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Free Indian Science COMMENT ILLUSTRATION BY PHIL DISLEY BY ILLUSTRATION Free Indian science As elections begin in India, Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson call for an end to the stultifying bureaucracy that has held back the nation’s science for decades. ndia’s general elections this month and Indian science is as much structural as it is industry. Three other Indian-born scientists next could be among the most important financial. Before the machinery of govern- have won a Nobel prize — biochemist since it gained independence in 1947. ment took over and mismanaged research Har Gobind Khorana (in 1968), astrophysi- IAfter ten years of a largely indecisive and in the mid-twentieth century, several foun- cist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (in an often scandal-ridden coalition govern- dational scientific discoveries were made 1983) and molecular biologist Venkatraman ment, there are strident demands for better in India. Between about 1900 and 1930, Ramakrishnan (in 2009) — but for work done governance, economic reform, the promo- Jagadish Chandra Bose made innovations entirely outside India. No mathematician tion of manufacturing and improvements in in wireless signalling (borrowed by Italian from India has won the Fields Medal. And agriculture, health care and environmental electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi); Indian institutes and universities do not fea- management. Meghnad Saha developed an ionization for- ture in the world’s top 200 higher-education Sadly, science and its administration, once mula for hot gases that has a central role in institutions (see go.nature.com/bc69uq). seen as central to Indian development, are stellar astrophysics; Satyendra Nath Bose’s The basic problem is that Indian science not currently on the agenda, despite some theoretical work in quantum statistics led to has for too long been hamstrung by a trenchant critiques from scientists and Bose–Einstein statistics; Chandrasekhara bureaucratic mentality that values admin- science policy-makers1,2. Repeated govern- Venkata Raman did Nobel-prizewinning istrative power over scientific achievement. ment promises to increase the expenditure work on light scattering; and in math- And, to preserve local control, research is on research and development (R&D) to 2% ematics, Srinivasa Ramanujan was equally still done mostly by small teams working in of India’s gross domestic product have not pioneering. isolation rather than through collaboration been kept. R&D spend remains at about But since 1947, there has not been a single — a key generator of impact4. 0.9% of GDP — compared with 1.12% in Nobel-prizewinning scientific or techno- More than two decades ago, the threat of Russia3 (down from 1.25% in 2009), 1.25% logical discovery, despite India’s successes in imminent national bankruptcy forced India’s in Brazil and 1.84% in China2 (see ‘Brick space, radio astronomy, biology and pharma- government to liberate its economy from the benchmarking’). ceuticals and the worldwide reputation of its notorious ‘licence–permit raj’, which had That said, the stagnation afflicting US$100-billion information technology (IT) strait-jacketed commerce and industry since 36 | NATURE | VOL 508 | 3 APRIL 2014 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT 1947. What will it take in 2014 to reinvigorate India’s decrepit scientific empires, trapped for BRICK BENCHMARKING Of the emerging economic powers, India spends the least on research and development. decades in a similarly rigid bureaucracy? On citations, it tails China, South Korea and until recently, Brazil. DEEP-ROOTED PROBLEM GROSS EXPENDITURE ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (GERD) The problem has a long history. The Council 4 of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) South Korea China Brazil Russia India SOURCE: THOMSON REUTERS was formed in 1942, before independ- ence, to establish five national laboratories 3 aimed at converting research discoveries into industrial applications. It was soon 2 widely derided. Raman, referring to the first director-general of the CSIR, chemist Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, said: “Bhatnagar built 1 the National Laboratories to bury scientific instruments”5. The situation today is no bet- GERD as % of gross domestic product domestic product GERD as % of gross 0 ter. A former CSIR director-general, chemi- 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 cal engineer Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, remarked in 2013: “India can’t remain a 2 IMPACT nation of imitators.” 