Science to maximise demographic dividend in India

According to an estimate India has nearly 2 lacs researchers, of 14% are women. In terms of per thousand researchers, India has only 4 scholars, which is far behind even from Kenya (6) and Chile (7). America and Britain have 79 scholar per thousand people.

As compared to 2001, India published four times more research papers, yet it was still far behind from Brazil and China.

These figures are grim indication of our status in scientific endeavour related investments and expenditure.

If india is to take lead in the 21 century, which is also touted as the 'Century of india' by our leadership, the fraction of GDP that goes into science education and research needs to increase consistently over a couple of decade.

The modern research infrastructure needs to be installed in the educational and training institutions. Training of the young population of the country, starting from high school to post gratuates levels, is mandatory in order to exploit the demographic dividend that the country has today.

We lost the opportunity during industrial revolution and still facing the stigma of backwardness. We are facing the danger of lost opportunity yet again lest we did enough to utilise energy of our young population for building a scintific momentum by educating and training our youths. This needs to be done sooner than later as we are already lagging far behind as evident by the information shared above.

(Information source: Patrika)

Why its still tough to do science in India

The scenario has certainly changed and improved since I was a graduate student, there is no doubt about it. But when I put things in perspective with other countries where our young minds migrate to advance their careers in science, I find a stark backwardness the way we do it here. It also explains why those young scientists, in most cases, do not want to return even when our government is offering lots of doles to attract them back. 

One of the main reasons for lagging behind is consistent lack in the supply of some of the basic items required to conduct the experiments. Take for example, if a student needs an antibody to quickly scan whether his hypothesis stand true or not, he needs to wait for at least one month after placing the order. Lack of timely availability of key materials delays things and increases the frustration and disenchantment of students. 

Now lets see why does this delay occur? The delay in procuring these basic items, in most cases, is because we do not manufacture these research materials here locally and for most of these items we are dependent upon other advanced countries. That is one the many reasons why things get delayed. I do agree that some of the items do get delivered in a couple of weeks time, but most of the items do not.

Another factor is ordering process in which the order itself takes two to three weeks or more to be processed due to apathy of our colleagues in the university offices. Either the said apathy is due not lack of understanding why and how importantly a particular item is needed, or its due to a deep rooted inertia and slow pace of working on files or deliberate attempt not to expedite the process. There may be many other reasons locally at other places, all of which may not be compressed in one blog. And these things cause further unnecessarily delay.

I have noticed another serious thing in research material procurement, and that is related with how much we pay for these items? It is exorbitant double or triple amount of money that we pay as compared to their price in those countries from where the items are procured.The reasons why we pay that much includes shipping charges, which is some times much more than the cost of the material shipped, import duty, taxes and profit margin of the vendor procuring the material for the scientist. 

No doubt that Government is trying to enhance the funding in science education and research and this investment is indeed encouraging and appreciable yet the pace and quality of research has not improved as expected. There are many bottlenecks which create hurdle in realizing the true potential of our young minds.

What needs to be done in this regard? I think to increase the pace and quality of our scientific research we must manufacture and create the material at home. We must encourage entrepreneurship so that investment can come in establishing companies to generate and make available research items such as antibodies, cell culture products, cells, and related consumables needed in a lab. For this government would be required to make clear policy of promoting such activity. In doing so proper guidelines of international standard are must so that we can assure the quality of the products. The country like China has done so much in so little time in this area, and it is showing in the quality of research and the quality and quantity of research papers that they publish in international journals. We must not lag behind and should take it with utmost urgency or we may miss the flight.

Next, we must create labs and lab products of international quality, train and hire our youths in these labs, create an efficient scientific work culture, make the science more lucrative as a career option so that a science graduate gets handsome payment and job option when he steps out with a degree. This will ensure that our youth do not look to go abroad to further their career in science and we loose them for ever.

I do not know, at this time, who will take these steps and many other things necessary to take India to another level of scientific prudence and productivity for which we have been known. But, as a scientist and educator we must discuss and deliberate at various fora, so that these words reach right ears. Indeed, we have had a rich scientific culture which needed to be revived and advanced. At least