Low government postdoc funding fuels India's research brain drain

India's gross expenditure on R&D has stagnated at 0.64–0.65% of GDP for over two decades, with the government funding only 2,500 postdoc positions and supporting approximately 262 full-time researchers per million people.

While Ph.D. enrollment in India surged by 70% over four years to 3.44 lakh in 2023-24, the number of awarded degrees slipped from 38,986 in 2019-20 to 32,588 in 2021-22.

Public R&D funding remains lopsided, with IITs capturing over 80% of major competitive grants across extramural projects while state universities, enrolling over 85% of students, compete for less than 10%.