Starting and Running R&D

Before joining BHPV I was working in Central Mechanical Engineering Institute,(CMERI) Durgapur,West Bengal. CMERI was set up by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research,(CSIR). CMERI building was majestic and had very good infrastructure. It had overstaffed administration, finance department, purchase department etc. There was an elaborate system for purchasing any material. The system was so rigid that purchasing any material needed for Research was a tedious affair. Some times we had to wait for years before we can receive any material. Consequently Research workers had lost interest by the time the materials arrived. There was no system of review of the projects. Projects were started without identifying who is the end user. Projects were dropped without assigning any reason. Even serious minded people who were interested in Research got disillusioned and left CMERI. A quick analysis of the state of affairs revealed that the budget allocated was skewed. More than 70 percent of the budget went for maintaining the infrastructure. There was very little money left for actual Research. There was no accountability. Since the Institute was located in Bengal, non-Bengalis were discriminated. Studying all these at close quarters,I dreamed that at any time I had to lead a R&D group, I will allocate 70 percent of the budget to purchase machinery, materials, instruments etc. and remaining money for infrastructure. If necessary, have a separate budget for infrastructure and the budget for R&D will be decided by R&D staff. Also once a budget is allocated for a R&D project the spending cannot be questioned. There shall be continuous monitoring of the projects both for progress and budget.Any increase in the budget should be justified. Every project proposed should identify an end user and what benefit we are going to get once the project is completed. How some of these ideas were implemented in BHPV will be the subject of next blog.