(Lightly edited for readability)
Speakers: Arindam Ghosh, Shubha Tole, Subhra Priyadarshini
Subhra Priyadarshini 0:19: Hello and welcome to the Nature India podcast. I'm your host Subhra Priyadarshini.
It's April 2024. And India, the world's largest democracy and most populous nation is, on election mode. Close to 970 million voters are eligible to cast their votes in this election, which will last almost a month and a half. In Nature India's election special today, we'll look at some questions that scientists in this country have been pondering over -- things that have gone right in the last few years of governance and things that might get some help from quick interventions by an incoming government, a government which will actually have the benefit of looking at science policy, and administration with fresh eyes.
India's science has seen some real highs in the past few years. For instance, we've all heard of the successful moon mission and ISRO's other technological leaps. We've heard of the success stories in vaccines and drug development. In terms of scientific publications, India has sharply risen to become the third largest contributor to scientific knowledge production after the US and China.
All that is laudable -- big ticket events, and figures that India can rightfully feel proud about. At the same time, scientists have been frustrated with the stagnancy in research funding over the years or the ecosystem being plagued due to bureaucratic hurdles. Sometimes, things don't move fast enough -- that's been a constant worry. Or even the lack of private funding avenues, almost 60% of India's science is funded by the government. A National Research Foundation has been put in place in India in the hopes to bring in more autonomy to research funding, and to tap into private funds. But how it might be able to do so is still not quite clear.
Now, there's also pseudoscience to be tackled. And as we all know, public trust in science has been on the downside. And that's not just in India, but across the world. But given India's massive 1.4 billion population, it does assume more significance than any place else. And the scientific community time and again, grapples with the issue of research misconduct or of sub-optimal use of limited public money allocated to research.
Well, these are just some of the things that we keep reporting about. But today, we have in our virtual studio, two scientists, with whom I'd like to talk about some of these issues. We have physicist Arindam Ghosh, professor in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and neuroscientist, Shubha Tole, Dean of Graduate Studies at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.
Let me begin, both of you, by asking what you think are the key issues in India science that the scientific community would really like addressed when a newly elected government takes office in about a couple of months from now.
Arindam Ghosh 3:32: A newly elected government will hopefully have time and implement long term policies, what I would really look forward to once the new government comes in is to take hard policy decisions which will make doing science impactful both in the short and the longer term and there are requirements of such policy changes. For example, there are restrictions in purchases or research that are bottlenecks, in inviting people from different conferences, because we are tied with various MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) restrictions. So there are a large number of policies that require to be separated when it comes to research and our visibility in the global platform. We would like, for example, the government now in the last term has started several mission modes, which will have finite duration. So the scientific community in India will have to provide or come up with results within a finite length of time. So for all these, there are requirements of easier bureaucratic processes, and relatively more smoother and faster action time on various aspects. And hopefully, some of those will be easier for the newly elected government to implement rather than those which are, you know, busy and committed to other mandates.
Shubha Tole 5:00: This is an important juncture at which we should think about these issues. So I'm very glad you raised them. One is to enable science to flourish simply by disbursing already approved funds in a timely manner. The second is to capitalise on our culture's attraction and enthusiasm for science. Our young people really enjoy every outreach event that, you know, we've seen we've done, there is so much burning desire to learn, I think we should capitalise on that and feed this interest with properly structured programmes. And the NEP (National Education Policy) actually has a framework and the people are thinking about it. And the third is to recognise that science is actually an international endeavour. And we should really not recognise national borders in trying to discover truths. The truths are really universal and above us all.
Subhra Priyadarshini 5:57: Funding for science has been stagnant for the last few years though.
