India’s Economic Survey 2026 underscores the critical role of translational research, reinforcing ITRI’s mission and accelerating reform momentum

February 2026
The Economic Survey of India 2026 marks an important moment for India’s innovation ecosystem. It articulates, with clarity and intent, the urgent need for the country to strengthen its translational research capabilities, which is the core of India’s Translational Research Initiative (ITRI) . It was particularly encouraging to see this emphasis reflected in Chapter 8, “Industry’s Next Leap : Structural Transformation and Global Integration” (pages 335–336), which closely aligns with the discussions the ITRI team has been having with the Chief Economic Advisor on building a robust and nationally anchored translational research ecosystem.
A key contribution of the Survey is its clear diagnosis of a long-standing structural challenge in India’s innovation journey. While the country performs strongly in early-stage research and discovery, it struggles to translate this strength into industrial outcomes. Innovation often stalls at the stages of prototyping, piloting, and validation—the critical bridge between laboratory research and market-ready solutions. Unless this gap is addressed, India will find it difficult to convert scientific excellence into globally competitive products and technologies.
Crucially, the Survey recognises that this challenge cannot be addressed through funding alone. It calls for a more systemic response that strengthens the institutions and mechanisms required for translation, adoption, and scale. In this context, the recommendation to establish Translational Research Centres (TRCs) as shared national assets is particularly significant. These centres are envisioned as long-term platforms that reduce the cost and risk of experimentation, enabling collaboration across academia, industry, start-ups, and MSMEs. The Survey rightly positions TRCs as infrastructure of national importance, comparable to physical and digital public infrastructure, rather than as short-term project-based interventions. The proposed role of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) in identifying, establishing, and governing these centres further strengthens the credibility of this approach. If implemented well, this architecture could substantially improve India’s ability to translate research into scalable, high-impact outcomes.
The document places these issues in a broader strategic context. It cautions that without a strong innovation and research translation ecosystem, India risks remaining dependent on a service-led growth model and exposed to supply-chain disruptions and technology denial. It contrasts this with an alternative path in which stronger innovation and industrial capabilities allow India to move up global manufacturing value chains. In this framing, translational research is a practical enabler of India’s industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy, and not just a scientific endeavour.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the Economic Survey discusses research translation as a strategic imperative and even goes further and identifies specific gaps in the translational ecosystem and suggests implementation and governance mechanisms.
For ITRI, this represents a strong validation of the direction we have been working towards. We are glad to have had the opportunity to contribute to and help shape this thinking. We are grateful to the Chief Economic Advisor and his office for their engagement and openness to dialogue.
ITRI is already taking concrete steps to operationalise this vision. We are committed to supporting the establishment of a national Membrane Translational Research Centre at IIT Bombay, aimed at accelerating the translation of membrane technologies across critical applications such as water, energy, and industrial processes. Alongside this, ITRI is working with the Mumbai Biocluster to strengthen India’s biomanufacturing capabilities—focusing on shared infrastructure, industry–academia collaboration, and pathways for scaling lab-stage innovations into commercially viable manufacturing outcomes. Other initiatives towards supporting national translational facilities in 2D materials, advanced chemical manufacturing, among others, are also in the pipelines.
As translational research gains wider recognition and institutional support, we remain committed to working with partners across government, academia, industry, and philanthropy to help strengthen the institutional foundations needed to translate research into scalable, high-impact outcomes.