Book

Who owns the infrastructure through which a nation validates its own knowledge? India has built sovereign digital rails for identity, payments, documentation and commerce. Yet when it comes to research—the knowledge India creates—the infrastructure of validation, indexing and recognition remains largely outside its control. This creates more than an academic problem. It creates a validation vacuum, contributing to publication pressures, Career Advancement Scheme deadlocks, rising publication costs and the outward flow of academic capital. Project SARASWATI proposes a sovereign Research Layer for India’s Digital Public Infrastructure—a public digital rail for the aggregation, validation, archival, translation and indexing of Indian research. At its heart is a question of sovereignty: If India can build the infrastructure to move money, establish identity and store documents, why should it not build the infrastructure to validate its own knowledge? SARASWATI is not merely a technology proposal. It is a framework connecting higher-education reform, digital sovereignty, public finance, multilingual scholarship and India’s ambition to become a knowledge power by 2047. A nation that funds the creation of knowledge must have the capacity to preserve, validate and recognise it. Project SARASWATI is a call to build that capacity.