Just recently, the MHRD launched two web portals intending to serve to promote research and innovation in the country. One of the schemes is specifically aimed to promote the Social Science Research (SSR) culture. Social sciences (SS) primarily deal with the study of society and the relationship among individuals within society. The proposal to fund SSR is thus a realization that this subject dealing with large-scale cultural and human challenges of society will helps as a guide to best organise ourselves to address the increasing societal problems.
The issue under discussion is about the ‘Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration’ (SPARC) and the scheme for SSR christened as the ‘Impactful Policy Research in Social Sciences’ (IMPRESS). The former scheme will facilitate research collaboration among Indian and foreign academia while the second will fund research projects in the areas of social sciences in India. Both schemes are expected to start by January next year.
The SPARC aims to encourage research collaborations between Indian universities and some of the leading universities of the world. Under this around 600 joint research proposals will be awarded for 2 years and Rs. 418 crores have been allotted for it. The funding for projects would be provided under three categories; below 50 lakhs, below 75 lakhs, and below 1 crore. The quality benchmark for SPARC is that only such Indian institutes can apply which are in top 100 NIRF ranking or top 100 NIRF subject ranking and for foreign universities the benchmark being to be in top QS ranking.
Each team funded under SPARC shall comprise of eight members, 2 faculty members each from the Foreign and the Indian University and 2 students each from both institutions each. SPARC aims to further the already launched GIAN initiative of the UGC which is an evolving scheme allowing participation of foreign faculty in Institutes as distinguished / adjunct / visiting faculty / or to participate in delivering short or semester-long courses.
The implementation of IMPRESS will offer offers multiple perspectives on society, informs social policy and supports us in holding our policy makers to account. As emerging economy like India will continue to face social, business and economic problems abound, the significance of SSRgets further enhanced to help provide workable solutions and its importance immeasurable and enlarging. According to a 15-year-long study carried out by ICSSR it was found that on the grounds India’s expenditure on SSR as ratio of the Union budget, or ratio of GDP, or per capita expenditure in comparison to BRICS countries is meagre in significant degree. It is in this context that the launch of IMPRESS would help identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on governance and society.
An interesting book on the subject of funding SSR by Sukhdeo Thorat and Samar Varma, published by the Oxford University Press in the 2017 present a strong case for designing a comprehensive national social science policy which can meaningfully strengthen and promote a research ecosystem for improved public policy-making in the country. This book addressed many issues like lack of funding, availability of data, infrastructure and quality of research output and among which, the funding issue has now been sufficiently addressed by both the schemes. The authors have revealed that India has a relatively weak SSR culture with a mere a 1.6% global share in the 16.6 lakh articles published in reputed journals worldwide in the period between the 2009-14 period while China, on the other hand had a share of 5 % in the same period among the 160 countries under study.
In another scholarly work by Ray, Parmeswaran, Agarwal along others, in the year 2016 and published in the IDEAS repository a precise and relevant index of quality of SSR in India which was constructed capturing its multiple dimensions important in the Indian context. The results show that Indian SSR contributes more to public debates and policy formulations than to plainly pushing the frontiers of knowledge for further research. The above two cited studies found that it is absolutely essential to increase research funding for social sciences to improve its quality. Secondly, these studies had also suggested that there has to be a concerted effort to encourage collaborations, especially international collaborations, in SSR in India.
The objective of IMPRESS is to identify and fund research proposals in social sciences with maximum impact on the governance and society. It is expected to fund 1500 projects and Rs. 414 crore has been allotted, which is Rs. 20-25 lakh rupees per project for 11 policy themes. This scheme is expected to run for four cycles and the quality benchmark is that only such universities which are under 12B schemes of UGC are eligible and each project shall conclude in 3 years to be monitored by the ICSSR.
The launch of two schemes seems to be introduced as per the conclusions of the two prominent studies cited above. It is expected that this initiatives would institutionalise a mechanism to encourage research culture in India. The rich research repository from the output of around total 2100 research projects to be funded under both these schemes will no doubt serve as a national benchmark and reference database for social sciences in India. The two schemes to promote, fund and encourage collaborative research, will most certainly go a long way in augmenting the quality of SSR in India.