Shubha Tole 6:00: Funding is always limited. In every sphere, there can always be more. So rather than argue for more funds, I would simply say, whatever has been approved, simply make it efficient in terms of dispersal. Grants do not come on time. Granting agencies do not seem to have the regular annual funding cycle in which you send out proposals and by this deadline, if approved, you get funding by this deadline. We've all been through where, first year money comes, after that you don't get funds for a while. You cannot do competitive science this way. Your competitors all over the world are forging ahead and here you're waiting because you can't see your grant-funded employees, student or postdocs, or you can't order some critical reagent simply because an already approved grant fund has not arrived. Grants are not the only funds. The even more vital funds are, in fact, students salaries, student fellowships. Social media is full of how poorly we treat our most precious resource, a young mind that wants to get into science. Students are the ones on whose shoulders all our science runs. They are the ones in the labs doing the experiments. They want to learn, and we simply owe it to them to pay them on time.
Again, I'm not talking about quantum of funding, that's a separate argument. It would be excellent if their funding were inflation protected, if it was linked to annual DA. For some reason student fellowships don't have a DA component, they are fixed and then after some number of years, it becomes woefully inadequate. And then there are protests and then it gets hiked. Why have the sub-optimal model, why not link student fellowships to the years? But even more fundamental, why not simply pay an already approved amount on time, so that the student does not have to wait 5, 6, 7 months, sometimes more than a year. And then we seem to want to assuage ourselves by saying, "Oh, they will get arrears". That doesn't help a student who has to pay their bills and purchase their, you know, basic living necessities, or even support their families on a monthly basis. So overall message: Whatever money has been approved, either grants for scientific research or student fellowships, please disperse it on time. Let's have a regular financial cycle.
Arindam Ghosh 8:17: We would like to have, and this is also an important aspect which a newly elected government can do, is to have patience. One has to understand that investing in science will not give an instantaneous return. You can see many of the other countries which are now at the forefront in scientific productivity, they have been investing a much larger amount for decades, and built an ecosystem. We are doing that. Our investments are bearing fruits. Patience from the government and giving more trust and faith or its scientists will be particularly useful.
Subhra Priyadarshini 8:57 In science education, what are the things a country that's looking to become a science superpower needs to do?
Shubha Tole 9:03: To capitalise on our national enthusiasm for science. Our culture is unique. We really enjoy learning things. Our students love being introduced to new things. I hope very much that the new innovations proposed in the National Education Policy allow these young people to thrive. It's too early to tell right now how the major reorganisation suggested at the school level restructuring education programme will play out. But it's good that we have a National Education Policy at the undergrad and graduate level. The National Education Policy does need some close attention to meet all of the different types of educational institutions. Again, I am glad that we have taken the first step to having a policy and I look forward to evolution of this policy being informed by the practitioners of science, so that we may have something that fits our graduate education institutions such as mine, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research better. So that we have a vision of how the country's holistic training is envisioned.
We collaborate with people regardless of their nationality or, any affiliation at all. We exchange information and humankind is able to explore further, we are able to uncover truths, that all humankind benefits from better. I think national boundaries are just created because humans like to group themselves into whatever it is -- geographical boundaries, or like mindedness or any other label. But I think science in and of itself is one giant umbrella, which would cover us all. So Indian grant could have international travel components, which currently they don't. The budget head does not exist. Travel should not be particularly differentiated based on whether you cross a national boundary or not. Importing things or exporting things should really not be that difficult. We are not trying to you know, import or export food grains or, you know, hardware when you're trying to pursue science. And that should come primary to everything else.
Subhra Priyadarshini 11:20: That's actually a great wish list from both of you. And not that some of these things haven't come up in discussions for the longest time now. I hope the policymakers are listening and taking down notes. That said, there have been some high points really in India science in the recent years. What do you remember as the golden moments, when you look back, say, a decade in India's science?
Shubha Tole 11:45: I have to say, India's space initiatives have just captured the fascination and imagination of everybody. So I will actually go a decade back to when Mangalyaan reached Mars. I think it was launched in 2013. And started its orbiting 2014. I mean this was beyond exciting. My children were 8 and 11 then, and the sheer excitement that India has reached Mars actually inspired my younger son to, in fact, plan for a future in aerospace engineering, simply because it gripped his fascination. Close after, I think 2015, the Astrosat was launched, this satellite for astronomy observations in which actually TIFR had three major instruments. They actually built them, they actually fabricated them. And we were privileged to take a little visit and look at the prototypes as they were being made. So I would say these things stand out. And of course, the more recent Chandrayaan.
