From the Red Fort to the Red Planet, Indian science and technology has done remarkably well given the resources allocated and confidence bestowed on it through the idea of creating a ‘scientific temper’. Can Indian boffins do better? Certainly; yet painting them as monumental failures in the last 60 years is a travesty of justice. India has its own unique way of doing research and development and its fruits have touched the lives of every citizen and made the country a better place. Every sixth person on this planet is an Indian; consequently if Indian science works to meet the country’s huge unmet needs, it is indeed serving the globe.
In less than 60 years, Indian minds have contributed to transform the country from a so-called ‘basket case’ to a global force to reckon with. Reaching self-sufficiency in food and being able to feed 1.21 billion people is a tribute to the acumen of Indian agri-scientists who sweated in the sun, not the ‘techno-geeks’ who tap on keyboards in plush air-conditioned environments. Becoming the ‘pharmacy of the world’ is not because someone outsourced work to cheap ‘techno coolies’. Reaching Mars in the debut attempt through the world’s cheapest inter-planetary mission was not because of ‘body-shopping’, but due to the intense work of scientists at the Indian space agency. That Bengaluru could morph so easily into the information technology capital of the world was possible only because it was truly India’s ‘science city’, where institutions like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) nurtured wisdom and talent.
Recently there was a piercing barb by N.R. Narayana Murthy, the illustrious founder of Infosys Limited, questioning the contributions of our top institutions. He asked what they have done “to make our society and world a better place? Is there one invention from India that has become a household name?” On the face, many would think this is correct. Dig deeper and one realises how shallow and misplaced Murthy is in his understanding of India’s scientific ecosystem.
Rejecting Murthy’s claim with the ‘all the disdain it deserves’, C.N.R. Rao, India’s most recent Bharat Ratna in science, says Murthy’s interpretation ‘is highly exaggerated and completely wrongly worded’. It may sound like hitting below the belt but Rao asks, “What new earth-shattering idea or product has Infosys come up with that has helped the society?” According to Rao, the industry has failed Indian science by not investing enough in R&D; almost two-thirds of all investment comes from the government.
Just half a century earlier, food shortages were plenty and grains like wheat were being imported in millions of tonnes from the U.S. under the PL 480 scheme. Since they landed on seaside ports, the phrase ‘ship to mouth’ became a household name. Food rationing was rampant, households usually converged at ‘ration shops’ and not at ‘food courts’. The grim mood was exemplified by Paul Ehlirch, a professor from Stanford who – in his The Population Bomb – said, “The train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion. India was doomed, and should be left to die in a triage.”
In 1981, the year when Infosys was born, India produced about 129 million tonnes of food grain feeding 683 million people. The country was a net importer of grains. In 2014, the country produced 263 million tons of food grain feeding 1.21 billion people. Doubling food grain output in 35 years could not have happened, if not for the hard-working agricultural scientists and receptive farmers. Today, India is a net exporter of food grains. In 2013, the country exported $39 billion worth of agricultural products. None of this would have been possible had Indian scientist not toiled silently to make incremental innovations; no patents were necessary nor were any taken. Such noble deeds are certainly a cause for ‘delight for global citizens’. Today the ‘food courts’ are overflowing and the country’s image in the world has been transformed through the contributions of the software professionals. India has the third largest economy and from being the ‘land of snake charmers’ the country is now the land of the ‘mouse that moves the world’.
However, this is not to say that all is right with the Indian S&T system. Chronic under-funding and understaffing for a country of this size is one issue. India’s S&T workforce is estimated to be just about 200,000 with just four researchers per 10,000 people compared to 79 for the U.S. and 18 for China. India spent a mere 0.9 per cent of its GDP while China — with a much bigger economy — spends two per cent of its GDP on R&D. In its May 14, 2015 issue, an editorial in Nature noted, “India has a puny scientific workforce, relatively few high-quality universities, an anaemic manufacturing sector and an epidemic of red tape.” All of this drastically affects scientific output.
On an average, in 2013, for every one million people India filed only 17 patents compared to 541 by China and 4,451 by South Korea. As Raghunath A. Mashelkar — former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) — is fond of saying, the norm ‘patent, publish and flourish’ has still not seeped in.
