India’s Deep-Tech Future Begins With Basic Science: Raghu Mahajan

When microbiologist Thomas Brock became fascinated by organisms thriving in the near-boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park in the US, he could not have imagined that Thermus aquaticus, a bacterium he later isolated with Hudson Freeze, would one day provide the crucial ingredient that made polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology fast and inexpensive.  

PCR is a technology that makes millions of copies of a targeted segment of DNA and is now widely used in medical diagnostics, genetic testing and forensic science. That crucial ingredient was Taq polymerase, a heat-resistant enzyme isolated from Thermus aquaticus that survives the heating cycles required by PCR. Research driven simply by curiosity about life in extreme conditions thus helped produce one of today’s most consequential technologies.

This story illustrates why societies must invest in curiosity-driven basic research without requiring promises of immediate technological application: deep ideas often arise from childlike curiosity, coupled with hard work, persistence and attention to detail.

Consider theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. When he studied how light interacts with atoms, the mathematics required him to posit a previously unknown process—stimulated emission. This purely theoretical deduction, with no foreseeable practical application, supplied the physical principle underlying laser technology.

More poetically still, when Einstein developed the theories of special and general relativity to address philosophical puzzles about space, time and gravity, he could not have known that, a century later, the global positioning system (GPS) would depend on both theories to function at the desired accuracy.

That lesson applies to space technology more broadly: its achievements rest on generations of basic research in gravitation, orbital mechanics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, plasma physics, materials science and numerous other fields.

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers perhaps the most dramatic contemporary warning against judging research by its immediate economic returns. The field grew from curiosity about memory, learning, neuroscience and the collective behaviour of physical systems. 

The field dates to 1956, but its path to the centre of today’s economy was interrupted by prolonged periods of shrinking funding and institutional interest—the so-called “AI winters”—during which neural networks became deeply unfashionable.

Yet, researchers such as John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, continued their fundamental work; at the time, its eventual economic value was neither apparent nor the point of the inquiry. Combined later with vast computing power and large datasets, this work helped lay the foundations of generative AI.

Markets excel at scaling a technology once its value becomes visible but are far less capable of sustaining an unfashionable idea through decades of uncertainty.

Discovery to Application

The challenge for public policy is therefore to sustain the long and uncertain path from discovery to application. A few months ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that “basic research is the origin of the entire scientific system” and called for a gradual increase in the share of research funding. China’s spending pattern reflects the same priority: expenditure on basic research rose by 11.1% in 2025 and was 89.4% higher in 2025 than in 2020.

A July 2026 report of the Department of Science and Technology puts India's total R&D expenditure in 2023–24 at 0.84% of GDP. Although a welcome recovery from 0.64% in 2020–21, it's not a new high as 0.84% was also recorded in 2008–09.

In the comparable calendar year 2023, China spent 2.58% of its GDP on R&D—just over three times India’s share. The difference was greater still: on a purchasing-power-parity basis, China spent $915.5bn, compared with India’s $120.6bn—approximately 7.6 times as much.

China’s emphasis on basic science also extends to scientific exchange. For instance, since 2023, Beijing has hosted the International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS), with the municipal government of Beijing among its principal funders. It brings together roughly 1,000 mathematicians, physicists and theoretical computer scientists, around 30% from abroad. Its international character is as important as its scale: basic science thrives on open inquiry, free exchange and the absence of intellectual borders.

India, by contrast, requires organisers of conferences involving foreign participants to seek political clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs for individual foreign delegates. Any necessary screening of individual visitors would ordinarily be handled through existing immigration and security systems.This additional layer of bureaucracy discourages scientists from organising international meetings in India.

Indeed, the bureaucratic instinct to constrain rather than enable research remains powerful. In 2025, government research grants began moving to the Treasury Single Account (TSA)-Hybrid model administered through the Public Financial Management System (PFMS).

Under this model, funding agencies retain control over grant releases and make payments against claims submitted by institutions through PFMS. Host institutions remain responsible for procurement and for maintaining audited accounts, but routine expenditure now passes through an additional layer of central processing.

Another example came in July 2025, when the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) stipulated that domestic conference travel by PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, when funded from TIFR-administered resources, would be reimbursed only up to the AC two-tier railway fare rather than economy airfare.  

Though institutional rather than national, the rule captures a broader contradiction: India aspires to internationally competitive science while making routine participation in scientific life needlessly difficult. 

Signs of Progress

Despite these shortcomings, some recent developments offer grounds for optimism. Procurement reforms from June 2025 have given directors and vice-chancellors of specified institutions greater freedom to purchase scientific equipment outside the Government e-Marketplace and have raised several procurement thresholds.

This is meaningful but still partial progress: the relaxations apply only to research-related purchases by designated institutions, vest discretion in institutional heads rather than individual researchers, and leave most existing procurement rules in place.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation has also sought both to engage more actively with researchers and institutions and to mobilise greater private-sector investment in research. 

Beyond government, growing private philanthropic support for basic science suggests a realisation that India cannot foster world-class deep-tech companies without a vibrant ecosystem of fundamental research.

Notable recent examples include CALIBRE—the Centre for Artificial Learning and Intelligence for Biological Research and Education—hosted jointly at ICTS and NCBS in Bengaluru; the Lodha Mathematical Sciences Institute and Lodha Theoretical Physics Institute in Mumbai; and the Murty Science Fellowship for early-career researchers.

It is encouraging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised AI, quantum technologies, space and robotics in this year’s Independence Day address. But leadership in these fields cannot be secured merely by funding near-term applications and commercial deployment; it requires sustained investment in basic science, a welcoming environment for international scientific exchange and an administrative culture that enables rather than obstructs researchers—the conditions under which tomorrow’s transformative technologies will emerge.

The writer is assistant professor, physics, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru