Pop science

Angela Saini, debut author of Geek Nation, How Indian Science is Taking over the World, is on a publicity tour of India. Saini, who did a post-graduate degree in engineering science from the University of Oxford, is an award-winning science journalist who has published in Science, Wired, The Guardian and New Scientist, here talks to Sunitha B about the book and how she got down to writing it.

What is Geek Nation all about?
Geek Nation is a journalist’s journey through India, looking for why and how the country is set to become the world’s next science superpower. It is the result of a six-month journey I made in 2009-10 through Indian cities, from Thiruvananthapuram, Mysore and Bangalore to Lucknow and New Delhi.

What was the experience like?
I travelled through a wonderful and diverse scenario. I saw a rocket launch at the Indian Space Research Organisation, I was inside India’s biggest nuclear facility, I travelled in remote valleys of the Western Ghats, and went to the cotton fields of the poorest farmers on earth. I visited the IITs, and interviewed people like Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy. One of the quests in my journey through India was for the ancient roots of Indian science.

What are the most promising researches you found?
There are pockets of innovation in different cities. In Chennai, it is medicine, software in Bangalore and agriculture in Lucknow. But the most promising was Open Source Drug Discovery, a government initiative to collect individual scientific research and make sense of it. They’re now working on the M Tuberculosis genome. It’s antithetical to practices in global research, where IPR is jealously guarded.

Pure science and fundamental research are, however, lagging in India.
I believe that’s because India continues to loose a lot of talent to foreign universities. But now the IITs are strengthening their research environment to attract PhDs. More and more MNCs are opening their R&D facilities in India.

What next? Do you have another book planned?
Geek Nation was released in the UK in March 2011 and in India in April 2011. A Chinese translation is coming next. I love my job as a science journalist and am going back to it. No second book is planned.

What has been the response to the book?
I have had wide press coverage. Popular science writing is one of the favourite reads of people all over.

You have a blog with an intriguing title...
“Nothing shocks me, I’m a scientist” — the title of my blog is borrowed from the film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.