The Indian Science Congress concluded in Thiruvanthapuram this year. The Prime Minister, as is the tradition, inaugurated it and eight thousand odd scientists listened to the noble platitudes being spouted by a few “notable” worthies of Indian Scientific establishment and the scientific bureaucracy. An annual ritual which must surely rank amongst the most non-productive meetings of science, the only noteworthy thing this year being the Prime Minister’s call for “breaking the bureaucratic shackles in Indian science”.
One look at the agenda or program of the Science Congress will convince anyone that nothing meaningful can ever be achieved in such a broad ranging meeting. There are physicists, biologists, technologists, health professionals, geologists and every other kind of scientist present. In the 4 days, there are plenary talks by geriatric scientific dons and bureaucrats. Then there are other sessions where people give 10 minute presentations of their work.
Apart from the “big shots”, there are literally thousands of science teachers from all over the country. There are science teachers from small provincial universities and colleges for whom this is the only opportunity to meet other workers and interact with them. But given the diffused focus and the customary chaos which accompanies these kind of mega gatherings, most of these scientists take the opportunity to see the city and do their shopping! For most of them, it is a holiday for which they can be reimbursed by their respective institutions. After all, while the scientific elite in this country jet sets to conferences globally ( on the exchequer’s expense) , the poor physics teacher from Muzzafarnagar can only get to the Science Congress!
The Prime Minister’s exhortation to the scientific community needs to be seen in the larger framework of this government’s policies to improve the standards of scientific research in the country. The basic ingredients of this plan include setting up of new “Innovation Universities” where academics of Indian origin working in the West can come and get world class infrastructure and salaries (an Act of Parliament will be passed which will make these institutions exempt from auditing by the Comptroller & Accountant General), setting up of Indian Institutes of Science Education & Research (IISER) and promoting science as a career by liberally funded scholarship and fellowship schemes.
Some of these initiatives, like the scholarships after school for science and the fellowships for research students will go a long way in making science attractive for our students. However, it is doubtful whether initiatives like the Innovation Universities will do much for improving the standards of scientific research in India, despite the “world-class” environment being offered. This is for the same reason that despite having a plethora of institutes, the overall standard of scientific research is still nowhere near “world class”.
For the overall standard of research to improve in the country, the ivory tower or islands of excellence approach needs to be rethought. This approach can work if the research and academic standards in the existing institutions are of some reasonable quality and there are linkages in terms of collaborations and interactions between these centers of excellence and the academic community at large. Unfortunately these conditions are far from being fulfilled. The standard of research in a majority of the existing universities is abysmal. And the centers of excellence function like true ivory towers-their researchers having no interest in interacting with their “inferior” counterparts within the country, preferring to collaborate with peers in Berkeley rather than in Benares.
It would seem that in 60 years, we would have learnt our lessons from following this island of excellence within a sea mediocrity (or worse)approach. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The new Innovation Universities do away with even the statutory linkages with the country at large!
What will be more fruitful in the long run would be to increase the overall levels of teaching and research at the secondary and the undergraduate levels. This can be done of course through massive investments in infrastructure (buildings, libraries, laboratories etc), incentive schemes for students and teachers, in-service training programs and generous service conditions for enhancing capabilities and capacity building. Some of these have of course been implemented with the scholarship schemes and the Pay Commission. However, to stem the rot, much more needs to be done on a war footing.
The Indian-born Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s response, when asked recently about how Indian students could emulate him and win the coveted Nobel, was sobering- “That is the wrong question to ask- you don’t get into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you are interested in it”. Hopefully this would provide some food for thought for our Minister who wants institutions to incubate Nobel laureates and wants to create islands of excellence which will produce Nobel winning research. Improving the standards of teaching and research in the thousands of colleges and existing universities will do a lot more for Indian science than a few “world-class” institutions with part-time NRI scientists.