India’s most recent Five-Year Plan, the 12th Five-Year Plan, was approved by the National Development Council on December 27. Five-Year Plans, created, implemented and monitored by India’s Planning Commission, outline budget estimates for different agencies, as well as address areas and list initiatives that the government will prioritize for the next five years. The most recent Plan is effective 2012–2017. The Plan’s priorities of R&D, agriculture and water quality bode well for instrument and lab product demand.

The 12th Plan outlines three goals for Indian science: to bolster the country’s stance as a science leader, to use science to facilitate improvements in areas like food security, energy and the environment, and to establish global research centers within the country to enhance competitiveness. The Plan outlines a detailed science, technology and innovation policy, which also includes emphasis on R&D spending, human resources and collaborations.

A new approach to funding is one way the Plan aims to achieve its goals. The Plan indicates an effort to move away from a funding system of providing scientific agencies with set amounts of government research funds and toward a system based on specific projects. The Plan recommends the creation of a National Research Fund, under which research institutes would compete for government funding based on their proposals. The Plan also advocates in-depth assessments of current research programs.

Increasing R&D spending is a key strategy of the Plan. India’s R&D budget will receive a 60% boost to 1,204 billion rupees ($22.5 billion = INR 53.40 = $1). India aims to raise its share of R&D as a percentage of GDP from 0.9% in 2012 to 2% by 2017.

The Plan is focused on building and supporting research centers. National scientific agencies will receive INR 142,167 crore ($26.6 billion) in funding under the Plan, which is 142.2% more than they were allotted under the 11th Five-Year Plan. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) will receive a 98.8% increase of INR 17,896 crore ($3.3 billion).

The DSIR will set up inter-university centers under the Plan, which will focus on emerging areas such as biodiversity and genetic epidemiology; computer science and cyber security; cognitive sciences; and advanced materials, manufacturing and fabrication. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which is part of the DSIR, will establish 40 Cluster Innovation Centers. Several have already been initiated, such as a food processing cluster in Tamil Nadu and a life sciences cluster in Gujarat. The CSIR will also create 10 CSIR Outreach Centers, which will feature programs jointly developed by CSIR and other national agencies and will focus on geographic areas where CSIR does not currently operate. In addition, 12 Innovation Complexes will be built by the CSIR to foster translational research.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) will receive a 95.8% increase in funding to INR 21,596 crore ($4.4 billion) under the Plan. Its goals include improving science and technology infrastructure at 500 universities.

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) will fund new and existing research centers with its INR 11,804 crore ($2.4 billion) budget, an increase of 84.8%. Twenty-five centers of excellence in plant sciences, animal sciences, human biology and industrial research, as well as 10 centers for translational science and innovative research in medical schools and two centers for policy research in agriculture and health care biotechnology, will be established by the DBT. The DBT also aims to create 20 Inter-Institutional Centers to link basic science with translational R&D. DBT funding for three existing and two new bioclusters will provide resources such as incubators, common technology platforms, contract labs for small and medium-size enterprises, and research hospitals. Five national research centers will be established in bioinformatics and computational biology; marine and microbial biotechnology; biodesign; bioscience and bioengineering; chronic disease science and biotechnology; and infectious disease science and biotechnology.

Other focuses of the Plan are publications and human resources. The Plan aims to continue to increase India’s global share of research publications from 3% to 5% by the end of the Plan. India also aims to improve the quality of its scientific papers, as its share of the top 1% of global publications is 0.5%. One way in which the country intends to do this is by increasing its number of full-time researchers by 62% to 250,000 and R&D personnel in R&D centers by 10,000. The DST also plans to support 250 researchers from 10 institutions under the Solar Energy Research Initiative, as well as to award 1,000 overseas doctorate scholarships and 250 overseas post-doctorate fellowships. Providing fellowships will be a key strategy for the DBT as well, as it has pledged to establish 100 fellowships for scientists returning to India, 200 biomedical fellowships and 250 post-doctoral fellowships in the life sciences.

The Plan also indicates that India is focused on collaborations. The Plan encourages collaboration among Indian universities, private and public firms, research centers and science academies. A goal of the plan is to designate 10%–15% of public R&D spending to public-private partnerships. Open source R&D will also encourage collaborations. For example, the CSIR’s Distributed Organic Chemical Synthesis program will use open source innovation to expand on the country’s Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) scheme to include areas such as drug development and delivery. A goal of the initiative is to create a national repository of 400,000 small molecules by 2017. Another expansion of the OSDD scheme includes the Science 3.0 initiative, which will support open innovation and crowdsourcing among multiple institutions to identify issues and form solutions in areas like energy efficiency, materials use and waste generation. India will also expand research globally by establishing joint centers of excellence in Malaysia, Sweden and the US.

The Plan also emphasizes agriculture and water. Combined, these areas will receive INR 284,030 crore ($53.2 billion) under the Plan, a 143.7% increase. The budget for Agriculture and Allied Activities, defined as livestock, forestry and fisheries, will jump 121.87% to 134,636 crore ($25.2 billion). A key focus is the Sustainable Agriculture Mission, which will receive up to 15,000 crore ($2.8 billion). The Mission is geared toward helping agriculture better withstand climate change, including support for the development of stress-resistant crops and an increase in the productivity of rain-fed agriculture.

The Plan also lays out ways to improve water quality. In particular, the Plan identifies groundwater as an emerging crisis. As the Plan explains, the most recent public investment has been for surface water, despite groundwater becoming the main source of both drinking water and irrigation. Almost 60% of Indian districts have had inadequate water quality, supply or both. Groundwater surveys have revealed increasing levels of microbiological contamination. The Plan will support the Groundwater Management and Regulation program for groundwater and waste management, which will be a joint effort of government, research institutes, local agencies, civil society organizations and local communities and is an initiative of the Ministry of Water Resources, which has been designated INR 18,118 crore ($3.4 billion) under the Plan.