Society
Sonam Wangchuk and the Long Story of Starving for a Cause
Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike has reignited debate over fasting as political protest, tracing a tradition from ancient Ireland and Gandhi to modern India.
Sonam Wangchuk hunger strike became one of India’s defining protests of 2026, but its significance extends far beyond a single political moment. This feature journeys through centuries of hunger strikes—from ancient Ireland to Gandhi and modern India—to understand why the human body continues to be used as the ultimate instrument of democratic dissent.
Sonam Wangchuk gave up food at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in June 2026, protesting more than just another exam paper leak controversy. The fast was a response to a crisis that had shattered the confidence of millions of Indian students, and it also brought back one of the oldest and most ethically disturbing forms of political protest: the hunger strike. For 26 days, the 59-year-old engineer, school reformer, and climate innovator made his own body a place of protest. The simple demand: India’s education minister should resign after multiple exam paper leaks put countless academic futures at risk. But the outcome was not a quiet one. Days went by, supporters gathered round him, political leaders begged him to end the protest, and eventually Delhi Police physically removed him from the protest site and took him to hospital, acting on Delhi High Court orders issued on medical advice. Organisers said it was done against his will; police said it was necessary for his safety. Either way, the decision was taken out of his hands.
The movement did not end with him. In the days after his removal, police used tear gas to disperse students marching toward Parliament, several protesters were injured, and public anger only hardened. On 25 July, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced his resignation, writing that he was “pained to see the events of the past 10 days.” The Cockroach Janta Party, the youth movement that had organised the sit-in, declared its demands met and called off the protest. Wangchuk had set the demand in motion and paid the heaviest personal cost for it, but the concession itself came four days after he had already been carried out of the square — a reminder that a hunger strike’s power often lies less in the faster’s endurance than in what it makes everyone else unable to look away from. As with previous hunger strikes, the political result was only half the story. The act itself launched a national conversation that routine petitions, speeches, and marches had failed to keep alive.
The Family Legacy Behind Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike
For Wangchuk, fasting has become a regular tool of his political resistance, and not always a peaceful one in its consequences. Two years earlier, he had survived for twenty-one days without food in the freezing temperatures of Leh, demanding constitutional safeguards for Ladakh through inclusion in the Sixth Schedule and a renewed dialogue on statehood. He fasted again that October. Then, in September 2025, he began another hunger strike in Leh over the same demand — one that ended very differently from the others. Days into the fast, clashes broke out elsewhere in the city; buildings and police vehicles were burned, and four people were killed.
The federal government said Wangchuk’s rhetoric had contributed to the violence and detained him without trial under India’s National Security Act, a law that permits custody for up to a year without formal charge. He spent nearly six months in a jail more than a thousand kilometres from home before the detention was revoked in March 2026. Wangchuk denied inciting the violence and asked for an independent inquiry into the deaths; his wife challenged the detention before the Supreme Court, arguing it relied on complaints that predated the unrest. The matter remains legally unresolved.
The topics have shifted, from environmental governance to educational reform, but the approach has remained remarkably consistent. Each fast is a statement of the same principle: that when the institutions won’t listen, voluntary suffering can make society listen. What the September 2025 episode adds, uncomfortably, is a reminder that the state can respond to that suffering with force rather than dialogue — and that the person fasting bears that risk alone. Sonam Wangchuk’s conviction is rooted far beyond himself.
A Hunger-Torn Legacy
Long before Sonam became an internationally renowned innovator, his father Sonam Wangyal had already used fasting as a political tool. Wangyal, a prominent leader in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, fought for Scheduled Tribe status and constitutional protections for Ladakh’s tribal communities. He, like his son, came to see that traditional political negotiations often didn’t work. In 1984, his hunger strike drew the personal intervention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who travelled to Leh, met him, and persuaded him to end the fast with an assurance that the demand would be addressed. The image is still powerfully significant. It represents not only the moral force that fasting can sometimes generate but also an older political culture in which governments felt it necessary to publicly respond when citizens are willing to risk their own lives for a public cause.
Wangchuk usually describes his own movement as his father’s unfinished business. Though the constitutional demands may have been different over the years, the fundamental fight for recognition, dignity, and political voice has persisted through generations. And that continuity is an unnerving concern as well. Is the hunger strike political success or democratic failure if every generation has to use the same tactic for the same recognition?