1.00 In 1954, India’s Department of Atomic World average Energy (DAE) was created using a different model, later replicated for other scientific 0.75 departments, such as those for space, science and technology, electronics, biotechnol- 0.50 ogy and ocean development. Its first head, nuclear physicist Homi J. Bhabha, was made a secretary to the government, on a par with 0.25 top administrators in home affairs, finance Relative citation impact and defence. This gave atomic energy official 0 credibility, but placed it in a bureaucracy that 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 was not designed to foster innovation. Gradually, the DAE’s independence was ground down and its scientists and technolo- Development of Telematics for some years virtual abandonment of science. But none gists slotted into administrative grades in before emigrating in the early 1990s, and the of India’s science academies (such as the which they could progress no faster than their appointment in February of Indian-born Indian National Science Academy and the non-scientific peers. Research achievement Satya Nadella as chief executive of Microsoft. Indian Academy of Sciences) has taken any offered few rewards, other than a patriotic pat The problems at the national level are action — even on the widely reported cases on the back. The other scientific departments mirrored in institutions. First, scientists are of plagiarism by their fellows7. quickly went down the same route. Scientists promoted on the basis of years of service, began to measure success by their adminis- rather than achievement, and once at the FOUR STEPS TOWARDS CHANGE trative position and left research to juniors, top they stay until retirement age; long after, Indian science needs public funding, but not who saw what they had to do to move up the in some cases. Even at the prestigious Tata government control. In many countries, the hierarchy. If good science was done along the Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) promotion of science is devolved to agencies way, it was incidental. Today, although India in Mumbai, which is less rule-bound than outside the main government structures, ranks tenth in the world for output of scien- many other institutions, research groups are such as the United Kingdom’s Engineering tific papers, it ranks 166th for average cita- almost invariably headed by those who have and Physical Sciences Research Council, the tions per paper (see go.nature.com/xl3ldg). been there the longest. European Research Council, the US National Almost 20% of patents filed at the World Second, although research in the lead- Science Foundation and Singapore’s Agency Intellectual Property Organization in 2010 ing institutions is well funded — with more for Science, Technology and Research. were from China, with just 1.9% from India money available than requested in credible The first step towards reinvigorating (below Russia’s 2.1% but above Brazil’s 1.1%)6. grant applications, a striking contrast to the Indian science must be to create an empow- Nearly 60% of India’s science budget2 is situation in many nations — the funding is ered funding agency, staffed by working now spent on the CSIR, scientific depart- subject to unsuitable restrictions applicable scientists, some of whom could be non- ments and the Defence Research and to the entire government bureaucracy. These resident Indians. A possible model is the Development Organisation (DRDO) — an include limited foreign travel and no travel European Research Council, which deals enormous and impenetrable empire set up support for research students, ruling out with a complex of national governments no in 1958. None of these national institutions regular participation in leading conferences less formidable than India’s 29 state govern- has stimulated scientific excellence. Indian and research gatherings. ments, yet manages to focus on supporting scientists do outstanding work, but not in Third, the movement of researchers from research excellence. The crucial requirement India. The latest examples of this long-famil- one institution to another is discouraged, is obviously that an Indian scientific research iar situation include the award of the 2014 because administrators prefer senior posi- council be permitted to set its own criteria Marconi Prize in the United States to engi- tions to be filled by internal promotion for the evaluation of research proposals, neer Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj of Stan- rather than lateral hiring. independent of direct government control, ford University in California, who worked One would expect respected bodies of and disburse government funds accordingly. in the Indian navy and at the Centre for scientists to question the government’s A second step must be to ensure 3 APRIL 2014 | VOL 508 | NATURE | 37 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT planned rotation of institutional roles in India barely benefited from this boom and responsibilities. This occurs in most until recently, when a few enterprising university departments in the Western world IT companies such as Tata Consultancy — typically, every four or five years for the Services, Microsoft and Infosys instituted chair of a UK university department. Gov- well-planned funding to pay attractive sti- erning bodies should limit the tenure of the pends to young computer scientists taking heads of scientific institutions and groups up research careers. to, say, five years, after which they would One lesson from India’s IT industry is be expected to return to active research. that it is essential to draw the private sector This change would work best by choosing into major research programmes. Industry heads young enough to have future research at present contributes about 30% of India’s careers.
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