Misplaced priority

The perils of ignoring basic science research

Indians are taught early that science is only a means to an end. All the bright young people who enter the "science stream" of various schools are told to have their eyes set not on that ever-receding horizon of scientific discovery, but on the more mundane, if more monetarily rewarding, prospect of a career in engineering. Lost in this mindset is this basic fact: for a country, basic science is as essential as engineering. If anything, for a country struggling to lift itself up the value chain, basic science is perhaps more important than engineering. Sadly, the present state of Indian science does not measure up to its potential. Nor is it quite as much of a priority as it should be. The recently-held 101st session of the Indian Science Congress bore this out amply - it largely failed to generate the same kind of interest in scientific circles and the media as many of its predecessors. One possible reason: a perceptible drop in the participation of outstanding scientists from across the globe, as well as in the quality of papers presented there. And, if there's a root cause for this, it's that the Indian state has for many years failed to prioritise basic science properly. Dismay over state apathy and meagre funding for science and technology was recently articulated, with great emotion, by the distinguished scientist C N R Rao - himself chairman of the Prime Minister's scientific advisory council - soon after being conferred the country's highest honour, the Bharat Ratna. He squarely blamed the bureaucratic stranglehold over science policy and scientific institutions.

India's total R&D expenditure has seldom touched even one per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP). This compares poorly with not only the developed countries but also with some of India's rapidly-growing developing-country competitors, such as Brazil and China. The average annual R&D expenditure in the past ten years comes to merely 0.9 per cent of GDP, though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been stressing the need for raising it to at least two per cent since at least 2007 - and his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, suggested it in his address to the science congress in 2000. And over half of the meagre R&D expenditure goes to just a handful of sectors: space, defence, atomic energy, pharmaceuticals and automobiles. Many other vital areas, particularly fundamental research, remain woefully underfunded. The emerging science of biotechnology, too, is a victim of policy inertia - the all-important regulatory reform might be a casualty of the inability of this Parliament to pass any laws. Worst of all, universities - which account for a sizable part of total research effort as reflected in research publications - get less than five per cent of the country's overall R&D expenditure.

The problem, however, extends beyond the public sector. Indian enterprise has also been stepmotherly about research. A recent study by Business Today found that six of the ten top companies in terms of R&D spending have tended to slash their expenditure on this count in the past few years. An aversion to capital risk and inadequate fiscal and other incentives for investing in R&D are among the major reasons for this. The Planning Commission, too, has observed that the current tax benefits have led to only marginal results. Besides, the linkage between academic research and industry is rather weak in India. In most scientifically advanced countries, a good proportion of technological innovations comes from industry-sponsored research projects at universities and research institutions.

This apart, most research institutions in India lack intellectual freedom and academic environment conducive for creative work. Faulty promotion policies, unfair academic practices, sycophancy, substandard publications and brain drain are among other formidable drags on the quantity and quality of their output. Unless such issues are suitably addressed, the country's research base will remain weak. And India's brightest will continue to see science as an activity fit only for schoolchildren.