Ancient Form of Protest
The hunger strike is often linked to Gandhi or modern India, but its roots go far deeper. Troscadh, a practice acknowledged by early Irish legal traditions, was in place centuries before constitutional democracies. If a person felt that they had been wronged, they could fast outside the offender’s house. The aim was not violence or coercion in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, it used public shaming. There was considerable social stigma associated with allowing another person to suffer openly at one’s doorstep, often demanding settlement if legal procedures failed. The premise was simple and deceptively so.
A person with little institutional power was able to turn private suffering into public accountability. With time, this moral reasoning grew to a wide range of political circumstances. Marion Wallace Dunlop was a British suffragette who refused to eat after being jailed for campaigning for women’s right to vote. Her protest inspired dozens of other activists, eventually prompting British officials to resort to force-feeding, a barbaric procedure that drew more sympathy for the suffrage cause than imprisonment itself. Terence MacSwiney, an Irish republican leader, died in British custody after a 74-day hunger strike. His death reverberated around the world and spurred international support for Irish independence. Six decades later, Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners would make the same sacrifice inside the Maze Prison, turning the prison walls into one of the most important political battlegrounds of twentieth-century Northern Ireland.
In India, fasting has traditionally been a form of resistance. Jatin Das, who was jailed with Bhagat Singh, died in Lahore Central Jail after fasting for 63 days to protest the treatment of political prisoners under British rule. His funeral attracted massive crowds all over northern India, transforming a private act of suffering into a public expression of anti-colonial sentiment. These incidents, split by country and generation, reveal a startling connectedness. Hunger strikes rarely succeed, because governments don’t suddenly develop empathy. They work because visible suffering raises the political cost of staying apathetic. No one understands this dynamic better than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Gandhi never used fasting to wring concessions from his opponents. It was an exhibition of satyagraha — the search for truth through self-discipline and self-suffering rather than through violence against others. For Gandhi, voluntary suffering was a moral appeal not just to rulers but to society, whether to oppose communal violence, caste discrimination, or to seek reconciliation after Partition. The protester did not seek to defeat an opponent in his worldview. Instead, they wanted to awaken the conscience of all. This moral insight into political resistance would have an immense impact on later movements in India and elsewhere. But the hunger strike is not only a historical custom. It also surfaces long-standing questions about the connection between power, the human body, and democratic accountability — questions that reverberate every time a protester refuses to eat in the name of justice.
When Democracy Stops Listening
Hunger strikes continue because they occupy a special niche in democratic politics: they are not violent acts or ordinary expressions of discontent but moral appeals that force communities to confront hard questions. They demonstrate the limits of institutional responses by transforming the human body into the ultimate vehicle of political communication. This method has stood the test of time, from the doorsteps of ancient Ireland to Gandhi’s satyagraha, from Jatin Das’s martyrdom to Sonam Wangchuk’s repeated fasts, not for its ability to bring political victory but for its ability to expose the moral price of official indifference. Its effectiveness has always been hit or miss. Hunger strikes have sometimes changed laws and institutions and sometimes brought only silence, jail, or death — in the space of a single year, Wangchuk’s own record now contains all three: a minister’s resignation, and, five months earlier, a detention without trial. Even if they don’t succeed in forcing instant policy change, they often succeed in changing public perception and reminding voters that democracy is as much about listening as it is about governance.
Wangchuk’s strikes raise a question that extends beyond Ladakh or exam reforms: why do citizens in the world’s largest democracy still believe the best way to be heard is by starving themselves? A healthy democracy has no business asking the people to risk their lives before their grievances are rectified. If peaceful self-sacrifice remains one of the most powerful forms of political expression, the real problem is not with those who fast, but with the institutions that make them feel they have no choice.
About the authors:
Pratyusha Pan is an English literature researcher whose work explores memory, history, and political thought.
Anusreeta Dutta is a columnist and climate researcher with experience in political research analysis, ESG research, and energy policy.
Society
Where Time Stands Still for Science: Inside Teylers, the Netherlands’ Oldest Museum
Explore Teylers Museum, the Netherlands’ oldest museum, where 18th-century science, fossils, physics and Enlightenment history remain remarkably preserved.
Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands’ oldest museum, offers a rare journey through 250 years of science, from giant fossils and early physics to its historic Oval Room.
As I walked along the peaceful banks of the Spaarne River in Haarlem, a historic Dutch city located just fifteen minutes by train from Amsterdam, an elegant neoclassical facade caught my eye. To a casual passerby, the grand entrance might look like just another historic manor. Stepping through its heavy doors, I felt like I had walked right into another century. This is the Teylers Museum, the oldest museum in the Netherlands, founded in 1778.
