The Union finance minister’s announcement of a Rs 100,000-crore corpus to promote research by the private sector has come alongside what scientists say are “effective dips” in the 2024-25 interim budget outlays for some government science departments.

The announcement of the giant corpus to scale up private research in “sunrise domains” has also triggered speculation in some scientific circles about the source of the corpus money and its likely impact on research in the fundamental and basic sciences.

The term “sunrise domains” is generally used to describe hard technology disciplines such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence or renewable energy.

Nirmala Sitharaman said in her interim-budget speech on Thursday that the government would establish the Rs 100,000-crore corpus to provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates.

“This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains,” Sitharaman said.

Some science administrators applauded the plan, saying large fund infusions are necessary for technology start-ups to scale up and move towards the commercialisation of their ideas and products.

“We already have an innovation ecosystem in the country but taking innovative ideas towards commercialisation requires large amounts of funding,” Rajesh Gokhale, secretary in the department of biotechnology, told The Telegraph.

Many scientists, however, are wary. Some are wondering whether the corpus would mean cuts in budgets for government science departments, while others are interpreting the proposal as a reflection of a lack of enthusiasm for research in the basic sciences.

“Any big investment that will push research is welcome,” said Partha Majumder, emeritus professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. “But I wonder why the government wishes to encourage only research and innovation in the private sector. I wish it had concurrently increased the budget for science and technology significantly.”

The interim budget proposes a 1.2 per cent increase in the outlay for the department of science and technology (DST), a 0.7 per cent increase in the outlay for health research, and a 16 per cent dip in funds for the biotechnology department.

Gokhale said the outlay for biotechnology had decreased because certain Covid-related initiatives had ended.

“Any increase below the rate of inflation is effectively a decrease,” said Ayan Banerjee, professor of physics at IISER Calcutta. “Given these trends, where is the corpus money going to come from?”

The proposal for the corpus comes at a time when the Centre expects industry, non-government sources, and philanthropists to contribute Rs 36,000 crore to the Rs 50,000-crore budget for the National Research Foundation, an apex body under the DST to support research.