VOL. 16 NO. 1 JANUARY-MARCH 1997 - R & D HIGHLIGHTS

  • The national investment on R&D activities attanied a level of Rs. 6821.02 crores in 1994-45. The same for the year 1995-96 is estimated to be Rs. 7753.78 crores.

  • 0.81% of Gross National Product was devoted to R&D during 1994-45.

  • Sectorwise percentage share of national expenditure during 1994-95 was Central Government 64.9%, State Governments 8.6%, public sector industires 10.1% and private sector industries 16.4%.

  • In the Insitutional sector, about 18% of the total expenditure was spent on basic research, 39% on applied research, 31% on experimental development and the rest 12% on supporting activities.

  • 89.7% of the expenditure incurred from government sources came from Central Government and 10.3% from the State Governments.

  • 76.9% of the R&D expenditure incurred by Central Government sources came from 12 major scientific agencies - CSIR,DAE DBT, DNES DOD, DOE,DOS, DRDO, DST, ICAR, ICMR, MoEn and the rest came from other central ministries/departments/public sector industries. Amongst the major scientific agencies, Defence Research and Development Organisation accounted for 31.7% of the expenditure.

  • State sector spent Rs. 588.40 crores on R&D activities during 1994-95. About 88.6% of the total investment on R&D activities by State sector was on development of agriculture and allied areas. More than one fourth of total State sector R&D expenditure was incurred by R&D institutions located in the States of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

  • Industiral sector spent Rs. 1804.90 crores on R&D activities during 1994-95. The number of R&D units involved were 1053 in the private sector and 171 in the public/joint sector besides 151 Scientific and Industiral Research Organisations (SIRO) units.

  • Industry spent 0.60% of their sales turnover on R&D in 1994-95.

  • The Extramural R&D support increased from Rs. 104.51 crores in 1992-93 to Rs. 131.34 crores in 1994-95. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) were the two agencies playing a major role in Extramural R&D funding.

  • Academic sector received 65.3% of the total Extramural R&D support during 1994-45.

  • Plan allocation for S&T increased from Rs. 142 crores in the Fourth plan 1969-74) to Rs. 11,765 crores during the Eighth plan (1992-97). During the Eighth plan (1992-97), the share of S&T plan outlay in the total public sector plan outlay was 2.2%.

  • India's per capital R&D expenditure was US($) 2.39 during 1994-95.

  • q As on 1st April, 1994, nearly 3.14 lakh personnel were employed in the R&D units of public and private sector industires. 36.4% were performing R&D activities, 31.4% were performing auxiliary activities and rest 32.2% were providing administrative and non-technical support.

  • q There were 10,505 women directly engaged in R&D activities.

  • q India had 6.91 scientists, engineers and technicians (SET) per thousand population during 1996. Only 0.23 SET per thousand population were employed in R&D during 1994.

  • q Doctorates in pure science form 75.3% of the total 4,655 S&T doctorates produced by the educational system in the country during 1993-94.

  • q Patents sealed in the year 1993-94 was 1,746 and out of which 442 were sealed by Indian citizens. This forms one-fourth of the total patents sealed in India. The maximum number of applications filed by Indian were from the State of Maharashtra with a percentage share of 30.2%. United States of America topped the list of applications for patents filed in India by foreign countries with a share of 43.6%

  • q There were 204 universitites/deemed universities, 10 institutions of national importance and 8,613 colleges during 1994-95 imparting higher education in the country.

- Research & Development Statistics, 1994-95, Sept. 1996