According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index 2018, India has been ranked 8th among the 112 participating countries in the quality of public and private research institutes.
India scored just 0.42 out of 5 in the quality of research institutions index. USA tops the list with a score of 3.88. The List for the Top 8 ranking countries with their scores are given below:
- United States- 3.88
- China- 2.38
- France- 1.34
- Germany- 0.89
- United Kingdom- 0.63
- Spain- 0.54
- Japan- 0.52
- India- 0.42
It was due to the quality of research in India that made it to the Top 10 also because other countries that participated were poor for producing quality research.
According to the study on Critical Analysis of the UGC- approved list of journals published in Current Science, it was found that 88% of the list of journals approved by University Grants Commission was of ‘low quality’, due to lack of investments on research and development (R&D). It was found that India spends just 0.62 percent of GDP on research, according to R&D Data Release 2018 by UNESCO Institute for Statistics. France spends 2.25 percent of its GDP on research, and the United States, 2.74 percent.
Looking at the figures, it was found that the investments that India had been spending is found to be increasing but the GDP Percentage has been declining. The reason for it is lack of resources that are required for conducting high-quality researches.
In 2013, the government launched Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan or the National Higher Education Mission to enhance the number of researchers in higher education. Two years later, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was launched to rank universities and institutes in various parameters, including research.
While that was happening, the government also announced the ‘Institutes of Eminence (IoE)’ scheme, where it decided to grant 20 institutes the tag of ‘Institute of Eminence’ for helping them become world-class universities – out of which six have already been announced and more than a dozen are waiting for the approval.
According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2017, it stated that 57% of the country’s youth aging between 14-18 years were not able to solve basic division problems.
India is in a desperate need to support researches and development within the country, for keeping its rank intact, and should bring in laws to check the loopholes that exist in the laws and monitor the research quality in the country.
Therefore, India needs to establish measures for enhancing its quality of research at the ground-level.