India likes to speak of a knowledge century, often referring to it as a ‘glorious’ past. However, on the ground the space for scientific research and quality teaching and learning environment, in general, is weathering away. Social sciences, particularly, has shrunk into the margin – a shadow of its promise. The problem here is not the lack of talent. It is the consequence of policy dormancy and improper implementation of educational policies, along with stagnant R&D investment, erratic support for social science institutions, mass vacancies in faculties positions, and widely practiced ad hocism and contractual appointment of teaching staff. Together these trends are corroding teaching and research quality as well as the international standing of Indian institutions and scholarship.
The recent publication of Ernest Aigner, Jacob Greenspon, and Dani Rodrik in World Development (2025) analysed the publication trajectories in the field of economics and offered a sobering reminder that the geography of knowledge is unequal as the geography of wealth. The United States (which constitutes only 16% of the global GDP) alone accounts for 65% of all research output in top-ten economics journals. In contrast, developing countries, constitute over 80% of the world’s population, are largely invisible in the global research publication. South Asia accounts for a mere fraction of global authorship, this imbalance has worsened over the last four decades.
Over the past decades, India’s investment in research and development has stagnated at around 0.6-0.7% of the GDP which is well below the global average of 1.8% and far behind emerging economies like South Korea (4.8%) and China (2.4%).
by Kishor K. Podh
03/12/2025