THOUGH India now spends more than Rs 4,000 crore annually in research and development -- 87 per cent of which comes from government and public sector industries and the rest from the private sector -- as a percentage of the country's GNP, the R&D expenditure has been dropping steadily since 1987-88. Critical areas like health, energy and environment remain neglected and underfunded. Though India has a large stock of scientifically trained personnel -- about 4 million -- the number of persons employed in R&D per 1,000 population is still very low, when compared with some of the other developing countries.
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