10 Leaders The Economist February 12th 2022
17 days. The assembly in another state holding elections this
month, Punjab, clocked up only 11 days in 2021. It is run by the
Congress party, the main nationwide opposition to the bjp. De
spite the infrequency of sessions in all these assemblies, atten
dance is low. And the process of legislating is becoming ever
more perfunctory. Fewer and fewer bills are debated in commit
tee; many are approved by voice votes.
Campaign finance is another worry. The bjphas introduced
what it calls electoral bonds, which allow individuals and busi
nesses to donate unlimited sums to political parties in secret, in
effect. The bjphoovers up threequarters of the money donated
in this way, but other parties are also happy to accept the scraps.
It is impossible to allay suspicions that India’s industrialists are
buying favours from the government, since no one knows who
is making donations, much less whether there might be any
quid pro quo involved.These mechanical failings are not as glaring as the rise of
Hindu nationalism, but they could be highly damaging, since all
parties suffer from them. Even if voters in Uttar Pradesh spurn
the divisive rhetoric and discriminatory policies of the bjp, as
they should, the steady corrosion of the internal workings of
democracy means that they are unlikely to secure a thoughtful,
effective and responsive government.
Naturally, that matters very much for ordinary Indians. It al
so matters for the world. India is the planet’s most populous
democracy. By upholding political freedoms for 75 years, bar a
twoyear hiatus under Congress in the 1970s, it has set a hearten
ing precedent for the developing world. But these days it is look
ing less and less like a model. In a world where authoritarian
China seems to grow stronger by the day, it has never been more
important for India not just to holdelections, but to repair the
underpinnings of its democracy, too.nW
hen the Soviet Union launchedSputnik,thefirsteversat
ellite, in 1957, Americans were blindsided. They could
scarcely believe that they had been beaten into space. “Now,
somehow, in some new way, the sky seemed almost alien,” said
Lyndon Johnson, then the majority leader of the Senate, describ
ing what he called “the profound shock of realising that it might
be possible for another nation to achieve technological superi
ority over this great country of ours”.
America’s leaders did not want to be beaten again. In
President Dwight Eisenhower approved the creation of a new in
stitution—the Advanced Research Projects Agency (arpa). Its
task would be to scan the technological horizon and “invent the
future”. Six decades later arpa’s modern incarnation, darpa(the
Dstands for defence) has proved itself so useful—with decisive
roles in creating everything from the internet to
mrnacovid19 vaccines—that many medium
sized countries want their own versions.
One of those countries is Britain, which this
month announced that its new body—the Ad
vanced Research and Invention Agency
(aria)—would be led by Peter Highnam, a com
puter scientist poached, promisingly, from
darpaitself. aria’s stated purpose is to fund
highrisk, highreward research and it will start with a budget of
$1.1bn over four years. This new addition to Britain’s research
funding landscape is welcome—two years after the country left
the European Union, it is still unclear whether British scientists
will continue to receive any support from the eu’s $108bn Hori
zon Europe programme.
Yet Mr Highnam will face challenges in bringing the darpa
model to a country that has never seen anything like it. Copying
his previous employer wholesale is unlikely to succeed—dar-
pa’s scope and scale (it currently has a budget of $3.5bn per year)
far outweigh anything possible in Britain. Instead of trying to
replicate darpa, he should focus on bringing two elements of its
model across the Atlantic.
The first is independence. Government interference has hobbledotherexperimentalresearch bodies, such as Germany’s ver
sion of darpa. British ministers have promised the new agency
will be free from political interference and the bureaucracy as
sociated with the country’s usual research agencies. But the civil
service, science establishment and press may not react kindly to
a handsoff agency that is given big chunks of money and resists
scrutiny. Mr Highnam should go on a charm offensive to explain
what ariais. That includes the tough task of preparing Britain
for failures. Lots of them. darpahas succeeded over the decades
in part because many of its gambles have not paid off. That is a
sign that it is investigating truly radical ideas, rather than con
fining itself to the sorts of safe scientific bets best left to industry
or more conventional research institutions.
The second element is to have a centre of gravity. darpa’s ear
ly successes came from its relationship with
America’s Department of Defence, which was
trying to win a decadeslong cold war. It gave a
strategic direction to research and acted as a
deeppocketed customer. As a middling power,
Britain does not have a defence budget that re
motely matches that of Uncle Sam. Instead
aria should focus on another area, where the
country has critical mass: life sciences.
Britain is worldclass in this domain—as demonstrated in
both its academic citations and its scientific response to co
vid19. British lifesciencesfirms raised $3.4bn of venture cap
ital in 2021; more than anywhere else in Europe but far less than
the American biotech hubs, Massachusetts ($11.5bn) and San
Francisco ($4.9bn). There is ample room, therefore, for stimula
tion and investment that would direct existing British academic
and industrial strengths into tackling longterm health con
cerns. And with Britain’s National Health Service, ariahas a
giant customer with a burning need for technological break
throughs and the resources to buy them. By identifying the chal
lenges that people and health systems are likely to face in the
next few decades, ariacould showthatmediumsized coun
tries can be at science’s cutting edge.nHow to make Britain’s new innovation agency workHealthy curiosity
Radical research