Prof P Balaram about science as a driver of the future. It certainly is a driver of the future; Commerce is not. Q. Why is that Indian researchers doing research in India do not get a Nobel Prize? You are probably the 100th person who has asked this question. Sometimes in public and once by a minister when I was young and less cautions - My answer is – if you want to progress you should ask the right questions – in research, if you want to do well the most important thing is to find the right questions to ask much more important than finding in the answers. Now, in evaluating the past of science in India and in looking at what its future might be.. this is completely the wrong question – this is because prizes are given for one off events – they are sometimes given for discoveries – and Raman Effect was a discovery. They are sometimes given for a very large body of work in a given area which has advanced the area substantially but that is work given to individuals who had stayed the course and who had worked for 50 to 60 years in a given field. And this becomes the lifetime achievement of an individual. But whichever way it is.. what prizes recognize are individual exceptional achievement and merit. So when this will happen (getting a Nobel Prize) is something that cannot be predicted and again we cannot legislate it. It is not enough for a PM or minister to stand up and declare we are not going to invest this much money or we will have five Nobel Prizes in five years. I think we are sometimes unnecessarily obsessed with Nobel Prizes because we crave for recognition from the West. And I don’t think we are in a stage that we can say look there are several potential Noble Prizes won by India. I can ask you a counter question – We have one gold medal by Abhinav Bindra – you can ask a question – when was the medal won – has it done much for shooting event in India; has it done much for Indians more generally ? We have to be more pragmatic in realizing that individual achievement is not an indication to collective progress. What a country needs is collective progress… an institution also needs collective progress… Our country has progressed enormously on all fronts… and many of those fronts I think one aspect or the other science and technology has contributed greatly to progress… you must remember even if an invention, discovery is made anywhere you still need an huge amount of knowhow to be able to accommodate, accept and use that .. so in industries as diverse as IT industry to ASIAN EDUCATOR I August 2011
Nuclear program or Space program we can’t say that we have not done well. We have done very well… and we can’t say that our institutions have not done well.. without the institutions where are the people to work then. Q. Should we compare China’s development to India’s development? It’s a question that can be asked but we should not worry about it too much. China has its own trajectory and we have our own. Comparing the two is not required – we should worry about how to make our trajectory successful .. China has a completely different social and political system and a set of historical circumstances under which the country has reached the stage it has reached and we have a different set of circumstances… really I would view both India and China as great success.. we unfortunately sometimes look over our shoulders at China.. it might be good sometimes but I would not actually succumb to China syndrome. Q: Funding for research … has it been a problem in India? Funds for research are far more substantially available in India than they were a few years ago. Sometimes I wish I were younger all over again. There seems to be much more money available to do what we wanted to do. At the same time many institutions are reaching a capacity where they are not able to absorb and utilize funds that are limited. Our administrative structures, our financial structures within the institutions need to become innovative. If there one sphere in which we need innovation, it’s the sphere of finance and administration. Q. Your opinion on involving private sector in research… We would very much welcome the private sector’s involvement in basic research – industry of course has its own compulsions – they cannot invest in long term research which appears to have not end – but if you don’t invest in long term research you lose people – you need good people to stay in research - it is these students who go on to work on other problems later – research is also education – research is one of the important components of education for people who are going to employ at the upper reaches of R&D. Industry needs to recognize this and needs to recognize it has vastly benefitted by many reforms that have taken place in the last few years.. In addition to making large profits they must think in some way of using some of the money earned to back into research. w