India’s post-Independence scientific enterprise was built on a paradox—it trusted scientists with autonomy, while embedding them in a state that prized control. For a generation, visionaries like Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar resolved this tension through personal authority and national purpose. Institutions moved fast in the past because scientific leaders were empowered to decide.
But that equilibrium has quietly collapsed now.
Over time, Indian science has been absorbed into a dense procedural architecture—committees, portals, financial heads, audit trails, tenders, compliance calendars. The result is not simply inconvenience but a structural transformation: Scientific judgement has been subordinated to administrative processes. Intellectual energy is increasingly converted into paperwork, and risk-taking is quietly penalised.
This shift is not anecdotal. In its 2022 self-study report submitted to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) acknowledges that administrative and financial procedures have become inflexible and burdensome, imposing an inordinate demand on faculty time and adversely affecting research.
Should research follow financial calendars?
India’s research funding problem is widely framed as scarcity, however, the deeper problem is rigidity.
Once the grants are sanctioned, utilisation is again constrained by narrowly defined heads, slow inter-head reappropriation, and delayed releases. Scientific research, on the other hand, is nonlinear. Breakthroughs do not respect financial calendars and experiments evolve, which can expand or contract teams. Sometimes, field/laboratory travels may increase, resulting in an unexpected spike of consumables.
When flexibility is denied, grants cease to be instruments of discovery and instead become compliance exercises. Principal investigators are forced to optimise for audit safety rather than scientific ambition.
The TIFR self-study report captures this diplomatically: “TIFR needs to liaise better with governmental funding agencies to obtain flexibility of funding and timely disbursement.”
Infrastructure bottlenecks as research constraints
Administrative rigidity is not limited to finances. It manifests physically, in infrastructure delays that directly cap research capacity.
The TIFR self-study report further notes that “[s]tudent numbers are limited by space limitations. Given TIFR’s infrastructure prowess and the scientific calibre of its faculty, the total number of students it trains is much less than what it could be (~ 750 students and 250 faculty).”
One hostel at the TIFR Colaba has been under construction for ages but is stuck in committee-level bureaucratic hurdles. Inadequate infrastructure limits doctoral intake, postdoctoral recruitment, and collaborative density. This directly results in less research outcomes and outputs.
If proper infrastructure were available, the self-study report states that “the total research output of TIFR could easily be doubled, and the total numbers of highly trained exceptional human resources TIFR contributes to the country could easily be enhanced.”
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The quiet suppression of scientific entrepreneurship
Perhaps the least discussed casualty of this ecosystem is entrepreneurship.
Global research institutions have accepted a simple truth that basic science and entrepreneurship are not enemies. In fact, they can be complements. Max Planck, MIT, Stanford, and Cambridge all maintain structured pathways for researchers to translate ideas into companies, without forcing them to resign first. Even Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) allow the inventor faculty member to be an entrepreneur.
But at the TIFR, entrepreneurship for faculty members is institutionally prohibited. External engagements, consulting, and commercialisation are governed by layered permissions and committee oversight. The absence of an internal incubation framework sends an unambiguous signal: Serious entrepreneurship is something to be pursued only after exiting the institution.
Patent data reflects this environment, as well as procedural discouragement. According to its self-study report, TIFR was granted only 15 patents in the five years preceding 2021—a strikingly low number for an institution of its stature. The patent-rewarding process reportedly takes six to eight months at the TIRF, whereas comparable systems abroad operate on far shorter timelines of two to three weeks. Patent filing has become administratively and legally burdensome rather than strategically encouraged.
The loss is not institutional but national. Deep-tech innovation does not emerge solely from start-up hubs and co-working spaces. It often emerges from laboratories where world-class science is encouraged by institutional confidence.
Restoring trust without abandoning accountability
India is no longer a resource-poor country protecting scarce resources. It is a civilisational state trying to reclaim intellectual and economic leadership. Our challenge is both corruption and over-correction. Systems built to prevent misuse have begun to prevent use altogether, leading the state to mistrust its own scientists more than global competitors do.
There is still a ray of hope. In June 2025, the Central Government acknowledged the Government eMarketplace procurement as a bottleneck for research, validating the previous concerns raised by India’s researchers, and allowed non-GeM procurement for specialised instruments.
What is required now is intelligent autonomy. Not deregulation without safeguards, but governance that distinguishes between routine expenditure and frontier science.
Time-bound approvals, deemed clearances in the absence of objections, longer grant horizons, flexible fund utilisation, fast-tracked IP licensing, and clear entrepreneurship encouragements are global norms and the TIFR is lacking in them.
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The IISc counterexample
A useful contrast comes from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. The IISc and the TIFR have many similarities. The IISc was also started with the Tata funds, was later taken under control by the government, and for decades, it too functioned primarily as a publication-driven, inward-looking research university.
Over the past fifteen years, however, the IISc has consciously restructured itself to promote translation and entrepreneurship. Dedicated technology transfer offices, formal startup policies for faculty, incubation centres such as the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) and NSRCEL, and structured IP management systems have transformed how research interfaces with industry.
IISc today routinely produces deep-tech startups in areas ranging from aerospace and materials to AI and medical devices. From late 2020 till date, at least 40 startups have emerged from the institute, shaping the country’s research and innovation. Among these startups, IISc faculty members are co-founders in more than half a dozen startups.
This has not happened because scientists suddenly became more innovative and productive. It happened because administrative pathways were simplified, risk was institutionally legitimised, and commercialisation was no longer seen as a sin for academicians.
The CSIR Paradox
At the other end of the spectrum lies the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), one of the world’s largest publicly funded research networks, comprising more than thirty national laboratories and thousands of scientists. Despite its size and budget, CSIR has struggled to produce globally competitive industrial platforms in critical sectors.
Multiple government reviews for the past two decades have flagged low levels of technology commercialisation and fragmented mission focus, and weak industry integration. Research output remains heavily skewed toward incremental publications and small-scale industry services rather than transformative technological systems.
The TIFR—and the other scientific institutions—have two ways ahead from this point. One, to continue having high bureaucratic inertia and low outputs for technology commercialisation, patents, and industry-adaptable solutions. Or two, to implement process changes, leave command-and-control governance structures behind and keep the institution up-to-date with our times.
Scientific leadership should understand that scientists should spend fewer hours proving compliance and more hours pursuing discovery. Great science deserves light administrative touch. When paperwork begins to compete with physics for a scientist’s time, the nation loses quietly, invisibly, and steadily.
(With inputs from noted TIFR scientists)
Harshil Mehta is a columnist and public policy consultant writing on socio-political and national issues, and international relations. He tweets @MehHarshil. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)