New funding mechanism slows down research due to crippling procedures, scientists voice concerns

A new funding mechanism, adopted by the Union government since last year, has slowed down research in hundreds of Indian laboratories with a vast majority of the principal investigators not receiving their sanctioned money in time due to a set of “crippling procedures.”

Such a mechanism has adversely impacted the flow of funds from agencies like the Department of Biotechnology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Science and Technology and Indian Council of Medical Research to such an extent that a large number of researchers didn’t receive their allocation till last month.

In the last fiscal a large chunk of researchers received their project money only in March leaving them with a few days or weeks to spend. Most of them were unable to do so and the money went back to the government exchequer on March 31 since it was deposited in a “zero balance” account.

"The Zero Balance System was introduced in April 2022. We had no idea about this change till around mid-August 2022. The PFMS (Public Financial Management System) account that the university was maintaining for all project funds was 'sealed'. Then only we learnt about the ZBS,” SC Lakhotia, Distinguished Professor at Banaras Hindu University told DH.

A lot of back and forth communication through email and phone calls later the frozen grants for different projects became finally available to scientists for utilisation only in the last quarter of 2022-23. “Whatever was left unspent on March 31, 2023 in any project fund, automatically became zero on April 1, 2023. Again, a lot of correspondence with the funding agency had to be made to get the last year's unspent balance restored in June 2023,” he said.

This fiscal a majority of the researchers haven't received their allocation so far. Many have also not got their dues for the last financial year. 

Inability to pay for manpower as well as for supplies that are continuously needed for carrying out the research blocks all research progress, scientists say.

“It seems science research is not the government’s priority and they want to spend the money on something else. Because of such crippling procedures, project staff in many labs haven't received their money since last year,” said a senior CSIR scientist.

There are multiple layers of complexities in the PFMS such as opening separate zero-balance accounts in multiple banks for each funding agency to getting zero-balance certificates. 

“Many banks are not interested in having zero-balance accounts and we have to look for smaller banks that are interested. But smaller banks have capability issues,” said the director of a bio-research laboratory.

“To add to the worry, there is a newly imposed obligation that as principal investigators, we have to submit quarterly reports about the 'targets' for each quarter and how have these been achieved. It is forgotten by the bureaucracy that research is not a civil project that is expected to move along dotted lines. If research output were to be exactly as predicted and all the targets fulfilled as proposed, we need not have undertaken the research in the first place. Research seeks the unknown” said Lakhotia.

Sources in the Union Science Ministry said, they were aware of the hiccups and recognised the need for changes in the finance, audit and accounting systems. “But this is the financial model for the country. Solution (to the problems) will come soon,” said a senior official.