New Delhi

Indian science has received a funding boost of 11.7% in the annual budget announced last week. The big winners in the budget, which brings total science spending to 128.4 billion rupees (US$2.8 billion), are biotechnology, oceanography, and research into solar energy and traditional medicines.

Spending to rebuild the economy of Gujarat, shattered by the recent earthquake, has precluded an across-the-board increase for all ministries.

The Department of Science and Technology will receive an extra 100 million rupees for basic research and 250 million rupees for disaster-mitigation activities following the Gujarat quake.

Industrial research spending will increase by 5%, and Ragunath Mashelkar, secretary for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, is encouraged by the provision of 500 million rupees for “new millennium technology initiatives” and tax relief for pharmaceutical companies entering biotech research.

Atomic energy, space and defence research, which account for the bulk of overall science spending in India, receive rises of 8.9%, 6.4% and 5.8%, respectively. Biotechnology will get an extra 23%, and spending on solar energy will more than triple to 1.74 billion rupees, some of which is earmarked for pilot studies towards a solar electric power plant to be built in the Rajasthan desert.

Funding for oceanographic research rises by 60%, with money being provided for a joint venture with Russia for the design of unmanned submersibles. These are being developed as part of an Indian programme for recovering manganese nodules from the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

The increase in funding for the Department of Biotechnology is destined for projects in genomics, research into medicinal plants and the creation of an Institute of Bioresource and Sustainable Development.

The budget also provides for the creation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library to document traditional remedies — something Mashelkar says may help tell patent officers worldwide about the existence of cures already known in India.