Naidu’s many visions: ₹100-crore for quantum Nobel sets aspirations, spotlights capacity constraints

Naidu’s many visions: ₹100-crore for quantum Nobel sets aspirations, spotlights capacity constraints Premium

On December 23, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced a ₹100-crore reward for a Nobel Prize winner in quantum computing during a nearly one-and-a-half-hour interaction with students, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation that projected Amaravati, the State's capital-in-the-making, as one of five future “quantum valley” hubs globally. The Nobel Prize, regarded as one of the highest recognitions of scientific achievement, is awarded annually in six categories. The awards ceremony is held on December 10, marking the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish scientist and inventor as stipulated in Nobel's will.

Mr. Naidu's announcement sits at the intersection of educational investment, particularly research funding, laboratories, and scientific infrastructure, and the technology-led industrial transformation that the State government is betting on to shape Amaravati's future.

However, academics say that though the move is aspirational, the current budgetary allocations raise questions about the scale of public investment required to sustain such ambitions. The announcement also reflects Mr. Naidu's earlier approach of anchoring development goals in long-term vision documents, prompting a deep dive of how this latest push connects the Vision 2020 laid out in the 1990s with the newly unveiled Vision 2047, what key promises were achieved, which were not, and what now awaits the State by 2047.

One of the slides in the presentation highlighted what it described as India's relatively modest public investment in national quantum initiatives through National Quantum Mission (2023-2031), placing it at $0.735 billion, compared with China's $15.3 billion. In the Andhra Pradesh Budget for 2025–26, the State has allocated ₹31,800 crore for school education, ₹2,500 crore for higher education, and ₹1,200 crore for skill development and training. According to an analysis by PRS Legislative Research, Andhra Pradesh has earmarked 12.1% of its total expenditure for education in 2025–26. This is lower than the average education allocation of 15% by States in 2024–25, including Union Territories such as Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Puducherry.

Speaking on this, Dinesh Shukla, a senior scientist at the UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research (CSR) specialising in quantum materials, said that while offering large cash rewards for Nobel Prize winners is aspirational, such goals may remain a “daydream” without significant improvements to India's research infrastructure and scientific ecosystem. Nobel Prizes, he noted, are awarded for genuine breakthroughs. He said that research into quantum computing requires highly specialised infrastructure that is currently scarce or unavailable in India. This includes ultra-high-precision optics systems, millikelvin temperature facilities, high-end magnetometers, nanoscale device fabrication facilities, and highly precise electronics. “Beyond these laboratory-scale facilities, India also lacks very important “front-end,” large-scale radiation-based facilities, such as X-ray lasers.”

A primary concern remains India's heavy reliance on imported scientific instruments, even for basic research. He pointed out that something as fundamental as analysing a material's crystal structure requires X-ray diffractometers, yet these are not manufactured domestically. Prioritising the development of these infrastructural needs should be a top priority for India to close the gap.

Without improving the infrastructure for fundamental research, the country cannot effectively compete with those at the forefront of global science. Beyond physical tools, he also highlighted systemic issues that hinder a robust research ecosystem in India. Inequitable distribution and inconsistent funding cycles continue to slow progress. A critical concern he raised is the lack of high-quality, expert referees within funding agencies to evaluate and support high-potential research.

Another professor, formerly with Andhra University, a State public institution, who teaches quantum science and now works at a State funded degree college, on the condition of anonymity, said that his former university has only three to four professors teaching around 200 students in the Physics department. The Andhra University now offers “India's first” Bachelor's in Technology (Quantum Computing) from 2025-2026 year.

A closer examination of a Right to Information (RTI) reply, filed for a The Hindu report, shows that as of June 2025, at least 20 courses across the Arts, Science, Engineering, Law, and Technology colleges had no full-time faculty and were being run entirely by contract teachers. This indicates that the university is functioning with only about one-third of its 718 sanctioned teaching posts filled by regular faculty, covering nearly 14% through contractual appointments, while around 60% of positions remain vacant.

However, he said he remains hopeful that at least some research activity would begin as the State starts promoting quantum science. He added that several research proposals submitted by his colleagues are awaiting approval under the National Quantum Mission and the Andhra Pradesh Quantum Computing Policy (2025–2030). As per, Andhra Pradesh Quantum Computing Policy, grants for academic projects are capped at ₹30 lakh per project. According to the PowerPoint presentation made by Mr. Naidu, there are 134 proposals for teaching laboratories and 84 proposals for algorithm-based research.

The current push echoes an earlier phase of Mr. Naidu's governance. In 1999, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Naidu, working with McKinsey & Company, released the vision document Andhra Pradesh Vision 2020. The 346-page document, spread across 29 chapters covering sectors from information technology to education, placed education early in its agenda, with the second chapter titled “The Agenda for Education.”

One of the document's central goals was to raise the State's literacy rate from 44% in 1991 to over 95%. More than two decades later, Andhra Pradesh's literacy rate stands at 72.60%, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023–24 for the population aged seven and above. This places Andhra Pradesh last among the 36 States and Union Territories.

Further, the Vision 2020 document had argued that such outcomes would require increased public spending on education, recommending that allocations raise the budget between 17% and 20%. However, the 2025–26 Andhra Pradesh Budget allocates 12.1% of total expenditure to education, as per PRS Legislative Research.

At the same time, the policy framework emphasised expanding access to higher education through private participation. As academic A. Mathew from National Institute of Education and Planning (NIEPA) notes in Higher Education Policy in Andhra Pradesh, “the number of professional colleges expanded sharply during Mr. Naidu's tenure. Between 1995 and 2004, when he left office, engineering colleges increased from 35 to 236, MBA colleges from 57 to 207, and MCA colleges from 44 to 227, with intake capacity rising several-fold, largely driven by State policies that made it relatively easy to set up colleges. This expansion continued in subsequent years, particularly after the introduction of the Fee Reimbursement Scheme in 2008 by the then Congress government.”

After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014 and the allocation of Hyderabad to Telangana under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, Mr. Naidu returned to power between 2014 and 2019, after nearly a decade in opposition, and pitched Amaravati as the new capital. He lost the 2019 elections but returned to office again in 2024. With the timeline of Vision 2020 having passed and the State once again attempting to build a new capital, Mr. Naidu set out a new vision document titled Swarna Andhra 2047 in November 2024. The 232-page document, spread across 14 chapters, positions skilling and employability-focused education as a central pillar, with education forming the fourth chapter of the report.

It proposes increasing the share of the population aged 15–59 with formal vocational or technical training from about 1% to near-universal coverage, and raising the adoption rate of vocational training among large and medium industries from 3–5% to 95%. It also targets 100% literacy for those aged seven and above, and aims to raise the School Education Quality Index (SEQI) score from 50 to 100.

Beyond schooling, the document lays out broader developmental goals, including the creation of three “knowledge cities” in Amaravati, Visakhapatnam, and Tirupati, the establishment of an AI University and a National Centre for Artificial Intelligence, the setting up of three to five world-class multidisciplinary education and research universities, and the aspiration to produce up to two Nobel Prize, winning researchers from Andhra Pradesh, alongside a commitment to zero poverty.

While some of the education-related targets outlined by Mr. Naidu in the Vision 2020 document appear not to have been realised and others were, whether this latest vision can be translated into reality, rather than remain aspirational, remains to be seen.

(This is written by Bhaskar Basava, an independent journalist based in Hyderabad, covering politics, human rights, and environmental issues, primarily from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. He is now expanding his work to include education across all States.)

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Published - January 05, 2026 03:51 pm IST

education / Andhra Pradesh

Source: TheHindu
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