India’s R&Q Budget: Reservations & Quotas Over Research & Quality
india loves to boast of being a “rising power,” but the numbers don’t lie. While the US and china pour billions into Research & Development, india is busy pumping money into freebies, subsidies, and reservation politics. The result? They create technology, we import it. They export products; we export PhDs.
Here’s the painful breakdown:
1. US: Tech Superpower Built on R&D
The united states spends 3.4% of its GDP on research. That’s why Silicon Valley exists, why AI, biotech, and space innovation flow out of America. It’s an investment, not luck.
2. China: Copy, Invest, Innovate
china started as the world’s copycat, but today it spends 2.7% of GDP on R&D. Now it’s building chips, EVs, and AI at a speed the world can’t ignore.
3. India: 0.7% for R&D, 7x More for Freebies
india limps at 0.65–0.7% of GDP on research. Meanwhile, ₹4–5 lakh crore flows into subsidies and freebies — far more than what india invests in science, labs, and innovation.
4. The Real Budget Priority: Votes, Not Vision
Freebies = instant votes. R&D = long-term nation building. Guess which one politicians pick every time? Exactly. That’s why labs starve, but schemes flourish.
5. India’s R&Q Model: Reservations & Quotas
The US has R&D. china has R&D. India? We have R&Q — Reservations & Quotas. That’s the system we fund. That’s the culture we defend.
6. Importing Tech, Exporting Talent
We import chips, missiles, and engines. But we export IIT graduates, PhDs, and coders — all to countries that actually fund research.
7. The Innovation Gap Widens
As the US and china battle to dominate AI, semiconductors, and space, india risks being the world’s outsourced back office, not the innovation hub it claims to be.
💥 Final Word: Until india stops treating freebies as nation-building and starts treating R&D as survival, we’ll remain a country that builds slogans, not solutions.
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