The Selling Of Science

THE free market virus has finally penetrated Indian fundamental science. The accountability of the scientific community will now be measured in terms of returns on investment—the buzzword is corporatisation of research institutes and the strategy is to find the entrepreneur in the scientist. To this end, Government funds will be channelled to projects which are market-friendly, that is, geared towards application and practicability.

The change was slow, but inevitable. In 1989, India invested 1.1 per cent of its GDP on research. Today, the figure is down to 0.83 per cent. With more than 60 per cent of the spending on science going towards salaries and routine overheads, the labs are forcing people to concentrate only in areas where the transfer of knowledge from the lab to the assembly line can be done easily. (In the last Budget, Finance Minister   P. Chidambaram called for 50 per cent self-financing.) As a result, over the last six years, the axe has fallen mainly on funding for fundamental research. The 25,000 scientists at the 41 national labs of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are now forced to mop up at least one-third of their budgetary needs from within. A phenomenon that has saddened premier scientists of the country.

Markets, they warn, do not tolerate the space for playful indulgence, a vital breeding ground for fundamental science that operates in the frontier areas of knowledge and helps widen and reformulate previous scientific positions. Says former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, M.R. Srinivasan: "The scientific community is very perturbed by the downslide in allocations for research in the past five years. Liberalisation notwithstanding, it’s wrong to work on the premise that there is no use reinventing the wheel." Adds Professor Virendra Singh, director, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR): "If you keep peering over the scientists’ shoulders and checking the use of their work, it’s going to be counter-productive. They need breathing space. Scientists must be allowed to do research without clamping result or income-oriented goals on them." 

Apart from being myopic, the scientists feel target-oriented funding creates its own problems. Says Obaid Siddiqui, professor of eminence at TIFR and director of its National Centre for Biological Sciences: "As money available for fundamental research is limited, institutions and researchers end up making false promises about their work to get funding." Siddiqui feels basic research is crucial and has to be open-ended. "In basic research, scientists can’t say what they’re working towards and to achieve what goal. The benefits of basic research cannot be immediate. But it’s the basis for any applied science and has long-term benefits."

But the white paper on CSIR, authored by its director general, R.A. Mashelkar, is corporate and result-oriented and emphasises the supremacy of the market. CSIR’s strategy, says the white paper, is to evolve a balanced portfolio of projects by shedding programmes and activities that are unviable. The chapter on intellectual property rights (IPR) talks more of economics than of science. It declares: "CSIR’s IPR policy is to maximise the benefits from its intellectual capital by stimulating higher levels of innovation through a judicious system of rewards and forging strategic alliances for enhancing the value of its IPR." It would invest only in that basic research that supports its "scientific industrial research" programmes.

Prof C.N.R. Rao, president, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, rejects the Mashelkar project outright. Says Rao: "CSIR’s premise, which has led to a stress on developing innovative technologies, is wrong. Development of technologies can only be based on high sciences and involves first-rate minds. There seems to be a peculiar euphoria about liberalisation among administrators which leads them to believe that the economic scenario brought about by liberalisation is conducive only for developing innovative technologies." Support for high-level pure sciences is as essential for developing new technologies as basic infrastructure is for economic development, he says.

Trashing the question of the relevance of research, Rao asks: "How much of the ’96 Nobel Prize winners’ work is relevant this year? Many projects I undertake are also not relevant rightaway. This attitude of asking for a progress report every three months has destroyed the scientific fibre of several countries." With the Rao regime quietly scrapping the high-level Science Advisory Council, "there’s none to talk to the Government and advise it about these matters," laments Rao. Nor has the Government shown any intention of reviving the council.

The attitude of industry is also responsible for the changes initiated by the CSIR. Says Prof K.S.V. Santhanam of the chemical physics group, TIFR: "Companies like to use the collaboration route to bring in technology and there is a taboo on using what’s here. After spending so much money, many projects end up as pilots." For instance, though the country has fairly good technology for making caustic soda, almost all the 30-odd caustic soda plants have foreign technology. "The cost differential is considerable," says Santhanam.

But there are scientists who are perturbed at the way pure science research is going and feel result-oriented funding may help separate the wheat from the chaff. Says a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore: "How much of the basic research is really worth doing? The Abid Hussain committee had recommended that just about a dozen research institutes be kept alive. The pretence of having research just for the sake of it is bad science. It’s better to have no science than bad science." 

The decline in support, they argue, is not as bad as it’s made out to be, because it’s not indiscriminate. The biggest shortcoming of Indian science is that individuals were ranked higher than research institutes. While individuals do excel, they are unable to sustain it. And the institutes that depend on them manage to do well only as long as they perform. Siddiqui disagrees. "In fundamental research, people are more important than projects. Good people build around them a productive work atmosphere." 0ver the years, the climate of research has improved, there are more people, but quality has dipped. Says Siddiqui: "In the last 20 years, institutions have grown very fast and some of this expansion has been indiscriminate. With the growing paucity of talent, and UGC grants for research too little to encourage budding talents, most keen scholars cross the shores, and institutions end up taking the second best."

The major bone of contention is the anchoring of the science and technology (S&T) policy on the new economic policy and cor-poratisation of the CSIR in terms of output and organisational structure. To hitch S&T to the corporate wagon would force selective promotion of some technologies and deliberate suppression of others in response to corporate needs. For instance, research in solar photo-voltaics foundered as pioneering small solar firms were bought up by the oil companies which control a bulk of conventional energy sources and determine the direction and the speed of their exploitation.

Mashelkar expects CSIR revenues to boom to Rs 700 crore a year by 2000 AD, from the present level of Rs 177 crore. He declares: "Now we have marketing groups at every lab. Governments over the world want to make economic sense of their science. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have recast primary S&T organisation on corporate lines to treat research as business."

True, technology is coming in with liberalisation, but views differ on their quality and relevance. Srinivasan believes India is not getting cutting-edge technology. Countries are exporting only their second or third-best technologies. Says he: "It’s in our interest to seek and build the best. For which research needs to be encouraged. Unless allocations for research are raised—and dramatically—it will be very difficult for the country’s scientific labs to retain top people." And India may ultimately lose out in the all-important global technology race, entering the 21st century with the West’s shorn baggage while its own homegrown talent strengthens other nations.