The Scientist - Indian

Indian science has not grown but scientists have grown. CSIR doubles fellowships (good though)is another indication of trying to grow more and more scientists. Does science also grow commensurate with the growth of scientists? Numerically India bosts of as one of the countries with largest number of scientists. However, one notices from the newspapers that more often the inventions/innovations/discoveries are from countries other than India. What is the problem of Indian scientists? Interestingly some recognised scientists are NRI scientists. This year's Padmabhushan awardee too is an NRI! History tells us that Indian scientists who are Nobel awardees are again people of Indian origin and for their contributions to science elsewhere than in India except of course for Sir CV Raman. Whether it is western world or Europe where Indians flurish is because they perish if they don't perform. In India scientists flurish and science perishes - more so in government research institutions. Scientists in India are just not only in Space Programmes or Missiles Programmes, they cover all branches of science in the country. Indian Space Programme alone is perhaps a success story. There will be no war with any country and therefore there is no way of targetting the missiles developed. DRDO fired their missiles and claimed to be successful and media too hailed. Have they tested with dummy targets at appropriate distances to really say they have achieved success? At the recently held Indian Science Congress, PM has suggested inviting NRI scientists to India to participate in short term programmes. This is nothing new and there have been any number of such programmes in the past - what was the success rate. More often perhaps it enabled NRIs to visit their families at government expense and also open up evenues for our scientists to visit US (scratching each other's back).

The Scientist

The Scientist