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Every Union Budget is more than a fiscal statement. It is a signal to markets, institutions, and citizens about the country’s strategic direction. Few budget choices reveal this more clearly than India’s approach to research and development (R&D).
For nearly five decades, India’s public R&D spending has followed a consistent instinct: preserve, stabilise, and incrementally improve what already exists. This approach has delivered scale and predictability. It has built respected scientific institutions, enabled landmark space and atomic energy missions, supported a globally competitive pharmaceutical industry, and underpinned India’s digital public infrastructure.
Yet, despite these achievements, India remains largely absent from the ranks of countries that create frontier technologies. We are strong adopters, integrators, and scalers of innovation—but far weaker at originating foundational technologies and high-value intellectual property.
A useful way to understand this pattern is through India’s own civilisational framework the Trimurti philosophy of Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver and Maheshwara, the transformer.
Judging by successive Union Budgets since the mid-1970s, India’s R&D ecosystem is unmistakably Vishnu-centric. We excel at continuity. We deploy mature technologies at scale. But we invest far less in Brahma-like creation are high-risk, long-horizon research that produces new platforms, materials, and scientific breakthroughs.
This imbalance is not philosophical alone. It is visible in the data.
India’s gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) has remained stuck around 0.6–0.7 per cent of GDP for years. By comparison, Israel spends over 6 per cent of GDP on R&D, South Korea more than 5 per cent, the United States around 3.4 per cent, Germany just over 3 per cent, and China approximately 2.5 per cent and rising. These countries are not merely spending more; they are spending with a different intent and design.
India’s R&D allocations in the Union Budget remain modest relative to total expenditure and fragmented across ministries and schemes. This fragmentation encourages incrementalism and discourages risk. As a result, Indian firms and public systems have become exceptionally good at deploying innovations developed elsewhere, whether in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, or biotechnology but less effective at creating them.
This is not a failure of talent. It is a failure of budget philosophy and institutional architecture.
Countries that lead in frontier innovation treat R&D as strategic capital, not routine expenditure. The United States anchors high-risk research in multi-decade programmes such as DARPA and ARPA-E, insulated from annual budget cycles. Germany’s Fraunhofer system tightly couples applied research with industry. China aligns R&D investment with long-term industrial strategy, sustaining high funding levels over decades.
Despite institutional differences, these systems share three traits. They tolerate failure. They commit capital over long horizons. And they organise R&D spending around national missions rather than fragmented schemes.
India’s recent Budgets signal an emerging recognition of this reality. The announcement of a INR 1 lakh crore financing pool to catalyse private-sector-led research, development and innovation, followed by an initial allocation to operationalise it, marks an important shift. The expansion of mission-mode initiatives and challenge-based funding mechanisms also points in the right direction.
But intent alone is not enough.
A Vishnu-dominant R&D budget sustains what exists. A Brahma-oriented one builds what does not yet exist. The difference lies not only in how much is spent, but in how spending is structured, governed, and sustained.
Equally important and often ignored is the role of Maheshwara:- transformation through reallocation. Without deliberate mechanisms to sunset outdated programmes, R&D budgets risk becoming repositories of legacy schemes. Resources get locked into past priorities, leaving limited fiscal space for emerging technologies.
Innovation leaders routinely prune or merge programmes that no longer serve strategic objectives. India’s R&D frameworks rarely do this decisively. Scheme rationalisation tends to be cautious and incremental, resulting in fiscal inertia.
If Atmanirbhar Bharat is to move beyond assembly-level self-reliance toward genuine intellectual sovereignty, the Union Budget must explicitly treat R&D as strategic national infrastructure.
This requires several shifts. India needs a credible medium-term glidepath to raise GERD to 1.2–1.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. Mission-mode programmes in frontier areas like quantum technologies, advanced materials, climate technologies, and next-generation manufacturing must be backed by 10–12 year funding horizons, even as annual appropriations continue.
Funding instruments must be designed to attract private risk capital (Patient Capital), not substitute for it, using co-investment and milestone-based disbursement (or Serial VC funding). A formal mechanism to sunset and reallocate legacy R&D schemes is essential to free fiscal space for future bets. And government procurement must be used as a demand-side lever to help indigenous technologies scale from lab to market.
India does not need to abandon Vishnu. Maintenance and scale are national strengths. But without Brahma, India risks remaining the world’s most capable implementer of other people’s breakthroughs. Without Maheshwara, it risks carrying an expanding portfolio of legacy programmes that crowd out future innovation.
This Budget season presents a clear choice: continue refining a system optimised for preservation, or consciously redesign it for creation. The latter is harder and riskier. But it is the only path by which India can move from technological dependence to intellectual sovereignty.
The time has come to move deliberately, structurally, and philosophically from Sthiti to Srishti.
This article first appeared in The Economic Times on 31 January 2026.