At a time when science and art were seen as sister disciplines rather than opposing worlds, Pieter Teyler van der Hulst, a wealthy cloth merchant and banker, decided to do something extraordinary. Inspired by Enlightenment ideals that people should discover the world independently through reason and hands-on investigation, he left his immense fortune to establish a public center for knowledge. Teylers Museum was designed not as a dusty storehouse for old relics, but as a living “temple of the muses.” It became a welcoming space where researchers, students, and everyday curious visitors could gather under one roof to witness live physics experiments, study fossilized secrets of the Earth, and admire master drawings.
The Heart of the Enlightenment
Inside the Oval Room Stepping into the museum’s historic core, the Oval Room, felt like walking directly into an eighteenth century laboratory. Completed in 1784, this double-tiered hall features carved wooden showcases, brass scientific instruments, and a balcony library filled with leather bound encyclopedias, all bathed in soft natural light flowing through an ornate ceiling skylight.
In the late 1700s, this room served as a high tech science hub. Martinus van Marum, the museum’s legendary first director, used the space to host public demonstrations that fascinated scholars and visitors alike. Van Marum firmly believed that science needed to be seen to be truly understood. To explore the mysterious nature of electricity, he commissioned John Cuthbertson in 1784 to build the largest electrostatic generator in the world.
From giant electrostatic machines and rare fossils to Hendrik Lorentz’s physics cabinet, Teylers Museum preserves the history of science in a remarkably intimate setting.
Equipped with two massive glass discs over five feet in diameter, Van Marum’s generator could produce sparks over two feet long, generating artificial lightning that left audiences completely amazed. As I stood before this colossal machine, I couldn’t help but think back to Van Marum’s original notes from his high voltage trials. He noticed that these massive electrical discharges left behind a distinct, sharp smell, an observation that quietly laid crucial groundwork for the later discovery of ozone gas.
Fossils, Physics, and the Foundations of Modern Science
Moving beyond the Oval Room led me into the scientific galleries, where cabinet after cabinet reveals the real origins of modern paleontology and physics. Long before Charles Darwin published his theories on evolution, early naturalists were struggling to make sense of prehistoric remains.
In 1802, Van Marum purchased a famous fossil, originally unearthed in Öhningen in southern Germany, known at the time as “Homo diluvii testis”, or “the witness of the Flood.” Theologians of the era believed it to be the skeletal remains of a human who perished in Biblical waters. Years later, French naturalist Georges Cuvier examined the specimen and identified it as the fossilized giant salamander ‘Andrias scheuchzeri’. That discovery helped overturn centuries of religious assumptions, proving that entire species could actually become extinct over time.
Teylers Museum also houses one of the rare specimens of Archaeopteryx, the famous primeval bird fossil that provided the crucial missing link between feathered dinosaurs and modern birds. Walking past these display cases felt like watching the early building blocks of science come together.
The museum’s dedication to physics continued well beyond the 18th century. In 1910, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Hendrik Lorentz was appointed Curator of Teylers Physics Cabinet. Lorentz, whose mathematical equations laid the groundwork for Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, conducted experiments on electromagnetism, optics, and atomic physics within these very walls for nearly two decades. When Einstein visited his friend Lorentz in Haarlem, he described the city and its scientific atmosphere as a sanctuary of pure thought.
A Center for Curiosity
Dutch Museum Culture Across Generations Exploring the galleries, I was repeatedly struck by an aspect of the experience that feels deeply rooted in Dutch culture. In the Netherlands, museums are rarely treated as rigid, solemn monuments reserved only for academics. Instead, they are active, community centered gathering places designed to spark curiosity across every stage of life.
Around me, multi-generational discovery was happening in real time. I watched a young child look wide-eyed at a display of polished mineral specimens, pointing out bright colors to a grandparent who was patiently explaining how crystals form. A few yards away, a group of students stood engrossed near a collection of early optical instruments, casually debating how light bends through glass lenses.
This spirit of accessibility gives Dutch museum culture its vitality. From toddlers interacting with physical phenomena to lifelong learners examining centuries old manuscripts, people of all ages come together to ask questions and explore. Teylers Museum reflects this philosophy naturally. It doesn’t feel like a dusty home for old artifacts, but a place where centuries old ideas still inspire people today.
Timeless Wonder in a Physical World
What makes Teylers Museum stand out today is its complete preservation. While modern science centers rely heavily on interactive touchscreens and digital simulations, Teylers offers something far rarer: authentic, untouched history. The brass dials of the barometers, the hand blown vacuum tubes, the polished mahogany cases, and the handwritten labels remain virtually untouched, arranged exactly as they were over two centuries ago.
