Vanishing Act

PEOPLE in physics narrate this story with glum faces. Senior scientists once scrolled down the list of names at a three-week school for adva...

PEOPLE in physics narrate this story with glum faces.

Senior scientists once scrolled down the list of names at a three-week school for advanced PhD students. As usual, half were from West Bengal. But South India was invisible.

Surprised, they checked again and again. There was not a single name from the stronghold of pure sciences and C V Raman.

8216;8216;Where are the Ranganathans and Venkatramans?8217;8217; asks professor Sunil Mukhi, who has chaired the call committee for this school of theoretical high energy physics, an annual ritual of the Science and Engineering Research Council, an arm of the department of science and technology.

8220;Their numbers drop every year but once, in 2000, we noticed with alarm that there were zero students from the South. We are clearly losing scientists to infotech,8217;8217; says Mukhi, dean of graduate studies at Mumbai8217;s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research TIFR. He often wonders whether his PhD students will return to India from post-doctoral work at Princeton and Stanford.

Many have similar stories to tell, worry signs picked up from labs pining for a bustling, excited young crowd.

8220;Ever heard of a department of biophysics and crystallography at Chennai University? 8216;8216;The youngest faculty member is 47. Recruitment at that department stopped 15 years ago,8217;8217; says M Vijayan, associate director at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He calls it a national problem.

8220;Top quality scientists are just not easy to find. Even the quality of the top 100 at interviews is below par. So we can8217;t select most of them,8217;8217; N V Madhusudana, dean research, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, told The Sunday Express in a telephone interview.

Madhusudana morosely describes that Bangalore colleges are closing down physics divisions because the students are missing; most students fly abroad. 8216;8216;We are suffering, just like any subject that involves actual lab work is suffering, because you can always go to the US and find a better equipped lab.8217;8217;

How they head hunt, scientifically

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CATCH them young is a one-year-old idea at Kolkata8217;s Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics for research in physics and biological sciences. Ten to 14 undergraduates get two weeks of training every year during three years of study. 8216;8216;A relationship develops with the scientists and we persuade them to stay in basic sciences, instead of venturing into IT or engineering,8217;8217; says professor Rajkumar Moitra. On graduation they are inducted as graduate associates. And there8217;s that handsome stipend, travel grants8230; WALK-in interviews have been the norm since 1997 at the Centre for Advanced Technology CAT, Indore, an R038;D wing of the department of atomic energy. 8216;8216;The aim is to stop or reverse the brain drain from India and get the best talent available,8217;8217; the CAT website is not shy to say. Higher level recruitment is 8216;8216;open at all times.8217;8217; 32-plus is 8216;8216;extra-ordinarily old8217;8217; for the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, and its joint family of nearly 2,000 active researchers. Current policy is to recruit mostly at assistant professor level. 8216;8216;Always below 35, preferably 32,8217;8217; says associate director M Vijayan. One reason IISc PhD output is only growing. ADVANCE placement offers, one year before you wave an MSc, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. When the best first-year MSc students complete summer training, pass a test and interview, they are offered a future job. They must pass final-year, the exact grade doesn8217;t really matter. 8216;8216;At least one out of five take it up. A subtle means of attracting talent,8217;8217; says a faculty member. IN-house is best for BARC. Since 1957, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre BARC training school produces 150 scientists every year. Today there are 137 studying at Trombay, and 120 training to work at nuclear power plants. 8216;8216;Bhabha was a different man, why can8217;t we replicate this model nationally?8217;8217; is a common refrain.

8216;8216;Since the 1990s, the number of foreign-born scientists and engineers in USA started has been growing at a smooth 10 pc a year. By 1999, India and China were the top source nations for skilled labour in the US market, an area dominated in the 8217;70s by Germany, Canada and the UK.

In the seaside labs of the TIFR, where students work the computers 24/7 3 am and dawn are normal, the number of new PhD members in the fold have stayed constant for the last 15 years: 15-18 in physics, 8-10 in biology, one or two in pure mathematics. The average age of academic staff hovers between 35 and40.

TIFR8217;s school of natural sciences has recruited 18 people in the last five years. 8216;8216;That8217;s not bad. But it8217;s not great either and we lose people at the entry level, to the US,8217;8217; says Deepak Mathur, professor of atomic and molecular sciences. Sometimes they have to ask PhD students 8212; selected from 800-1,000 applications 8212; to leave after an initial training period because they show no promise.

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8216;8216;Students may think that TIFR doesn8217;t have the sound of Harvard or Stanford. When the US clamps down on visas, we suddenly get more and better applications,8217;8217; says Mukhi.

In Pune, Naresh Dadhich, successor to astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar as director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, wonders how to stop a head-hunting headache that dates back a decade.

8216;8216;We have a faculty of 13 when the ideal number is 20. For the last 10-15 years we have not found the right people for these posts. We don8217;t get as many PhD students as we would like either: we get two or three when we can take in seven or eight per year,8217;8217; he says. Then he adds, 8216;8216;seriously8217;8217;.

Mumbai8217;s Forensic Science Laboratory, the state headquarters in forensics, rushes a specialised team headed by just three scientific officers to sift through blast sites. Their bloody routine after bomb blasts is a night spent at the site, followed by a day in the labs, with not a moment8217;s rest in between.

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8216;8216;I have 134 sanctioned posts lying vacant, starting from director, deputy director and assistant directors. Most recruitments stopped in the 8217;90s. Ideally, I need another 167 hands,8217;8217; says the lab8217;s acting director Rukmini Krishnamurthy.

Pune8217;s High Energy Material Research Laboratory struggles to go ballistic. 8216;8216;Mathematicians are a dying breed in India. When we source projects to university students, too often the quality of research is below par,8217;8217; says Haridwar Singh, director.

On a Delhi visit, Mathur checked the age profile of a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research laboratory out of sheer curiosity. 8216;8216;I was shocked to find that 70 per cent of the scientists were above the age of 50. That8217;s very unhealthy!8217;8217;

The manpower crunch is felt selectively, gnawing at government labs and old-time hotties like physics, chemistry and mathematics being toppled by biology and IT. There is no panic, yet.