Women biotech scientists await funds for research

Almost five months after being selected for the DBT Biocare programme, an initiative by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to encourage women scientists, none of the 75 chosen candidates has received the funds promised nor salaries.

The DBT, which is under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), has been running the Biocare programme since 2011. It is mainly meant for the career development of unemployed female scientists for whom it will be the first extramural research funding sanctioned by the government.

A doctoral woman researcher selected under the programme is eligible for a ₹60 lakh grant for three years. This includes a salary component of ₹75,000 a month.

From 2020 to 2024, on average annually, nearly 50 women scientists have been beneficiaries of the programme, according to the response to a question in the Rajya Sabha in March. This year, 75 women scientists were chosen on March 30, following which they are expected to begin their research projects. However, one of the selected scientists said that in the absence of the required sanction letters or funds, they were unable to commence their research.

‘No response’

“For the past five months, we have been writing to the DBT regarding the release of funds. Initially, we were told that this would be released within a month but now nobody is responding to our calls. One of the conditions for this grant is that we cannot avail ourselves of research funds from any other project, so some of us have quit even international post-doctoral fellowships and are now left in the lurch,” a researcher told The Hindu on condition of anonymity.

Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, the DBT, told The Hindu in a text message that the funds would be released “in the next 10 days”. Sources in the Science Ministry said the delay was due to a change in the fund disbursal policy, effected since November 2024. Under this scheme, called the Treasury Single Account system, funds no longer go from the departments concerned (for e.g. the DBT) to beneficiaries but is routed through a centralised system, under which bank accounts of beneficiaries are linked to the Reserve Bank of India. Though a step towards ensuring transparency in Central government accounting and disbursal, the execution of this system has been tardy.

As The Hindu reported in May, a marquee scholarship scheme of the Science Ministry – the INSPIRE fellowships – has also seen delay in fund disbursal to several research scholars.