It has been said for decades that India has the third-largest scientific and technical manpower in the world""without reference to whether most of the people qualified in the relevant disciplines are actually involved in scientific or technical work. The successes of the past decade in the field of software and information technology-enabled services have also created the impression that the country is strong in the broad field of science and technology. Given the way images of success get built up, many people would have been surprised at the disquieting warning last week that Indian science is on the decline, a warning that has come from none other than the Prime Minister's scientific advisor, Professor C N R Rao, and one that needs, therefore, to be taken seriously. | |
| This decline in Indian science has taken place when it is moving ahead elsewhere with unimaginable rapidity, to support technology-led growth. When measured in terms of the percentage contribution to world science and to high-quality research papers, the Indian position is all the more dismal. Against China's contribution of 12 per cent to world science, India's is only 3 per cent. The proportion of high-impact research papers from India is even worse, at just 1 per cent. And in terms of the number of citations per scientific paper, another globally recognised parameter of the quality of scientific research, India ranks 119th. And if Indian science output is calculated on a per capita basis, it works out to just 20 papers per million people, against about 1,000 papers per million people in the US. No wonder then that even much smaller countries like Taiwan and South Korea have become global players and have overtaken India, which at one stage was viewed as a potential world leader in this field. In fact, there are not many scientists in India today who can measure up to world standards, let alone hope to win a Nobel prize. |
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| The reasons for this sorry state of affairs are well-known. The most striking among these is the poor investment in scientific research, the bureaucratic domination of scientific bodies and the political manipulation of education and science. Unfortunately, private sector investment in this sector is abysmally low and public sector investment is not growing. Though it is well appreciated that an investment of at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) needs to be made in science and technology generation, so as to sustain healthy economic growth, the present level is just a fraction of that. How such low investment can jeopardise development is manifested starkly in the agriculture sector, where the growth rate of output has decelerated perceptibly because of stagnation in research investment, at a mere 0.3-0.5 per cent of agricultural GDP, and therefore the absence of any research breakthroughs. Equally worrisome is the sharp decline in the quality of human resource in this sector as science is no longer considered an attractive career option for the bright youth. |
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| While all this makes for a sorry state of affairs, the truth also is that a revamp of this sector is not difficult, though it would require considerable will and determination. Much of what needs to be done is already stipulated in the science and technology policy adopted in 2003, a document that has been forgotten after it was put together. The policy has clearly laid down that the government should, through its own resources and contribution by industry, push up investment in science to the desirable level of 2 per cent of GDP. Equally significantly, it has ordained that all science-based ministries, departments and other bodies should be run by scientists and technologists and all socio-economic ministries should have in-house scientific advisory mechanisms. Also, close interaction has been mooted between private and public institutions in science and technology. It is only if all this is done that the country can hope to improve on what has so far been a pretty sorry record. |
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