New Delhi

Science spending is to get a major boost under a budget laid out on 8 July by India's new Congress-led government.

Total expenditure on research and development will increase by almost a quarter to Rs 152 billion (US$3.3 billion) under the budget for the financial year which began in April.

“There will be a 15% hike in funding for all our major projects — and that isn't bad,” says Valangiman Ramamurthi, secretary of the Department of Science and Technology.

Indian scientists are delighted with the budget. “I am very pleased,” says Raghunath Mashelkar, head of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the largest science agency in India.

The increase is widely distributed across different spheres. Funding for fusion research at the Department of Atomic Energy will double last year's budget to Rs700 million, for example, and funding for multidisciplinary research projects at the science department will grow by Rs400 million to Rs2.4 billion

The budget allocates almost Rs5 billion — one fifth of the entire space budget — to the development of a new rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-III, giving it the largest funding of any single science or technology project in the country. Gopalan Madhavan Nair, the space secretary, says the rocket will be able to launch satellites weighing up to 4 tonnes and will fly by 2007.

A 21% increase in support for space research will also allow scientists to begin work on a Rs3.5-billion lunar orbiter mission planned for 2008 and on a recoverable satellite that could be a forerunner for a manned space mission.

The national budget — which takes advantage of strong economic growth to boost spending, despite India's growing budget deficit — includes billions of dollars for rural development. Some of the science and technology money will be channelled towards this. There will be more support for agricultural biotechnology, for example, and for technology to clean water supplies. This will include funding for the country's first commercial-scale desalination plant, in Chennai, which will be followed by a number of others.