DST India: Dept. of Science & Technology

DST (Department of Science and Technology) is the Government of India department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, that sets national science and technology policy and funds and coordinates research and development across Indian institutions. It sits above statutory bodies such as SERB and is unrelated to Daylight Saving Time.

Two disambiguations worth making explicit up front:

1. In general search, “DST” is heavily associated with Daylight Saving Time, the clock-changing convention. This guide is about the Indian government science department only; it has nothing to do with clock changes.

2. “DST” is not the same organisation as SERB (the Science and Engineering Research Board), which is a separate, statutory grant-making body that operates under DST’s umbrella and administers many of India’s individual-investigator research grants and international-mobility fellowships. If you are specifically looking for SERB’s grant programs — including VAJRA and the Overseas Visiting Doctoral Fellowship — see the dedicated guide: SERB (India): VAJRA and OVDF Programs for International Researchers. This page focuses on DST at the department level: its mandate, structure, and the schemes it runs or oversees directly.

What DST Is and Where It Sits in Government

DST is one of the departments under India’s Ministry of Science and Technology, which also includes the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). DST itself is described on its own website (dst.gov.in) as the nodal department for organising, coordinating, and promoting science and technology activities in the country. Its stated responsibilities, per its published mandate, include:

Formulating national policy relating to science and technology
Promoting R&D in emerging and priority technological areas
Coordinating S&T initiatives across other government departments and institutions
Providing grants-in-aid and financial assistance to scientific institutions, associations, and research bodies
Extending science and technology activity to the state, district, and village level
Directing the societal application of science and technology, including toward disadvantaged communities and women’s development

In practice, this means DST functions less like a single grant-making agency and more like a policy and coordination department that funds research both directly (through its own schemes) and indirectly, by housing and overseeing a set of statutory and autonomous bodies that run their own programs under DST’s broader mandate.

Statutory and Autonomous Bodies Under DST

DST’s published mandate lists a number of statutory and autonomous bodies and institutions that operate within its administrative umbrella, including the Technology Development Board, the National Council for Science and Technology Communication, the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, several professional science academies, the National Innovation Foundation (Ahmedabad), and the Survey of India. This is not an exhaustive operational org chart — it illustrates the range of the department’s oversight, from basic-science research institutes to survey and mapping infrastructure to entrepreneurship promotion.

The most relevant of these bodies for a research administrator handling individual investigator grants is SERB, which historically operated as a standalone statutory body under the Science and Engineering Research Board Act, 2008. Following the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) Act, 2023, which established ANRF as a new apex research-funding body and repealed the SERB Act, SERB’s statutory framework was subsumed into ANRF, though the SERB name, its application portal, and its program brands (VAJRA, OVDF, Core Research Grant, and others) continue to be used as the operating identity for those specific schemes. Research administrators should treat SERB as the correct current name to search and cite for those individual-investigator grant programs specifically, while understanding that its parent statutory structure now runs through ANRF rather than a standalone SERB Act. Full detail on SERB’s own programs is covered in the dedicated SERB guide rather than repeated here.

DST’s Schemes and Programmes

DST organises its own direct funding and capacity-building activity into a published set of scheme categories (per dst.gov.in/schemes-programmes), each covering multiple individual schemes aimed at specific stakeholder groups:

Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund — funding aimed at research, development, and innovation activity
S&T Capacity Building Programmes — human capacity development for researchers and students
Institutional Capacity Building Programmes — strengthening research institutions’ infrastructure and capability
Research & Development Programmes — direct support for R&D projects
Innovation and Technology Development Programmes — technology advancement and entrepreneurship support
Science for Society Programmes — linking science and technology to societal and community needs
National Missions — large-scale, strategic multi-year initiatives
International Cooperation & Mega Science — global partnerships and participation in mega-science projects
S&T Data, Policy and Training — knowledge infrastructure and professional development
State S&T Initiative — state-level science and technology support
Good Laboratory Practice — quality-assurance and standards compliance for non-clinical safety testing

DST describes these as schemes “designed with specific objectives to promote research and innovation in specific domain/field(s) for target stakeholders,” and the individual schemes within each category cover grants-in-aid, fellowships, and institutional support. Because scheme names, eligibility criteria, and application windows change over time, always confirm current details directly against the relevant page on dst.gov.in before advising an applicant.

