Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India (office: 15 August 1947 – 27 May 1964), initiated reforms to promote higher education, science, and technology in India.The Indian Institute of Technology – conceived by a 22 member committee of scholars and entrepreneurs in order to promote technical education – was inaugurated on 18 August 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal by then minister of education Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Beginning in the 1960s, close ties with the Soviet Union enabled the Indian Space Research Organization to rapidly develop the Indian space program and advance nuclear power in India even after the first nuclear test explosion by India on 18 May 1974 at Pokhran.
India accounts for about 10% of all expenditure on research and development in Asia and the number of scientific publications grew by 45% over the past five years.However, according to India’s science and technology minister, Kapil Sibal, India is lagging in science and technology compared to developed countries. India has only 140 researchers per 1,000,000 population, compared to 4,651 in the United States. India invested US$3.7 billion in science and technology in 2002–2003. For comparison, China invested about four times more than India, while the United States invested approximately 75 times more than India on science and technology. Despite this, five Indian Institutes of Technology were listed among the top 10 science and technology schools in Asia by Asiaweek.The number of publications by Indian scientists is characterized by some of the fastest growth rates among major countries. India, together with China, Iran and Brazil are the only developing countries among 31 nations with 97.5% of the world’s total scientific productivity. The remaining 162 developing countries contribute less than 2.5%.