Arindam Ghosh 12:47: Space missions have been one of the most important recent aspects. But I think there are two aspects we shouldn't forget, given our science funding and our strategic importance in the local geographical establishment. If you look at the early 90s, even when the self reliance in nuclear technology was demonstrated, I feel that over the years, there are several large moments like the moon landing, like the Mangalyaan, like the Pokhran event. All these have shown that we have been capable. But you know, what I would suggest is that we should not only concern ourselves with these isolated mega events, and one should also take a look at how scientific community has evolved over the last decade or so. And this is happening in the background. Not often you see this in the newspapers, but we can see as a member of this community. For example, over the last 10 years, I have seen the high quality publications from India increase dramatically in the best journals, journals which were simply inaccessible to us. I remember our paper in Nature was in 1986, on high temperature superconductivity. But look at the situation today. Last one year, I have seen at least four papers in the Nature group and the journals that are coming out of the group. So what we see is that we are seeing a community which is becoming increasingly ambitious, a community which is becoming increasingly confident in the science that we are pursuing in this country. And this is happening, you know, because of the investment over the last 20 years. The number of startups that have come up, collaborating with the industries and trying to create our own indigenous products from our own science. It's amazingly more and more frequent to see every time we go out for various kinds of tech expos.
India has now become confident embark on these mission modes. For example, the green hydrogen in a $2.2 billion of investment which will make India net zero by 2030. By creating 450 gigawatts of renewable energy that requires a massive scientific ecosystem. India is investing about a quarter of a billion dollars in quantum technologies. We will be making new products, which are very different from existing technologies. There are some countries which have, and Europe as a continent has, invested massively. Already, there's more than $25 billion that have been invested in this worldwide, making quantum computers, having secured quantum communications, making new generation of sensors, whether it's sensors for brain imaging, or it's a sensor for fantastic new kinds of earthquake sensors, etc. But these are coming up with the infrastructure and the scientific know-how that has been developing over the last decade. So while some of the major hotspots of moon landings are there, but there's been a background improvement that we are actually benefiting from today. We should see both these aspects as the high point of Indian science.
Subhra Priyadarshini 16:12: We know that now we have social media as well, that amplifies some stories over these others. And like I mentioned earlier, science communicators and journalists, we all think a lot about scotching misinformation, which doesn't have a backing in evidence. So now, you're taking on pseudoscience, for instance. There's been some criticism lately also around allocation of public funds for science, that might not be cutting edge. It's kind of a loop that keeps feeding itself. How exactly can we get around this?
Arindam Ghosh 16:49: One is what we have done in the past. And I think that's very important to understand, and very important to know what the history is. While we recognise that in those contexts, it is extremely important to ask, okay, in that context, what are we doing now? So it's important to learn and recognise the past. But that should not be the sole point of our pride in our science, it's important to understand what's happening. I believe that many of the claims of what we end up calling pseudoscience many of these are empirical, and one needs to have a focus or a structure through which there is the necessity to verify or justify many of these claims through revelant scientific ideas and understanding. It's important, because only then we will be able to exploit if these ideas and concepts and claims are really true. We do not have a very well defined structure. Maybe this is where the science academies can come into play. Because we have very strong science academies in the country. There are well defined structures that the science academies can help in understanding apparent counterintuitive claims, rather than dismissing them as pseudoscience.
Shubha Tole18:10: I think science is that which can be experimentally tested, repeated, independent of who is doing the experiment, where it is being done, and so on. The body of knowledge that science can address is smaller than the vast events around us. I think, eventually science will explain everything, but it is going to take a long time. And until then, there is going to be lots of things that science cannot explain. That doesn't mean that they are not important. Just saying that something is not scientific doesn't mean it is useless or less important or anything. And this is something that we need to address as a culture, we need to address it right from our schools.
