As Tamil Nadu’s parliamentary elections loom, its ambitions to become a trillion-dollar economy and its position as one of India’s leading industrial and knowledge hubs mean it’s worth examining how the state has invested in science and environmental issues over the past five years.
First, the state’s environment and climate strategy has been to integrate climate action across sectors rather than increasing headline allocations for the environment and climate change department. Within this framework, it has launched a number of specialized ecological missions from 2021. In the 2021–22 fiscal, the state has earmarked ₹500 crore for setting up the Tamil Nadu Climate Change Mission – one of the first of its kind among states – and another ₹150 crore for the Wetlands Mission to restore 100 ecologically sensitive water bodies.
The following year, the state established the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Fund with a corpus of ₹1,000 crore to fund renewable energy, electric mobility, pollution control technologies, forest conservation and circular economy projects, among other climate-related technologies. It has put in an initial ₹100 million as sponsor capital with the fund tasked with mobilizing more from development finance institutions and international climate investors.
By 2023–24, it has expanded its conservation efforts by donating ₹10 crore to the Nilgiri Tahr project and expanding the Green Tamil Nadu mission to increase forest cover. The 2024-25 Budget expanded the Sustainably Harnessing Ocean Resources, or SHORE, scheme to boost the blue economy and provided subsidies for electric vehicles to support sustainable transport.
Spending in 2025–26 increased sharply as the government allocated ₹21,178 million to the power department, which includes investments in renewable energy sources, pumped hydro projects, battery energy storage systems and other energy infrastructure, and ₹100 million to build new basic science research centers in Chennai and Coimbatore.
The government also said in 2025 that Tamil Nadu had spent about ₹15,270 crore on disaster relief, mitigation, preparedness and capacity building programs in the previous four years.
S&T expenditure
Second, although science and technology (S&T) revenue spending has increased in recent years, it still represents a small share of the state’s broader fiscal priorities. Before proceeding further, note that according to the National S&T Management Information System (NSTMIS), Tamil Nadu has spent more than ₹ 600 crore annually on total R&D till 2020-21. The difference arises because NSTMIS assesses R&D spending across departments rather than spending under V&T. For Tamil Nadu, this expenditure is spread across agriculture (crop research, pest management, soil science, etc.), veterinary services (livestock and aquaculture research), public health (clinical research at the State Medical College) and other applied sectors.
This figure also has two important dimensions. For Tamil Nadu, these costs are spread across agriculture (crop research, pest management, soil science, etc.), veterinary services (livestock and aquaculture research), public health (clinical research in state medical colleges) and other applied sectors. Dimension 1: applied research does not produce basic IP. Dimension 2: in the same period when Tamil Nadu spent just over ₹600 crore annually on total R&D, Gujarat spent ₹922 crore and Uttar Pradesh more than ₹1,000 crore.
A global comparison is also possible. When South Korea’s GDP per capita was what Tamil Nadu has today, it was already allocating 1.2% of its GDP to R&D. However, Tamil Nadu’s total expenditure on R&D is below 0.5% of its GSDP, meaning that the state currently spends less than half of what is required (by South Korean standards) to support a world-class innovation ecosystem.
In particular, the allocated budgetary resources of the state for pure science and technology were, of course, much lower. In the decade leading up to 2021–22, annual revenue expenditure averaged around ₹10 crore. But as the state shifted to a technology-driven economy and began to meet its “net zero” commitment, the numbers began to rise. For example, by FY 2025–26 the allocation reached ₹ 67.5 crore and by 2026–27 an estimated ₹ 81 crore.
But while the increase between the period before 2021 and 2021-27 is eightfold in nominal terms, it is smaller than the allocations for climate-related missions. In 2025-26 alone, the state has earmarked over ₹21,000 crore for the power sector. In fact, until it announced ₹100 million in the 2025–26 budget for new “Basic Science and Mathematics Research Centres” in Chennai and Coimbatore, state funding for basic research was meagre—most of it in the form of small grant schemes (₹10,000 to ₹0,000 per ₹1,000) such as the State Science and Technology Council. Major research institutions in the state like IIT-Madras and Institute of Mathematical Sciences are mostly funded by the Union Government.
As a result, the state currently lacks the advanced research and development needed to develop domestic technologies. This means that Tamil Nadu’s current spending risks becoming a consumer of green technologies, including the purchase of solar panels and batteries for electric cars, rather than a creator of major research discoveries. For example, although Tamil Nadu is the national leader in solar installations, more than 80% of the PV modules in these projects are imported from China or come from manufacturing centers in Gujarat, such as those operated by Adani Group or Waaree Energies.
Published – 12 March 2026 07:05 IST
