to 0.84% — an all-time high for India, but still well below leading research economies.
For the first time, private industry's share of India's R&D spending (51.8%) surpassed the combined contribution of all levels of government in 2023-24.
India continues to rank third globally by volume of scientific publications, even as its citation impact and research quality indicators lag behind top-ranked research nations.
Institutional reform is underway through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), intended to reorganise how India funds and directs research across disciplines.
Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — India's New Apex Research Body
The Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023 established ANRF as India's apex body for providing high-level strategic direction to research, innovation, and entrepreneurship across the natural sciences, engineering and technology, environmental and earth sciences, health, agriculture, and the science-humanities interface — a considerably broader remit than its predecessor body.
Key Details
- The Act received presidential assent on August 15, 2023, and came into force on December 1, 2023; the erstwhile Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) was dissolved and subsumed into ANRF in February 2024.
- ANRF's governance has three tiers: a Governing Board presided over by the Prime Minister (ex-officio President), with the Union Ministers of Science & Technology and Education as ex-officio Vice-Presidents; an Executive Council chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India; and a CEO reporting to the Executive Council.
- ANRF has a planned outlay of ₹50,000 crore over five years (2023-2028), of which only ₹14,000 crore comes from central government budgetary support — the remainder is intended to be mobilised from other public sources and private industry.
ANRF is the institutional bet behind India's science-superpower ambitions — its design explicitly tries to correct the government-heavy, industry-light funding pattern that has historically constrained Indian R&D.
R&D Spending as a Share of GDP — India Against Global Benchmarks
Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) as a percentage of GDP is a standard international metric of a country's research intensity, tracked by bodies such as the OECD and UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and reported for India by the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
Key Details
- India's GERD-to-GDP ratio stood at 0.84% in 2023-24, its highest recorded level, but remains far below Israel and South Korea (each near or above 4-5% of GDP) and the United States (over 3%).
- Historically, Indian R&D spending has been government-dominated; the 2023-24 data marks the first year private industry's contribution (51.8%) exceeded combined government spending (government R&D rose to ₹1.18 lakh crore from ₹1.11 lakh crore, while private R&D rose to ₹1.27 lakh crore from ₹1.02 lakh crore).
- Policy discourse around India's science ambitions cites a target of reaching 2% of GDP in R&D by 2035, with industry expected to contribute around 70% of that increase — mirroring the funding structure of high-R&D-intensity economies.
The persistent gap between India's R&D-to-GDP ratio and that of leading research economies is repeatedly cited as the core structural constraint on India's ambition to become a "science superpower," making this ratio a high-yield Prelims fact and a recurring Mains analytical anchor.
Global Innovation Index (GII) — Methodology and India's Trajectory
The Global Innovation Index is an annual ranking jointly published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Cornell University, and INSEAD, assessing economies on innovation input and output pillars — including institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market and business sophistication, and knowledge and technology outputs.
Key Details
- India ranked 38th out of 139 economies in the GII 2025, a sustained climb from 81st in 2015 — one of the more consistent innovation-ranking improvements among large economies over the past decade.
- India ranks first among lower-middle-income economies and within the Central and South Asian region on the index.
- The GII is distinct from the Ease of Doing Business rankings (discontinued by the World Bank in 2021) and from the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness reports — each measures different dimensions of an economy's institutional and innovation environment.
India's steady GII climb is often cited as evidence of innovation-ecosystem progress, but analysts caution that index gains in inputs (infrastructure, institutions) have outpaced gains in research-quality outputs — the exact tension explored in assessments of India's science-superpower prospects.
India's Scientific Output vs. Research Quality — Volume Without Proportional Impact
Bibliometric data (from databases such as Scopus) shows India has become one of the world's largest producers of scientific publications by volume, but its citation-impact metrics — a proxy for research influence and quality — trail well behind the leading research nations.
Key Details
- India ranks third globally in the volume of science and engineering publications, producing about 7% of the world's total output, behind China (around 25%) and the United States (around 13%).
- Despite this publication volume, India's average performance on the H-index (a composite measure of both output and citation impact) places it in the middle of the pack globally, indicating comparatively lower research influence per paper.
- This "quantity without proportional quality" pattern is commonly attributed to funding fragmentation, limited industry-academia collaboration, and comparatively low investment in advanced research infrastructure — the very gaps ANRF and the R&D-to-GDP push aim to address.
The volume-versus-impact gap is the crux of the "science superpower" debate — publication counts alone do not indicate global research leadership, a distinction UPSC aspirants should be able to draw when discussing India's S&T standing.
- India's GERD (2023-24): ₹2.45 lakh crore; 0.84% of GDP (record high, per DST data tabled in Parliament).
- Private sector share of India's R&D spending (2023-24): 51.8% — first time exceeding combined government spending.
- ANRF Act, 2023: assented August 15, 2023; in force December 1, 2023; SERB dissolved and merged in February 2024.
- ANRF outlay: ₹50,000 crore over 2023-2028, with only ₹14,000 crore from the central government budget.
- Global Innovation Index 2025: India ranked 38th of 139 economies (up from 81st in 2015); first among lower-middle-income economies.
- India's global rank in scientific publication volume: 3rd, at roughly 7% of world output (behind China ~25%, US ~13%), with middling H-index/citation-impact performance.
- Policy target discussed: raising India's R&D spending to 2% of GDP by 2035, with industry contributing about 70%.