* We must aim to increase the total R&D spending as a percentage of GDP to at least 2 per cent by the end of the XII Plan Period from the current level of about 1 per cent: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 2012 Indian Science Congress, Bhubaneswar.

A coincidence? May be. But consider this.

* We will promote public private partnerships, to increase funding for frontier areas of scientific and technological research: Singh at the 2005 Indian Science Congress, Ahmedabad.

* We have to increase public private partnerships and catalyse significantly increased interaction between publicly owned Science and Technology institutions and industry: Singh at the 2012 Indian Science Congress, Bhubaneswar.

The Science Congress is the largest congregation of scientists in the country, held every year from January 3 to 7 and inaugurated by the Prime Minister. It started in 1914 and the 99th edition just completed in Bhubaneswar. It is a permanent engagement on the Prime Minister’s calendar and after Independence there have been only two occasions when the Prime Minister has not been able to make it.

The event is supposed to showcase the best in Indian science and an occasion for the Prime Minister to announce the big-ticket policy initiatives of the government related to science.

But the speeches of the Prime Ministers in the last 10 years reveal how repetitive this exercise has become reflecting either a policy stasis in the sector, lack of bold reforms or both.

Each year, the PM underlines the same themes: increase in investment, de-bureaucratisation of scientific establishments, public-private partnerships. So much so that sometimes the Prime Ministers use the same quote to make the point. Like Vajpayee in 2000, when he quoted Nehru to say: “As we enter the new century, I recall the stirring words of the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who said, ‘Scientists are a minority in league with the future’”. Vajpayee used Nehru’s same quote two years later in Lucknow.

Singh followed him a few years later. He quoted Winston Churchill as having said that “The empires of the future are going to be the empires of the mind” in 2008 and then reused the same quote in 2009.

The intention of increasing the investment on R&D to at least 2 per cent of the GDP has been repeated almost every year in recent times — in 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Of course, the growth in GDP means that in absolute terms the money going to science has gone up even if it has remained stuck at just under 1 per cent of GDP.

Similarly, freeing the lab from bureaucratic red tape has been a refrain down the years. In 2002, Vajpayee said that “bureaucratism is an enemy of a result-oriented approach and must be shunned, for it demotivates our scientific talent.” The next year, he echoed this: “We have to ensure that our scientific institutions do not become afflicted with the culture of our Governmental agencies...the main cause leading to frustration among young scientists is seniority displacing merit and talent suppression.”

Singh then struck the same notes in 2005 on the “tyranny of bureaucracy” and the perils of bureaucratic systems in 2009. In 2010, he reiterated the need to “liberate Indian science from the shackles and deadweight of bureaucratism and in-house favouritism.”

Another favourite, enduring theme: the decline of universities. In 2007, Singh referred to the “widespread concern about the decline in the standards our research work in universities” and called for a “massive” upgrade. Two years later, he said: “We need strengthening of institutional leadership in universities and research institutions.”