Op Ed:
India Asks: Will You Return Home Via PMRC?
By Adil Zainulbhai
“What PMRC is asking is whether the people who trained in India, built careers abroad, and carried that question about contribution somewhere in the back of their minds are ready to do something about it. Not someday. Now, while the window is open and the positions are real.”
The Prime Minister Research Chair (PMRC) Scheme, launched this month by the Ministry of Education, is asking questions about age-old dilemmas and answering with possible solutions.
India has spent decades watching its best scientific minds build careers abroad. It now has a serious answer to the question of why they should come back.
Think about the last time you explained your research to someone at a dinner party. The polite nods. The moment when they asked what it was for, really, in the end. And the pause before you gave the answer you have given a hundred times, about the long game, about how science works, about patience.
Now think about what it would mean to work on a problem where the answer to that question was obvious. Where the scale was so large, and the need so visible, that you never had to explain the relevance. Where your work on clean energy fed directly into the world’s largest renewable deployment. Where your research on AI ran on a digital public infrastructure used by hundreds of millions of people. Where your drug or your diagnostic reached a healthcare system that had no alternative.
That is what India offers right now. Not as aspiration. As fact.
The question Indian-origin researchers have always asked is not whether they want to contribute. It is whether the conditions exist to do it properly.
For a long time, the honest answer was: not quite. The funding was uneven. The bureaucracy was real. The gap between what was possible in a well-resourced Western university and what was available in India was wide enough that even researchers who deeply wanted to return did the math and stayed put. The pull of India was emotional. The friction was practical. Practical usually wins.
Return to India – PMRC
Returning to India: Changing the Arithmetic Via PMRC
The Prime Minister Research Chair (PMRC) Scheme, launched this month by the Ministry of Education, is a serious attempt to change that arithmetic.
It is not another fellowship with a stipend that makes you feel appreciated but not compensated. The financial package is structured as a top-up to whatever researchers are currently receiving, with a competitive annual fee, a one-time research grant for project initiation that runs to several crores depending on seniority, residential and medical allowance, and full relocation support. Fellows can return to their parent institution twice a year. The three-year engagement is designed to be a genuine commitment, not a sabbatical experiment.
There are 120 positions. Three tracks cover the full range of career stages. Young Research Fellows are early-career researchers within five years of their PhD, people at the moment when the habits and networks that define a scientific career are still being formed. Senior Fellows are mid-career scientists with five to ten years of post-PhD experience, researchers who have proven themselves and want their work to operate at a different scale. Research Chairs are the senior figures, ten-plus years out, with the standing to shape what an institution does rather than simply contribute to it.
The 13 priority sectors are the ones worth paying attention to. Semiconductors, quantum computing, AI, clean energy, biotechnology, healthcare and medical technology, space and defense, critical minerals. These are not invented priorities padded out to look comprehensive. They are the areas where India has national missions already running, with funding committed and institutions already in place. A researcher working in any of these fields will find not just a lab but a direct line into policy.
Return to India: A Funded Research Position by PMRC
Host institutions are the IITs, IISc, and national laboratories under DST, DBT, CSIR, and ICMR. Not every institution in the country, curated ones that have the infrastructure to absorb and support incoming researchers without the fellow having to spend the first year sorting out basics.
For early-career researchers, particularly those on postdoctoral contracts in the US or UK, the timing matters more than it might appear. The research funding environment in the US has contracted. Visa uncertainty for Indian nationals is real and has not gone away. Academic hiring in many fields is tight. The window between PhD completion and a permanent position is longer than it used to be, and the outcome is less certain. Against that backdrop, a funded research position in India, with a serious grant, world-class students, and the scale of problems that only India can offer, deserves a genuine look rather than a reflexive no.
For senior researchers, the calculation is different but equally worth making. At a certain point in a career, the question is not what the next paper will be but what the body of work adds up to. A Research Chair in PMRC is not being asked to deliver papers. They are being asked to shape an institution, to build something, to use what they know to create capacity that will outlast them. That is a different kind of opportunity from anything a tenured position in the West typically provides.
The scheme is also honest about what it asks. This is a three-year commitment, residential by design, with enough structure to ensure that fellows are actually embedded rather than just nominally affiliated. India has tried softer versions of diaspora engagement before, visiting positions, advisory roles, one-semester teaching stints. They have produced goodwill and occasionally good research. They have not produced the kind of sustained institutional change that a real presence over real time can create. PMRC is trying to do the harder thing.
For researchers with families, the practical questions are real and the scheme addresses them directly. IIT campuses and the cities around India’s premier research institutions have good schools. Spouse employment support and OCI card facilitation are part of the package. Relocation support is not a vague promise. These are answers, not deflections.
India ranks third in global scientific publications and is the second fastest-growing research producer in the world. Patents granted have grown tenfold in a decade. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is operational. The infrastructure is there.
What PMRC is asking is whether the people who trained in India, built careers abroad, and carried that question about contribution somewhere in the back of their minds are ready to do something about it. Not someday. Now, while the window is open and the positions are real.
Applications are open for 45 days from June 1, 2026. The portal, the eligibility criteria, and the application process are all at pmrc.education.gov.in. The contact for queries is contact.pmrc@gov.in.
The country that shaped you is asking a direct question. It would be worth taking seriously.
(Courtesy: PMRCOp-Ed | Prime Minister Research Chair (PMRC) Scheme | pmrc.education.gov.in)
Adil Zainulbhai is the ex-Chairman of Capacity Building Commission of India, which was set up by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi in 2021, to help improve the Capacity of Indian Civil Service. Prior to that, he was Chairman of Quality Council of India.
