Can Indians in India get a Nobel?

We’re all proud that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has won this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry. But a questions that comes to everyones (probably only Indians) mind that why Indians have to flee India and work in a developed country for a pathbreaking discovery that puts them on the Nobel shortlist.

The first and the last time an Indian scientist won a Nobel prize while in India was when C V Raman won one in 1930. Since then, a lot of sewage has flowed down the Ganga. India ceased to be a colony. The new government of independent India laid much stress on nurturing science and technology in India.

Independence also stripped the government of the facile expedient of blaming the colonial government for failing to nurture Indian talent or build domestic institutions that would allow creative research to flourish. And we created a bureaucratic, sclerotic science and technology establishment, the apogee of whose achievement is a thermonuclear bomb that might or might not have been a dud.

Okay, that was uncharitable and undeserved. India has satellite and launch capabilities that are decent by any standards . Missiles and nuclear powered submarines shore up India’s strategic capability. All this is fine. But these are developments in technology and its application to a specific end. We are yet to see any great flourishing of basic research.

Very few institutions undertake that. Universities are, for the most part, teaching shops and examination conducting machines. Expanding the frontiers of knowledge is not a priority for Indian academia. Papers are published because that is how promotions are achieved. Very few of these papers are cited by other researchers around the world.

A sharp cleavage exists between teaching, done in universities, and research, housed in specialised state research outfits. Universities and research organisations do not interact. Faculty pay is at a steep discount to what comparable skills would fetch in industry, ensuring that very few of those who fill academic posts embody first rate talent.

Those who do, migrate to a few centres of excellence, leaving the bulk of Indian students to the tender mercies of mediocrity. Is it any wonder Indians have to flee India to win a Nobel prize?

Modified from ET Bureau