Top research body such as TIFR should have more flexibility, says new head

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“There is no political interference, we function very autonomously. We recruit and promote people purely on grounds of scientific merit, and that is the strength of a place like TIFR. I can vouch for that. The oversight is in budgetary matter and the government is the funding agency for TIFR for a vast majority of funds. So that oversight is not unreasonable. But our worry is that while the oversight has its place, excessive bureaucratisation can stifle the nimbleness you need sometimes to function as a world class scientific organisation. And that’s the challenge in front of us. How do we balance? So when we get money, we need to tell them what kind of research we will spend it on.
Now what if there is a big scientific breakthrough? What we need to be able to do is quickly respond to it by saying yes the funding agency gave us money for ‘X’, but we want to shift our priorities to “Y”. This is not an act of bad faith, this is simply science having changed its boundaries,” he told The Indian Express in an interview over the weekend.

Trivedi said a scientific organisation had to function a little differently from other parts of the government. “We need to ensure that we have that kind of flexibility and we need to convey that to the bureaucracy. So that’s the challenge in front of us,” he said.

The theoretical physicist who joined TIFR in 1999 as a reader said the atomic energy programme of the country started in TIFR and because of its special status enjoyed by it, the institute had been fortunate in being given a considerable measure of autonomy so far in its functioning.

Trivedi’s appointment was initially rejected by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on technical grounds, but later approved by the Centre. Though he had taken over as the institute’s new director in January after Professor Mustansir Barma, the previous director, completed his tenure in December, he subsequently resigned from the post. The TIFR council then appealed to the ACC to reconsider the decision, stating he was selected by a search committee and that he was an internationally renowned eminent scientist. The ACC then agreed and confirmed his appointment last month.

An MSc in Physics (Integrated) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Trivedi did his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. He has been working with the institute in various capacities for the last 16 years.
“It has been a long journey and one of the nice things about our institute is that there is a thorough scrutiny not just when you are taken in, but also in the process of going up. So every five years, you are evaluated and letters of reference are obtained internationally. Typically, eight to 10 letters is not uncommon and then on the basis of that and on your published work, it is decided. It keeps you on your toes and it should be like that in every research organisation,” he added.

The TIFR chief said the amount of money the government gave to an institute like TIFR was increasing. The budget — both planned components that includes experiments, future growth and the non-plan which includes salaries and bills — is Rs 500-600 crore a year for all of TIFR, not just the Colaba campus.

“It’s not a small amount by any global yardstick, especially for a country like India. We have to be prepared to answer what we do with that taxpayers’ money. There is increasing oversight and the way we need to deal with it is to answer the current concerns that have been raised, and will be raised, by convincing people that we are really trying to do good science, that we are putting the money to the best possible use that we can. So the output is there, which matches any international yardstick and also the processes are there by which we recruit people, evaluate proposals for scientific research and allocate money for them and promote people,” said Trivedi.

The director said all these processes should be fair and have international benchmarks. “If we have strong processes within the institute — we do but we can do more I think — we can answer the increasing oversight,” he added.

“As far as my own appointment is concerned, I don’t fully know what happened. I think it’s a great honour to have been asked to be in this position. When I was told that there was some question about it, I was very happy to step down because it’s also true that every scientist’s true passion is actually research work. And then as it turned out, there was some rethinking on that and I am happy to come back…,” he said.