As a policy, in developing countries, maximum use should be made of the scarce internal skills and every effort should be made to prevent duplication of effort as well as wasted efforts. Research should focus on deriving the maximum tangible economic and social benefits. Isolated research is only rarely able to advance the understanding of or solve complex problems. Through simple collaboration, researchers from different disciplines can accomplish much more by teaming. A multidisciplinary approach involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to redefine problems outside of normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of difficult issues. The formation of multidisciplinary teams is vital to modern biomedical research, because these teams are not only important contributors to the advancement of scientific discovery but also to the translation of those discoveries into useful practice.
The NRC has revised its funding policy, and from 2014, the major thrust of funding will be for target-oriented research projects. Each year, pre-proposals will invited from groups of researchers of public scientific R & D organizations and universities for possible funding of target-oriented multi-disciplinary research projects aimed at solving nationally-relevant issues aiming at economic development, social welfare and environmental sustenance of the country. The value of a grant would be up to Rs. 50 million, over a 5 year period. Proposals will be invited from several priority areas in keeping with the National Science and Technology Policy Report.
As the NRC would be investing a fairly substantial sum of public money on these projects and funding would, therefore, be on a very competitive basis. We will be careful to select the most appropriate and capable researchers who could work together as a team on projects the NRC considers likely to have a tangible outcome in 5 years.