Standing among these collections, the experience feels less like viewing a static display and more like walking into a researcher’s active workplace, as if the scientists have merely stepped out for a short break.
As I walked out into the quiet streets of Haarlem, I couldn’t help but feel that the real magic of the place was not just in its old collection. It was in the reminder that science is not about having all the answers, but about never losing the urge to keep looking.
Society
Why Anaemia Remains a Persistent Problem Among India’s Adolescent Girls
Nearly 59% of Indian girls aged 15–19 are anaemic, with the burden far higher than among boys. Despite years of supplementation and screening programmes, anaemia persists, pointing to gaps in diet, adherence, diagnosis and follow-up.
India has updated its national strategy to tackle anaemia, with the latest Anaemia Mukt Bharat operational guidance continuing to emphasise supplementation, screening, treatment and addressing the underlying causes of the condition. The renewed focus comes against a persistent burden among adolescents, particularly girls.
The latest NFHS-5 data show that 59.1% of girls aged 15–19 were anaemic in 2019–21. The figure has changed little over the years: UNICEF’s analysis shows prevalence at 55.8% in 2005–06, 54.1% in 2015–16 and 59.1% in 2019–21.
UNICEF’s older data also illustrate the gender gap that about 56% of girls aged 15–19 were anaemic compared with 30% of boys.
Why are Adolescent Girls Vulnerable?
Adolescence is a period of rapid growth, increasing the body’s demand for nutrients. For girls, menstruation creates an additional source of blood and iron loss. Diet is another major factor. Iron-rich foods remain insufficient in many adolescent diets, particularly where households depend heavily on cereal-based staples. Income constraints, food availability and social and cultural practices can also influence what girls eat. But anaemia is not synonymous with iron deficiency.
Iron, folate and vitamin B12 deficiencies can contribute to anaemia, as can infections, blood loss and genetic conditions such as haemoglobin disorders. This makes diagnosis important: giving iron to every anaemic person does not necessarily address the underlying cause.
A 2024 study of 221 adolescent girls in rural Nagpur illustrates this complexity. 57% were anaemic and 84% had at least one micronutrient deficiency. Vitamin B12 deficiency was particularly common, while only 9% of the girls reported consuming government-recommended iron-folic acid tablets in the previous two weeks.
What is the Government Doing?
India’s Anaemia Mukt Bharat (AMB) strategy was launched in 2018 under the National Health Mission. It follows a life-cycle approach and combines six interventions: iron-folic acid supplementation, deworming, behaviour-change communication, testing and treatment, fortified foods, and action against non-nutritional causes such as malaria and haemoglobinopathies.
For adolescents, weekly iron-folic acid supplementation is a central intervention. India has expanded this into one of the world’s largest universal adolescent anaemia-control programmes, targeting 116 million adolescent girls and boys.
The challenge, therefore, is no longer simply whether India has an anaemia programme. It is whether interventions reach adolescents consistently, whether they are followed, and whether persistent anaemia is properly diagnosed and treated.
What Does the Evidence Say Works?
Indian research suggests that supplementation can work when delivery and adherence are strong. A large-scale programme evaluation involving 150,700 adolescent girls in Uttar Pradesh found that weekly iron-folic acid supplementation, counselling and periodic deworming were associated with a reduction in anaemia prevalence from 73.3% to 25.4% over four years. The researchers reported compliance above 85%.
Other Indian trials have similarly found improvements in haemoglobin following iron-folic acid supplementation, while studies have also examined whether different dosing schedules and health education can improve outcomes.
These findings point towards an important lesson: the problem is not necessarily that iron supplementation does not work. Implementation, adherence, diet and correct diagnosis matter.
Prevention Needs More Than Iron Tablets
Preventing adolescent anaemia requires several measures to work together. Girls need access to diverse diets containing adequate iron and other micronutrients. IFA supplementation and deworming need to be delivered regularly, while schools and community health systems need to provide nutrition and menstrual-health information.
At the same time, adolescents who remain anaemic need haemoglobin testing and appropriate follow-up. Where anaemia persists despite supplementation, health workers need to look for other causes, including vitamin deficiencies, infections and haemoglobin disorders. This is particularly important for girls who are out of school and may not be reached through school-based delivery mechanisms. The evidence therefore points to a broader approach: better diets, consistent supplementation, infection control, screening, treatment and follow-up—not iron tablets alone.
