How to write a research grant proposal for Indian funding agencies

Who can apply for a research project grant in India?

For most schemes, only faculty and scientists who are in regular posts. Ask your research cell once about this, then only start writing.

SERB’s old schemes are now run by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), set up under the ANRF Act, 2023. The Advanced Research Grant call says in its own words that the ARG “subsumes the Core Research Grant (CRG) of the erstwhile SERB”. The same call keeps many people out. Researchers pursuing a PhD are excluded, and so are research associates, postdoctoral fellows, ad-hoc and guest faculty and anybody on a yearly contract.

That means a PhD scholar will not be the PI. Once the project is funded you may join as the JRF, and before that you can do much of the groundwork for your supervisor. Postdocs have their own route, the ANRF National Post Doctoral Fellowship, where you write the proposal yourself. ICSSR also allows PhD holders who are on contract to come in as Co-Project Director, if they meet its publication conditions.

DBT and DST divisions put out their own calls on fixed topics (DBT’s go through its eProMIS portal). Follow the call document for these. UGC used to fund major and minor research projects for teachers. Right now we don’t see any open UGC call, so don’t build your plans on it till a live notice comes.

What sections does a research grant proposal have?

Always write in the funder’s template. Between funders the logic hardly changes. SERB’s technical-details format for the Core Research Grant, still on the ANRF site, shows it well.

• Origin of the proposal (1 page). Here you give the scientific rationale.
• International and national status (2 pages and 1 page). Who works on this problem, with recent references. In the national part you name the Indian groups.
• Importance in the context of current status (1 page). This is where the gap goes. The template itself calls it “a very important section”, and that is correct.
• Methodology (5 pages). For each objective give actual tables and figures of how work gets done, not general statements.
• Time schedule, milestones in a bar chart. Then the use of results and the risks you see.
• Expertise, roles and facilities. What each investigator does, their past and ongoing projects, and the equipment already there.

Summary, objectives, outputs and budget go into web forms with character limits. PM ECRG allows 3,000 characters for the summary. The ARG call I read put a cap of 15 pages in 11-point font on the scientific part. But the scheme page on the portal showed a different limit. So go by the current call.

ICMR is stricter on format. The summary is 250 words under five fixed subheadings. Three or four objectives at the most, each up to 25 words. Methods are written separately for every objective (design, site, sample size, analysis, ethical issues), and a Gantt or PERT chart is also needed. For the sample size part, our sample size guide will help.

Where scholars help the most is the status sections, because it need the same skill as the literature review in a thesis. Finish those sections with the gap. Our guide on writing a research gap statement shows how.

What does a good grant objective and work plan look like?

In a grant, one objective is one piece of work that you can complete, that someone can check, and that the funder can pay for. Thesis objectives are allowed to be broad. A funded one can’t be, since at the end somebody will ask if it was done or not.

Below is a part of an invented proposal.

Look at what the better version gives. It names the homes and the period. It tells what is measured, how many times and by whom, and what the team does if a home drops out. The sample count (40 homes, two samples, twelve months) goes directly into the consumables budget. A monitoring committee can also check every milestone, because each one has a date.

First write the methods at the level of detail in our methodology guide, and after that cut them down to the funder’s page limit. In most first drafts I see, background takes two pages and method gets only half a page. It should be the other way round.

How do you write the budget and budget justification?

Make the budget from your work plan. Don’t copy it from last year’s sanctioned project. List every activity, cost each one, and then place those costs under the funder’s heads.

The usual heads

ANRF’s ARG call has two types of head. Under recurring you put research personnel and consumables, travel and field work. Contingency, software licences and publication charges also go there. Equipment, software and long-term access to facilities are non-recurring. After sanction you cannot move money between these two. Travel and contingency are each capped at ₹5 lakh, and overheads come on top. JRF and SRF salaries go as per ANRF’s office memoranda, so take the current rates and not the ones from an old proposal.

ICMR sanctions money for staff, contingency, consumables, travel and equipment. Overheads can be 3% of the recurring budget at the most, and travel is not counted in that. Every sub-head has to be justified for ICMR.

In ICSSR’s 2026-27 guidelines, staff can take up to 45% of the budget and field work up to 35%. Equipment and study material get 10%, contingency 5%, and a workshop around 5%. The monthly pay for a research assistant is ₹37,000. The institutional overhead of 10% (₹1 lakh maximum) is released only once the project is completed.

What a justification line looks like

Two lines from the invented filter project. First one is “One JRF for 36 months: household sampling (objective 2) and laboratory trials (objective 1). Emoluments as per ANRF norms at sanction.” Second one is “Reagents for fluoride analysis of 960 field samples. Per-sample cost from the attached quotation.” A reviewer can check both lines against work plan in one minute.

Don’t put extra items in budget just so it looks bigger. If you ask for an instrument your department already has (and you listed it under facilities), you are inviting a cut.

How do reviewers judge a grant proposal?

Every funder puts out its criteria. Read them and write against them.

In ANRF’s ARG call the list is scientific quality and novelty, significant rather than incremental advances, clear deliverables, feasible methods and the likely impact. Reviewers go mainly by the proposal itself, and the team’s record comes after. ANRF first screens pre-proposals, then shortlisted full proposals go to experts. Some PIs get a call to present.

ICMR has five questions for reviewers. Is a priority problem being addressed? Will it make a difference to health outcomes? Is the work new? Are the methods right for the objectives? And can it be done in time? ICSSR does blind review first. Then there is interaction with shortlisted applicants.

Your reader may be tired, with many files to read. By the end of page one the reviewer should know what you will do, why it is important, and why your team is able to do it.

Why do research grant proposals get rejected?

A few proposals are rejected because of the science. A surprising number are rejected for rules that were written in the call from the beginning.

• The PI himself is not eligible. Many times his post is contractual or his service left is too short, or the institution is not approved.
• Objectives are written as topics and not as tasks. Nobody can ever finish “To study groundwater quality”.
• Status review lists paper after paper but never says the gap.
• Sites, samples or analysis are vague in the methods, so reviewers can’t judge if the work is doable.
• Budget asks for some instrument which no objective needs.
• Co-investigators are there in name only. ANRF’s ARG call says this can be a reason for rejection at the pre-proposal stage itself.
• The same work is sent to another government funder and this is not declared. ANRF asks you to declare it.
• Text is copied, including unmarked AI-generated text. As per ANRF there is zero tolerance for plagiarism.
• Names or affiliations appear in a blind section, for example Part A of the ICMR format. ICMR rejects these at screening.

As per ANRF, a proposal rejected on technical grounds should not come back to any ANRF programme without major revision. So do the revision properly, and wherever you get reviewers’ comments, use them.

Request senior PIs who have handled that scheme to go through your draft. For a second reader on structure and clarity, our research proposal support reviews drafts that you have written yourself. Defending the plan and the budget before the committee is still your job.