Does This Country Care About Research?

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

JAKARTA - Last week, DPR Commission XI member Anis Byarawati strongly criticized the government for managing research. Anis firmly said that this country does not respect the research of the nation's children. All can be seen from the allocated research budget.

"This is evident from the budget allocation for strengthening research and development in the country, which annually is still below 0.8 percent of the country's total gross domestic income," said Anis in a discussion on Democracy Dialectics with the theme "Covid Vaccine: Problem or Solution?" at the DPR Media Center.

Quoted from the official website of the DPR, Anis explained that the research budget in Indonesia this year alone is only Rp 1.37 trillion. This figure is lower than last year's Rp 2.01 trillion. In fact, we also look at the last few years, this year's research budget is among the smallest since the last 4 years.

Anis then tried to compare the Covid-19 vaccine research budget in a number of countries. Reporting from Reuters, the United States has spent up to 1 billion US dollars (US) or around Rp. 16.3 trillion to produce more than 1 billion vaccines.

The UK is investing 65 million euros, or IDR 1.1 trillion, to engage in global research to find a Covid-19 vaccine. The British government also said there were 8 possible Corona vaccines to be developed.

Not to mention what was done by India. Through the Serum Institute, the country spent 100 million US dollars or around Rp1.6 trillion, which is estimated to provide the vaccine for one year even though it will not be effective. Meanwhile, France has budgeted an emergency fund of 50 million euros, or around Rp. 880 billion, specifically to find a vaccine against this Corona virus.

"Meanwhile, Indonesia, with a positive number of Covid-19 as of 6 July 2020 reached 64,958 cases, the budget for the SARS cov 2 virus vaccine discovery center was only Rp 35 billion, even getting a discount of Rp 1.4 billion. This budget is much smaller than the grant funds. "The new normal system innovation video competition reaches Rp. 168 billion, even though the budget allocation does not necessarily accelerate the handling of the impact of Covid-19," he said.

The sad fate of research

Indeed, the research and technology budget in Indonesia is not a fraction of the budget for the Police or national defense affairs. Take for example two years ago. The National Research Fund Budget set in the 2018 State Budget is IDR 24.9 trillion. At first glance, this figure looks huge. But it's actually small because it is spread across various ministries. Specifically for the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, there is an allocation of IDR 41.3 trillion which is allocated for the entire ministry's activities.

Reported from era.id, apart from the problem of minimal budget, the world of research in Indonesia also faces other problems. Optimization of researchers in producing works in accordance with the National Research Priorities (2017-2045) and efforts to continue to boost international publications.

In terms of international publications, since 2014 data from the Directorate General of Research and Development of the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education have shown an increase in the output of international publications (books and journals). Consecutively from 2014 to 2017, Indonesian researchers have published 6,425 titles, 7,823 titles, 11,152 titles and more than 14,200 titles. This figure makes Indonesia sit in third place in ASEAN, behind Malaysia (around 20,000 titles) and Singapore (around 15,000 titles) as of 2017.

Indonesia has a pretty bad report card in the research and development field. Recorded in the 2017 Global Innovation Index report, out of 127 countries, Indonesia is in the 82nd position. Singapore is in the top seven, while Japan is in 14th place and South Korea is in 11th place.

This report further reveals the tendency of a country in conducting research and development. It can be seen from this that Indonesia's interest in conducting research and development is very small. Although budgets and funds have always been a polemic, there are other factors that should be considered. Namely the interest in research and development, as well as a culture of innovation that Indonesia does not yet have.