In 2009, when Infosys Ltd was 25 years old, its founders and managing directors were looking for ways to acknowledge science and academia’s role in the growth of IT industry. This was the genesis of the Infosys Science Foundation, which, after it was set up in February that year, instituted the Infosys Prize.
On November 7, the foundation will announce the winners in the six categories, each of whom will receive a prize money of US$100,000, a gold medal and a citation.
In an interview with The Hindu , S.D. Shibulal, one of founders and former CEO of the company, who is currently the president of the ISF, takes stock of the decade and the road ahead. Edited excerpts:
Would you be able to share some of the foundation’s plans for the future?
Over the last 10 years, we have given around 67 awards, and all the recipients have gone on to do research in multiple areas. But 10% are doing fundamentally important things. We have two Nobel laureates [Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee], two Field Medallists [Manjul Bhargava and Akshay Ventakesh], and the first lady from India to be elected to the fellowship of The Royal Society of London [Gagandeep Kang].
The Infosys Prize was not supposed to be a lifetime achievement award, but a mid-career award to allow recipients to continue their work and get recognised even more. We are extremely happy to have achieved this. Our awardees are already looking to the future; their research is not limited to the areas that they won awards in. Their work is much broader and they are addressing some of the big issues that will face in the next decade from climate change to genetics.
The Foundation’s focus will remain the same. To reward science and research, both basic and applied. Our active programme will continue to be the prize and the Science Foundation lectures.
The Economic Survey 2018 shows that the percentage of GDP in R&D has been stagnant at 0.6-0.7 in the last two decades. Can you comment on the funding crisis.
We have multiple challenges in this area, and before I come to that I’d like to address three points. First, the whole education system is based on maximising job prospects, on creating employability. Secondly, we do not inculcate curiosity in children. The third is that we have separate teaching and separate research institutions, when world over it is combined. I can see the shift in India and many universities are talking about research. When this happens, students actually come out of an environment where research is an integral part of their learning process.
So coming back to funding, I don’t know the exact numbers but it might have stagnated. In the 2019 budget, the Finance Minister spoke about establishing a national research foundation [to fund, coordinate and foster research] and allocating I think 1% of our GDP.
But we also have multiple challenges to address. We have to reshape our thinking on how we can combine teaching and research; we have to reshape our thinking on the outcome we are looking for, and rethink the funding status.
Do these issues affect research and development? Would it be harsh to say that India is not known for innovation?
We tend to be too harsh on ourselves, which is a good thing because that’s the way to improve. But we always have to look at the challenges. We have around 300 million children in school. I don’t have the exact number, but that would be if you take 1.3 billion people and compute that, maybe 200-300 million children, in schools.
That is more than the population of most of the countries which we compare ourselves with. It’s important to understand that these are very complex issues and systems to deal with. Of course, it requires a concerted effort, and no doubt multiple parties will have a part to play in it.
As per the 2019 Global Innovation Index, we have improved our ranking from 57 last year to 52. If we look at innovation related to our GDP per capita over the past nine years, we are one of the top. The point I’m trying to make is that everything is relative. There is only so much GDP, so we have to measure our innovation across those lines also.
Look at some of our achievements: Chandrayaan in my mind was an extremely successful mission. Yes, there was a last-minute snag. For a mission of that magnitude to get so close is very good. While we have a long way to go, at the same time we should also, given where we are, our GDP, our size, the number of children in school, I think we are doing a fairly good job.
How much of a role should the private sector have in funding research in institutions. The fear is that science funding will be predicated by its practical applications. Is there a middle path?
Successful countries have funding from both sides, public and private. And the public funding, generally, looks after the fundamental science, whereas private funding mostly happens to solve a problem.
You need a balance of the two, but that will get built over a period of time because today in India, private funding is low. That’s also because in India, the barrier between industry and academia is quite high when compared to other parts of the world. And private funding in applied sciences will increase when these two come closer and closer. But we are making progress.
Much has been written about gender ratios is basic sciences, a trend that is all the more pronounced in India. What must be done to encourage more young women to enter the field of pure sciences?
Around 23% of our Laureates are women, and in a way it reflects the environment in which we try to identify the winners. Our jury panels will always have women members to avoid any unconscious possible bias.
We feel that women ought to be represented in every field. And not just women, every segment of the population should be represented in research and science. Humans do have a tendency to look at role models and successful people. Young people look forward to reaching the same position has their role models. The more people we identify, the better. But it has to be based on merit.
