The Department of Science and Technology has announced that India’s ‘gross expenditure on R&D’ (GERD) has increased nearly four times between 2013-14 and 2025-26, from ₹79,356 crore to about ₹3,13,007 crore.The picture, however, is less rosy if you look at GERD as a percentage of GDP — or R&D intensity. GERD was equivalent to about 0.71 per cent of GDP in 2013-14. The ratio fell to 0.64 per cent in 2020-21, during the Covid-19 pandemic shock, but subsequently recovered to 0.84 per cent in 2023-24. The government projects it at 0.87 per cent in 2024-25 and 0.9 per cent in 2025-26.After more than a decade of strong economic growth, India remains below 1 per cent of GDP on R&D spending.Calculations show that if the GERD had grown at the same pace as GDP, then it would have been less by ₹44,000 crore in real terms over a 12-year period.Critics and backersThe message from these numbers is clear: The country is spending much more on research, but research has not become dramatically more important relative to the economy. Further, if you take away inflation, the ‘nearly four times’ falls to about 2.5 times. The government’s ₹3.13 lakh crore GERD estimate for 2025-26 is equivalent to roughly ₹2 lakh crore, based on 2013-14 prices, depending on the deflator used.These numbers provide ammunition to both critics and backers of the government. While the critics may say that the needle has moved just a little, the backers can counter that R&D spends have indeed outpaced economic growth.The private sector has often been criticised for not doing enough R&D, leaving the government to do much of the heavy lifting, but this trend seems to be reversing.“A notable trend in recent years has been the growing role of private sector industry in India’s R&D ecosystem. The share of private industry in GERD increased significantly from 32.2 per cent in 2020-21 to 45.2 per cent in 2023–24, highlighting stronger private industry participation and investment in research, innovation and technological development in recent years,” says the DST document.Defence-heavyAnother remarkable feature is that 76 per cent of the government’s R&D spend came from only 12 Central scientific agencies. DRDO accounted for a third, followed by the space (15 per cent) and atomic energy (14.4 per cent) sectors.Published on August 24, 2026