India’s adolescent anaemia burden is significant not only because of the immediate effects of fatigue, reduced physical capacity and impaired development. Anaemia during adolescence can also carry consequences into adulthood and pregnancy, making adolescence an important window for intervention.
The question for India’s anaemia programme is consequently shifting from how many tablets are distributed to whether the right adolescents receive the right intervention, take it consistently and receive treatment for the actual cause of their anaemia.
Society
79 Years After Independence: Is India Investing Enough in Science and Technology?
India’s R&D spending remains below 1% of GDP despite rising research output and patents. Is the country investing enough to achieve technological independence by 2047?
India’s research and development (R & D) spending has more than doubled in absolute terms, but R&D intensity remains below 1% of GDP. As India approaches 2047, the bigger question is whether its investment in science is sufficient to build the technologies and industries needed for technological independence.
When India became independent in 1947, the country had only 17 universities and 636 colleges serving about 2.38 lakh students. Literacy was around 14%. Nearly eight decades later, India has built a vastly larger education and research system. The country had 1,168 universities, 45,473 colleges and 12,002 standalone higher-education institutions in 2021–22, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education.
But as India looks towards its centenary of Independence in 2047, its scientific ambitions are running into a persistent question: is the country investing enough in research and development to build the technologies it will need? India’s R&D spending has increased sharply in absolute terms. Yet as a share of the economy, it has remained below 1%.
India’s R&D Spending Remains Below 1% of GDP
India’s gross expenditure on research and development rose from ₹60,197 crore in 2010–11 to ₹1,27,381 crore in 2020–21, according to the Department of Science and Technology. However, R&D expenditure as a share of GDP was 0.64% in 2020–21. The corresponding figure was 0.66% in both 2018–19 and 2019–20.
This means that while India’s research spending more than doubled over the decade, R&D intensity remained at roughly two-thirds of 1% of GDP. The latest detailed official figure available for India is therefore 0.64% for 2020–21. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2025 uses an R&D intensity figure of 0.65%, based on 2020 data. One of the most commonly used measures of a country’s research effort is R&D intensity—the amount a country spends on research and development as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP). It allows researchers to compare the relative priority given to R&D across economies of very different sizes.
There is currently no single internationally comparable R&D figure for every country for 2026. UNESCO’s new global R&D data collection is still underway, with the resulting data scheduled for release in November 2026.
Government Still Funds the Larger Share
The issue is not only how much India spends on R&D, but who pays for it. Government accounted for 59.2% of India’s gross expenditure on R&D in 2020–21, while business enterprises accounted for 40.8%, according to DST data.
The figures point to India’s continuing dependence on public funding for research. That becomes significant as research moves into areas such as semiconductors, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, advanced materials and clean energy. These fields can require expensive infrastructure, specialised equipment and long development cycles before research produces commercially viable technologies.
Increasing private-sector participation is therefore likely to be as important as increasing the overall R&D budget.
India is Producing More Patents and Research
Despite its relatively low R&D intensity, India has become a significant contributor to global research and innovation. The latest Nature Index data, covering April 2025 to March 2026, records 3,565 research articles from India in the journals tracked by the index.
Patent activity has also grown rapidly. Indian applicants filed 76,470 patent applications worldwide in 2024, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. This was a 19.2% increase over 2023 and placed India sixth among origins for worldwide patent applications.
The growth marks the sixth consecutive year of double-digit growth in patent applications from India-based applicants, according to WIPO. But patent filings do not necessarily mean that inventions reach the market.
A patent can protect an invention without it becoming a commercially manufactured product. For research to generate wider economic value, it has to move through several stages—from discovery to patent, prototype, product and eventually large-scale deployment. That transition remains one of the important challenges for India’s innovation ecosystem.
India Ranks Higher on Innovation Than Its R&D Spending Suggests
India’s relatively low R&D intensity has not prevented it from performing strongly on broader measures of innovation. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2025 ranked India 38th among 139 economies. India was also ranked first among lower-middle-income economies and first in Central and Southern Asia.
WIPO identifies India as an innovation overperformer, citing strengths including ICT services exports, venture-capital activity and the country’s ability to translate scientific knowledge into commercial impact. The contrast is significant.
India is generating considerable innovation despite spending a relatively small share of its GDP on R&D. But that does not necessarily mean that the existing level of investment is enough to support the next generation of technologies. As research becomes more capital-intensive, countries seeking technological leadership require sustained investment in infrastructure, specialised researchers and long-term development.
