Opinion Poverty of research in India
Of the four Indians to win the Nobel Prize in science,only one,C V Raman,was awarded for research work done in his own country.
Of the four Indians to win the Nobel Prize in science,only one,C V Raman,was awarded for research work done in his own country. Hargobind Khurana,S Chandrashekhar and our newest entrant to the exclusive Nobel Prize club,Venkatraman Ramakrishnan,have all been honoured for research at foreign institutions.
Asked whether the type of breakthrough he made on decoding cell proteins would have been possible if he had remained in India,Ramakrishnan acknowledged that research in India was lagging behind by some 20 years. His colleagues in India had to fly to Japan for getting X-ray sources. He advocated a long term policy,if we wanted to produce quality research in India.
Some years back,there was an interesting letter in Currrent Science by a science professor and researcher from Punjab,H S Virk,which put in perspective the rapid decline of cutting edge scientific research in our country. Using the Science Citation Index of the Institute for Scientific Information,Virk cited a survey which placed India in 8th place in the top 20 countries undertaking scientific research in the 1980s. In the 1990s,we were down to the 12th position,and today India is no longer in the list of the top 20.
India ranks 21st in terms of output of research papers in science,but 119th in terms of research papers of any worthwhile contribution. The number of R&D scientists and engineers per million of the population is 157 in India. This is one fifth the ratio in South Korea,and one thirtieth the ratio of countries like the USA and Japan. We have 17 per cent of the global population but account for a mere 1.5 per cent of the global output in R&D.
There is no shortage of brilliant scientific minds in India,dedication and application. Our inability to harness our huge pool of scientific talent to rise above mediocrity is due largely to our failure to build up institutions which can nurture and inspire genius. Apart from the IITs,no Indian educational institution merits a place in the list of internationally recognised universities and research centres.
One reason for this is,of course,funds. We spend a mere 3.5 per cent of our GDP on education compared to double this percentage in most countries. Which explains why our HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is in no position to fulfil the just demands of IIT professors that their emoluments should be commensurate to their services and their standing in the international market.
But,probably more than lack of funds,the responsibility for the sorry state of our research institutions is the work culture we foster. Political interference,nepotism,petty jealousies,corruption and bureaucratization have all taken a toll on our institutions of higher education. Merit is seldom the criteria for advancement,particularly as most of our research centres are controlled by government,where red tapism is rewarded and individual initiative frowned upon. Take for instance,the case of the Nobel Prize winner’s father,C V Ramakrishnan. He too was a brilliant academic who,together with his wife,founded the Department of Biochemistry at MSU in Vadodara.
Nevertheless,Ramakrishnan was hounded out of the institution because some well connected Ph.D students backed by politicians complained against him. Ramakrishnan’s fault was that he went strictly by merit in awarding scholarships,and tried to give research grants to as many students as possible,even if it meant cutting down the amount for each one.
Our research institutions are replete with similar examples. Over the years,bureaucratic and political interference has driven out a sizable section of the country’s top medical talent from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Even today,Dr Bisaria,a cardiologist of international repute at AIIMS,is fighting a legal battle because a frivolous notice was issued to him on the grounds that he had allowed a Class III employee to be present during an operation.
Bisaria’s real ‘fault’ actually lay in the fact that the former Health Minister wanted him removed because he was seen as part of the camp of Dr Venugopal which was fighting for AIIMS to retain its autonomy.
Why is it that the Defence Research Development Organisation,in which crores have been poured over the last few decades,come up largely with a series of duds? The long list of failed scientific research institutes in India is indeed disheartening.
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