Fellowships and Individual Researcher Support

DST’s website maintains a consolidated fellowship-opportunities listing (dst.gov.in/fellowship-opportunities-researchers) that aggregates fellowship and award schemes available to students, scientists, and researchers across academic and R&D institutions in India. Some of these are administered directly by DST; others — such as SERB’s Overseas Postdoctoral Fellowship (SERB-OPDF) and SERB’s Early Career Research Award — are administered by SERB under DST’s umbrella rather than by DST itself. This is the same distinction covered above: DST’s site functions as a discovery point for the full range of national fellowship opportunities, but the operational application process for a SERB-branded scheme runs through SERB’s own portal and review process, not a generic DST one. A research administrator advising a fellowship applicant should confirm, scheme by scheme, which body actually administers the specific award before treating DST’s general contact channels as the right point of application.

International S&T Cooperation

DST’s International Cooperation Division is responsible for negotiating, concluding, and implementing science, technology, and innovation (STI) cooperation agreements between India and other countries, and for representing India’s STI interests in multilateral forums. Per DST’s own published materials, India maintains bilateral S&T cooperation agreements with dozens of countries, with particularly active cooperation involving partners including Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US. For a research administrator supporting an international collaboration or a bilateral joint-funding call, DST’s International Cooperation Division (and the bilateral agreement governing the specific partner country) is the relevant starting point, distinct from SERB’s VAJRA and OVDF programs, which support individual researcher mobility rather than institution-to-institution or government-to-government collaboration.

DST vs. SERB vs. ANRF: A Quick Reference

Body	What it is	What it does
DST	Government department under the Ministry of Science and Technology	Sets S&T policy; runs its own schemes across capacity building, innovation, international cooperation, and more; oversees a set of statutory and autonomous bodies
SERB	Statutory grant-administering body historically under DST, now operating within the ANRF framework	Runs individual investigator-driven research grant programs (Core Research Grant, VAJRA, OVDF, and others) via its own portal and peer review
ANRF	Apex statutory research-funding body established by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, 2023	Provides overarching strategic direction and funding coordination for research across India; SERB’s statutory framework now sits within it

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DST the same as SERB?

No. DST is the ministry-level government department; SERB is a separate, statutory grant-administering body that operates under DST’s (and now ANRF’s) umbrella and runs specific individual-investigator research grant programs. See the dedicated SERB guide for SERB’s own programs.

Does “DST” in a research-funding context have anything to do with Daylight Saving Time?

No. This is an unrelated meaning of the same acronym. In an Indian research-funding or science-policy context, DST refers exclusively to the Department of Science and Technology.

How do I apply for DST funding?

It depends on the specific scheme. Because DST’s schemes span multiple categories administered by different divisions and bodies (including SERB for individual investigator grants), the correct starting point is to identify the specific scheme relevant to your project or career stage via dst.gov.in/schemes-programmes or the fellowship-opportunities listing, then follow that scheme’s own application portal and guidelines.

Is DST only for researchers based in India?

DST’s core domestic schemes generally target India-based institutions and researchers, but DST’s International Cooperation Division also supports bilateral agreements and joint programs involving overseas partner institutions, and certain SERB-administered schemes (VAJRA, OVDF) are specifically designed around international researcher mobility. Eligibility varies by scheme.

What is the difference between DST and DBT?

Both are departments under India’s Ministry of Science and Technology. DST has the broader, cross-cutting mandate for science and technology policy and coordination generally, while the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) focuses specifically on biotechnology research, development, and commercialisation. They are separate departments with separate schemes and separate application channels.

Related CASRAI Resources

Sourced from DST’s own published pages at dst.gov.in (mandate, schemes/programmes, fellowship opportunities, and international cooperation pages) as of this guide’s publication date. Scheme names, eligibility, and application details change over time — always confirm current specifics directly on dst.gov.in before advising an applicant.