I will make a completely artificial example. It may well be that playing a particular tune on a particular instrument, you know, somebody decides that this is going to cure your fever. Now, if this gets packaged as a miracle cure, and the whole Godman persona takeover happens, and people flocked to this, so that they can play a tune on this instrument and magically feel better. Now, it may well be that playing two hours of music calms your mind and brings your brain circuits to a state where you're going to feel better, independent of any magical activity or any unexplained vibrations and so on. And science may not be able to explain this yet because it's a very complex problem. It cannot be experimented. You cannot tease this apart such that you can set up an experiment where you test this tune versus that tune and what is feeling better. So all of this is outside of science simply because science cannot test it. It's far too complex. I don't completely dismiss the idea that playing some music will make you feel better and would say it is not. So just using this example you can apply to almost anything that is not scientifically reproducible or scientifically tested. Yet, we blur this. And when we blur this, we want to hold everything under this umbrella called science, because somehow we've decided something has to be scientific for it to be important or useful. And then we want to fund it under science. And then we want to give degrees of science, and so on and so on. The whole thing snowballs from this basic idea that, you know, for something to be important, it has to have the label of science, and that is what we have to get away from.
Subhra Priyadarshini 20:26: Absolutely, by definition, though pseudoscience would be something that doesn't have the backing of empirical evidence but tom toms as science. And of course, it's also difficult to make everyone understand how science works.
Shubha Tole 20:43: I have two passions. One is science, and one is classical dance. And in my life, I've learned from many, many teachers, one of whom was a young person whom I learned from for six months, when I was 32 years old, in Los Angeles, in graduate school at Caltech, I went to a studio and I would learn various things and enjoy myself. And she got to know that I am a neuroscientist, and I'm studying neuroscience. And this word 'neuro' is immediately fascinating and a little bit terrifying. It simply means study of the brain, but she would intriguingly ask questions about, you know, what I do. And she asked, "I have always wanted to understand what is brainwashing". She asked it with such earnestness, and you know, I was completely taken aback because there was no way for me to give her an answer rooted in science, because this term is completely sort of a colloquial term. So the fact that she thought I, as a neuroscientist would have something scientific to say about this term had me laughing at myself, because here is a term that has brain in it, and I could not for the life of me, give her a scientific explanation for brainwash, so that's my story.
Arindam Ghosh 21:54: Well, I mean, there are many, to be honest. But I have to say, I came up from a family, which didn't have a background in science, although my mother was a Masters in physiology herself, but my grandmother wasn't. So when my grandmother found out that I'm going to do a PhD in low temperature physics and semiconductors etc., I went and tried to explain to her that, you know, I'm going to do low temperature physics. My grandmother was extremely satisfied, because eventually I'll get a job in cold storage that makes good potatoes. So she was very happy that at last, we will have good quality potatoes, which are low temperature to last longer. So yeah, I mean, what this taught me is that the public understanding of deep science is still at a very early stage. Hope that we will have more and more awareness about science in the future.
Subhra Priyadarshini 22:47: The next time somebody says brainwashing, or low temperature physics, you know exactly what the scientists themselves are grappling with to explain those terms to lay people.
All right, so as India goes to vote, we heard what scientists are looking forward to from their next elected government. Essentially, to prioritise science policy changes, including streamlining bureaucracy and investing in research for longer term impact. We heard that India's investment in scientific infrastructure and research over the last decade has led to a kind of confidence in the country's ability to create indigenous products and solutions. But the country must not rest on the laurels of past achievement, but double up on present scientific advancements. This needs a solid structure in place efficient fund disbursement, timely student salaries and unhindered international collaborations to support science. We also explored why science should address the vast events around us but acknowledged that some things are outside of science due to complexity or lack of reproducibility. In a country with massive cultural diversity, a blurring of lines between science and non science can lead to misuse of the term science and sometimes undermine the importance of scientific inquiry. However, robust policies again, that science administrators could make, will ensure that complex issues such as public health or climate change benefit from the wisdom and expertise of scientists.
You were listening to the 2024 election special at the Nature India podcast, you can go back to our past episodes on the nature India website, or on Google or Apple podcasts. And on Spotify. This is your host Subhra Priyadarshini, signing off.
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