The more things change

Scientists are a minority in league with the future, said Atal Bihari Vajpayee quoting Jawaharlal Nehru in the National Science Congress of 2000. In 2002,he repeated that statement,with an embellishment: a bright future can be realised only when science is in league with the majority of our society. In 2000,Vajpayee also promised that Ramp;D investment would be hiked to 2 per cent of GDP over the next five years a vow he dutifully repeated in 2002. Manmohan Singh has been making the same 2 per cent promise from 2006 to 2012 except that he prefers to quote Winston Churchill every year: The empires of the future are going to be the empires of the mind. Over the past decade,Vajpayee and Singh have underlined the same lines about the bureaucratic stranglehold in science and the need to goad the best minds into science careers.

This is not to dispute the commitment of these two prime ministers despite a steady infusion of funds,the problems dogging our science policy havent changed,so their speeches cannot be wildly different. India still cannot claim to have created dynamic research hubs or platforms for public-private partnerships,or to have succeeded in fostering industry-led technological innovation. Scientific innovation can be the result of a firm or industry searching for ways to optimise a process or develop a product,or it can be a purer laboratory exploration,science for the sake of science. Good policy must further both objectives. Academia and industry need to strike sparks off each other. Private funding is sorely needed,as is the tangible direction provided by industry. As the Indian pharmaceutical industry flourished,so did investment in Ramp;D. Similarly,we need to reorient our research structures our institutions,such as the IITs,are devoted primarily to undergraduate teaching or advanced research in faculty silos,rather than meshing these goals in a research university,fitted out with specialised labs,interdisciplinary centres and incubation opportunities.

As India contemplates its overhaul of higher education,it must consider these practical ways to nurture and,more importantly,incentivise scientific research.