Missing at the Indian Science Congress: science, scientists

So much so that top scientists have kept away from the latest edition that began on January 3 here, flagged off by none else than the Prime Minister himself. The Congress ends tomorrow but attendance is at a dismal low at most of the sessions, papers being presented are two or three years old, and the Government is left wondering “what it needs to do in this situation.”

Barring full halls for lectures by the three Nobel Laureates invited this time, Paul M Nurse (Medicine), Roger D Kornberg (Chemistry), and Robert Curl Jr (Chemistry), a top official in the Science and Technology Ministry told The Sunday Express: “For the past three years, hardly anything of relevance has come out of this Congress.”

“I am sorry to say so but the Science Congress has become more of a mela,” says Prof C N R Rao, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister, who is among the country’s top scientists who has skipped the Congress here. “I have become frustrated with it. I have my research to attend to and decided to stay away,” he said.

He’s not the only one to have skipped the event. Of the 41 laboratories under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), only two are represented by their directors. Indeed, the director general of the CSIR himself has not shown up.

Premier scientific institutions like the Indian Institute of Science, TIFR, various IITs etc., are either not represented at all or have a mere token presence. Moreover, not a single top-level scientist has turned up from the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) or the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) or the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had a team led by its director G Madhavan Nair but its session on community development through space applications was a rehash of ideas already expressed at several other fora.

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