Today, according to the estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO), every third child in the globe — who is vaccinated through its programme — is protected through a vaccine manufactured in India. No small achievement for a country where the industry forever seeks to import technology.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the world body that helps needy countries, dubs India the ‘global pharmacy of the world’. It was work done at a nondescript CSIR lab in Hyderabad (not Cyberabad) which was then absorbed by Cipla Limited that became a game changer to the extent that the global rules of trade had to be tweaked to accommodate this innovation. The happy outcome was that the epidemic of AIDS, especially in Africa, could be stemmed because of Indian contributions. Consequently, through ‘pharma diplomacy’, India pushed back China’s foray into Africa to control the rich natural resources. The cost of AIDS treatment — a whopping $10,000 a year — dropped by more than 30 times to just $300 per year simply because ‘affordable excellence’ was part of the DNA of Indian researchers. Mashelkar says ‘still Saraswati comes before Laxmi’ i.e. knowledge before wealth!
Frugal technology development thrives in India; but low cost does not mean low value. Mangalyaan is still a work in progress, as the scientific results from the ‘technology demonstrator’ — made at a cost less than the making of the Hollywood blockbuster Gravity — are still being analysed. Yet, the Mars Orbiter Mission has paved a new global pathway way for inter-planetary travel, so much so that NASA now seeks to collaborate with the Indian space agency.
Remember the scientific contribution from Chandrayaan-1. India’s maiden mission to the moon re-wrote the geological understanding of the moon by finding the presence of water molecules on the parched surface. In times to come, when seeding life outside the Earth through colonisation becomes a reality, India’s contribution could be rated on a par with those Indian thinkers who contributed to evolving the concept of ‘zero’ or shunya . How can one even monetise such epochal contributions? Or should we even? Profits and bottomlines seldom drive creativity.
In his thought-provoking convocation address to the young students of the IISc on July 15, 2015, Murthy also said, “Is there one invention from India that has become a household name in the globe? Is there one technology that has transformed the productivity of global corporations? Is there is (sic) one idea that has led to an earth-shaking invention to delight global citizens? Folks, the reality is that there is no such contribution from India in the last 60 years.” Mashelkar concurs, saying that on all these fronts the answer is no doubt an ‘absolute zero’. But he gently adds that the new buzzword for the 21st century is ‘more from less for more’, a concept pioneered in India that even multi-national companies (MNCs) are adopting. This is probably why MNCs are setting up huge R&D bases in India. General Electric leads the pack with its John F. Welch Technology Centre in Whitefield near Bengaluru, which employs 5000 engineers and scientists and new products like the potable ECG machine are being sold through new business innovations.
Despite the unusually bleak picture presented by Murthy, there is still hope. According to the latest statistics available with the Department of Science and Technology, in 2013 India ranked sixth in the number of total annual research papers published; up from being ranked 12th in 2005. India published 102,753 papers contributing 4.36 per cent of the global research output. This was surpassed by the U.S., China, the U.K., Germany and Japan but the silver lining is that India’s compounded annual growth rate is the highest at 13.4 per cent; even higher than China’s 12 percent though India’s regional rival contributes 18.7 per cent of the world research output. One could dismiss these as cherry-picked government estimates, yet the highly regarded science watch group Thomson Reuters predicts that “India’s research productivity will be on par with most G8 nations within seven to eight years.”
Raghavendra Gadagkar, President of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, says “The claim of Narayana Murthy is so obviously wrong that I am not going to try to convince him with facts to the contrary. I am inclined to consider it as the well-meaning chiding of a patriarch attempting to push us to do even better.” If industry would pitch in with funding towards R&D, India could well become the powerhouse of innovation whose pent-up ambitions are waiting to be released. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ could unleash that potential transforming India and the world. To do that Mashelkar says, ‘Indians have that special gene for affordable excellence.’ Let us celebrate, not kill, the Indian innovation potential.
Pallava Bagla, a globally recognised science writer and co-author of Reaching for the Stars: India’s Journey to Mars. pallava.bagla@gmail.com
