Module 2 - India: Focus on Biotechnology

Lessons Learned and Issues for Wider Applicability

The progress on biotechnology research and its initial results illustrate that:

• Research programs focused on key problems and subject to rigorous and transparent monitoring can yield important dividends.

• Building in-house competence through human resource development and physical infrastructure can result in rapid progress and quality research outputs.
  
  
• Competitive research grants, awarded through a transparent selection process and followed by good monitoring, evaluation, and impact/outcome assessment, are an effective mechanism for financing high-quality research, undertaken by multidisciplinary teams from a range of institutions.
  
  
• Competitive grants can be useful in providing research support to more young scientists and to female scientists.
  
  
• A mechanism such as the BAG could be of value to other projects supporting research on biotechnology (or any other thematic area) in countries with a weak institutional and scientific base. While ICAR has not fully exploited the potential of this mechanism, the approach has the potential to mobilize all expertise available within a country (and possibly abroad) to improve the relevance and quality of research.

In view of the substantial successes under the program, ICAR is developing major biotechnology programs based on a competitive research grants scheme. Program management emphasizes transparency, quality evaluation, and bottom-up approaches.