China Spends Four Times India’s Share
The gap becomes clearer when India is compared with major research economies. WIPO’s latest internationally comparable estimates for 2024 put R&D intensity at 6.33% of GDP in Israel and 5.32% in South Korea. Japan and the United States were both at 3.45%, while Germany stood at 3.11%.
China’s R&D intensity reached 2.65%. By comparison, India’s latest available figure is about 0.65%. China therefore spends roughly four times India’s share of GDP on R&D. Other emerging economies also show different levels of research intensity. WIPO estimates Brazil at 1.15%, Thailand at 1.16%, Türkiye at 1.42%, Vietnam at 0.42%, the Philippines at 0.32% and Indonesia at 0.28%.
The figures are not all based on the same data year, making direct comparisons imperfect. However, the broad difference between India and the world’s leading research economies remains clear.
Government Changing The Funding Model
India has begun introducing policies aimed at expanding research funding and encouraging greater industry participation. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation was established through legislation in 2023, with a planned five-year outlay of ₹50,000 crore for 2023–28.
The foundation is intended to strengthen research across universities, colleges and research institutions and encourage collaboration between academia, industry and government.
In July 2025, the government also approved a ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Scheme. The scheme is intended to encourage private-sector investment in high-risk and high-impact R&D, particularly in strategic and emerging areas.
The initiatives reflect an attempt to address a longstanding problem: India’s research system needs greater private-sector participation if overall R&D investment is to rise substantially.
What Would Higher R&D Spending Change?
There is no fixed relationship between R&D spending and the number of patents, papers or technologies a country will produce. Reaching a particular percentage of GDP cannot guarantee scientific breakthroughs.
But higher sustained investment could expand the country’s research capacity. Moving from 0.64% to 1% of GDP would represent an increase of about 56% relative to India’s current R&D intensity. It could provide greater resources for research grants, laboratory infrastructure, doctoral training and advanced equipment.
At 2%, India would move much closer to China’s current R&D intensity and have a substantially larger pool of resources for research in areas such as biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, AI, semiconductors and clean energy. At 3%, India would enter the range of several major research economies. The outcome, however, would depend on how effectively that money is used.
From Research Papers to Technologies
For India, the next phase of science policy may therefore need to focus as much on the movement of research into the economy as on increasing research output. Universities need stronger research infrastructure and stable funding. Public laboratories need effective technology-transfer mechanisms. Companies need stronger incentives to conduct R&D domestically. Researchers need access to advanced equipment and long-term funding.
Success could also be measured through indicators beyond publications and patents: technologies licensed to companies, university spin-offs, industry-funded research, prototypes entering production and revenue generated from publicly supported research. This is particularly important for technologies that could shape India’s economic future.
A semiconductor process developed in an Indian laboratory, a new pharmaceutical platform, an energy-storage technology or an agricultural innovation can have an economic impact far beyond the research paper that first describes it. At the same time, basic research cannot be judged only by immediate commercial returns. Some of the technologies that eventually transform economies begin as discoveries with no obvious market.
India therefore faces a two-part challenge: expand research that pushes scientific boundaries while building the institutions and industrial capacity needed to convert discoveries into technologies.
The Science Challenge India Faces in 2047
The scientific challenge India faced in 1947 was largely about building capacity. The country needed universities, laboratories, trained researchers and institutions capable of supporting scientific inquiry. Much of that foundation now exists.
The challenge approaching 2047 is different. India is no longer simply trying to establish a scientific system. It is trying to use that system to compete in technologies that will determine economic and strategic strength. That will require more sustained investment, greater participation from industry and stronger links between research institutions and the market.
As India approaches 100 years of Independence, the question is therefore no longer only how much science the country produces. It is whether India can invest enough in that science—and build the systems around it—to turn research into technologies, technologies into industries and scientific capability into technological independence.
Editor’s Note
Dipin Damodharan, Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, EdPublica
South Korea offers an instructive comparison. R&D intensity—the share of a country’s GDP devoted to research and development—is not, by itself, a guarantee of economic transformation. But South Korea’s experience shows what sustained investment can achieve when it is accompanied by strong university research, private-sector participation and technological development.
UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics reported that South Korea’s R&D expenditure had reached 4.03% of GDP in 2011, compared with 0.81% for India at the time. The private sector accounted for a substantial share of South Korea’s R&D expenditure, highlighting the importance of industry participation alongside public investment.
The lesson for India is therefore not simply to spend more. It is to build an ecosystem in which increased R&D funding translates into research capacity, technologies, companies and productive industries.
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