Institutionalising Fisheries Research Priority Setting, Monitoring, Evaluation (PME) in the National Research System aims to promote resource allocation among alternative research problems in an efficient manner. The process of institutionalisation should be objective and based on scientific principles.

Enhancing production and productivity was the main challenge before the scientist in early seventies. Research managers had a relatively simple task of allocation of resources for research. The recent decade has added complexities. Regional balance, sustainability, trade technology links, shift in demand (preference pattern), efficiency, equity, health, nutrition, energy are a few of the many new challenges confronting fisheries scientists today. With time, these complexities will grow further. On the other hand, availability of public funds for fisheries research is declining. Research managers are finding it difficult to address all the challenges and pursue all scientific options to tackle them.

These factors necessitate more analysis using decision rules along with technical information applying optimisation techniques for allocation of scarce resources on research disposal among alternative research possibilities. Research planning and prioritisation has thus become a complex and specialized task. Institutionalisation of this process is therefore much more challenging, prioritisation is required at different levels. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) lays out broad intuitive priorities taking into account national needs and objectives. It also had to take a long-term view of natural resource conservation and sustainability issues. Such ex -ante judgments require analysis of expected costs and benefits. The subjective and intuitive judgment, thus, are inadequate in context of the contemporary complexity. The formal analysis has to be built and, what is more important, institutionalised at all levels in the NARS.

This requires (a) access to information (data) on production structure and resources (b) socio-economics factors driving these (c) strong scientific and technical knowledge base (d) analytical capacity combining agro- biological sciences and socio-economic expertise and (e) an institutional mechanism close to top management at each level in the NARS.

The choice parameters for decision making are income, employment, productivity growth, efficiency, sustainability, ecology, biodiversity, trade and equity which interact among themselves while deciding research priorities. Intuition and subjective judgment happens to fail in capturing these complexities. Research manager need more information and analysis in order to make decisions for priority setting and allocation of scarce resources.

The current capacity at various levels is inadequate to address the information and various need of systematic prioritisation of work. Almost all constituents unit of NARS recognize the need for planning unit. Such exercises are usually driven by a supply side orientation emphasizing technical /scientific parameters and there is no analysis of socioeconomic justification, impact (trade of) the main determinants of a demand driven research agenda.