Opinion The waning of science

Just as well that Suryanarayanan and his wife are passionate about their research and do not obsess about their meagre compensation. The couple’s monthly income,however,is one indicator of the wretched support that science receives in India. “Only the most committed can sustain themselves on such paltry recompense,” says Suryanarayanan. On top of it,even in the country’s foremost institutions,funding and infrastructure to pursue scientific research are several notches below what is available in the US and Europe.

A Bharat Ratna conferred on eminent scientist C.N.R. Rao last month brought the focus back on the country’s investment in science. Only more investments in science will make young Indians believe that the country’s future is linked to science,Rao is quoted as saying. “If India starts investing in science as much as China and South Korea do in the next couple of decades,we can make up for lost time,” Rao told reporters. Rao said he has had 150 PhD students work with him in the last decade and a half,but none has been from Bangalore. The young and the brightest in a city that was once big on science and technology research have turned towards information technology,entrepreneurship,banking and other careers.

Suryanarayanan says earlier generations of his peers were much worse off. Monthly stipends for those pursuing doctoral and postdoctoral research in science and technology have inched up over the past decade. But the amount is still poor by international standards. Suryanarayanan’s American peers make a minimum of $2,000 (Rs 1,20,000). “Here,students have to save for over a year to buy a laptop,and buying a car is unthinkable,” he says.

Few bright Indian students come into science because of this deterrent,says Roddam Narasimha,the distinguished aerospace scientist who is now director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies and chairman of the engineering mechanics unit of JNCASR. “People who come to science do so purely for the love of it and say,I don’t care about the money.” But,he asks,“Can a country build its science and technology on just these few people?” The lack of economic incentive is making the country’s reservoir of brain power go untapped,he argues. Talent is only one area that is scarce in the growth of scientific and technological research,he says. Science is not central to India’s vision of economic growth and development,and it is not integral to India’s national life the way it is in even a small country like Korea,which spends 3 per cent of its GDP on science. “We have a national ambition deficit in the area of science.”

Though India has seen ripping economic growth in the past decade,the country still spends less than 1 per cent of its GDP on scientific research (China spends 6 per cent of its GDP). As a fraction of the GDP,the spending on science has been static for decades. Rao said that the government allocated a fifth of the funds that research projects actually need and the funds were invariably delayed. Narasimha cites another reason as to why Indian science lags behind. Industry,whether state-owned or private,makes no great demand on its science and technology researchers. It is content with buying cheap technology and producing it in the country.

A group of 32 eminent Indian scientists and technologists,including Rao and Narasimha,are demanding a change,and wrote in a recent appeal to the prime minister,“What is required is not a mere increase in investment in science and technology from the current roughly 1 per cent of the GDP to the promised 2 per cent,but also the moral and intellectual support of the society as a whole.”

Societal accolades for those offered fat salaries rankle young scientists. Suryanarayanan reacted to the crore-plus salaries being offered to his peers by recruiters at IIM and IIT campuses saying,“When smart individuals can make high amounts of money,society pegs the status of poorly paid scientists at much lower,” he says. But he hastens to add that he has no regrets. “I truly enjoy what I do; I don’t know whether those who get those salaries can say the same thing.”

saritha.rai@expressindia.com