Can India's new billion-dollar funding agency boost research?

India is planning to set up a national agency to increase research across the nation's thousands of universities, colleges, institutes and laboratories. Legislation to establish the fund is expected to be introduced into the Indian Parliament in the next three weeks.

The National Research Foundation (NRF) will have a budget of roughly US$6 billion over five years. Some 70 percent of these funds is intended to come from investors in the private sector, and the remaining portion will be covered by the government.

The NRF's goal is to "seed, grow and promote" research...