Overview
- The Principal Scientific Adviser’s office has held consultations with the Higher Education Department, the DST, the DBT, and IIT directors to shape the plan.
- The scheme would offer medium- to long-term roles at premier institutions, including IITs and top DST/DBT laboratories, with substantial set-up grants to build labs and teams.
- Initial recruitment is expected to focus on roughly 12–14 priority areas across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
- Modalities under discussion include intellectual property arrangements, research autonomy, tenure structures, and measures to cut procedural delays.
- Officials point to limited results from DST’s VAJRA short-term programme—about 100 visiting scientists and roughly 60 completed projects—and to rising global competition, including concerns over U.S. higher-education policies, as drivers for a deeper model.