Playing catch up in Science
Disclaimer: This article is mostly from the view point of an experimental biologist. I also do not claim to have any expertise on how national S&T missions operate. This is a mere blog post— live and let live ☺
So this morning I google (as in the verb) "India lags in science" and lo and behold, articles come pouring in varying versions of the same. I have to admit, so much so that I did a back pedal on whether I wanted to write on this topic at all. Still here I am, having ploughed on, and I hope you too, will stay with me.
When one talks about India lagging in science and technology, the oft referred viewpoint is in the terms of expenditure as a country in the S&T sector. There were some articles on how we lag in the skillsets imparted themselves. As a true Google user, I also went through some Quora posts and replies— let me just say this— common man is very unhappy but at the same time mostly utterly clueless about how science/research works in India.
To be fair, I am pretty clueless about how science in India works as well, as are many researchers around me— for one, we have very little to no inkling of how and from where the grant or fellowship money is disbursed with such express delay (Yay, just made up a great oxymoron for us!).
My primary plot point for this blog post however isn't any of the more obvious reasons or portrayals of the "lag". To me, even as an undergrad, lag always meant how we (Indian researchers) are always playing catch up when it comes to framing scientific questions, designing our methodologies and restricting our implementations. This in turn precipitates as what on a global platform would be called sub-par, near-replication studies with 'no originality' aspects.
Personally, this lag makes absolute sense to me. What we call as modern science/medicine originated in the West, and we are still scrambling to get our acts together in the post-colonial era (rabble rouse alert!). Science in the West continues to grow at an unmatched pace compared to Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) owing to both the head start, and stating the obvious, the wealth assimilated from the colonies. Also, the continued exclusion of LMIC researchers directly and indirectly from global forums. At this point I'm low key wondering if this post is going to be just another one for the rant rally of mine. And then I decide, well if it is, so be it.
Yes, the expenditure of India on S&T could be better. We have chronic and ghastly delays in disbursement of grants and fellowships— read here and here. Competitive exams/interviews that are supposed to intake newer work force into Science get called off, with pandemic-induced delays to boot. I had written earlier for The Life of Science dot com about the rampant disparities in Science happening at national institutes versus central universities versus smaller universities. There is a huge problem of brain-drain. We actually have grants and programs to encourage ghar wapsi (Translation: return to home) of early career investigators— I wonder if any other country has these. The enlightened ones on Quora and many respectable folks I know on Twitter frequently call out nepotism and favoritism. And so, on and on and on.
Whew! Taking a deep, deep breath (You could too, you know?).
So we know the problems. Does it help to just know them? Well, it turns out, speaking both as a researcher and as someone who heavily consumes self-help materials, unless you trace out your problems clearly, you cannot start to work on solving them.
One of the arguments from the currently permanently employed researchers in India, which I also partially sympathize with, is that "We did not sign up to fix the system". Assuming the instances of nepotism and favoritism are reserved for few positions in the Indian science ecosystem, it is a cut-throat competition as in any other country to be able to secure a PI position in India. So when a person who has spent— in the hustle-culture terminology— "grinding", for years to be able to do science independently, feels like their hands are tied by the system, they will naturally return to greener pastures. But back to my plot point (finally!).
What does one do when the Science you do after fighting tooth and nail also seems to be called lack-lustre? What happens when we have to do a detailed cost-benefit analysis on which reagents to obtain— most of it imported, of course— and how the study would still have lesser n numbers and fancy techniques? While I type this in, saw a recent tweet from Dr. Deepak Modi, a scientist working at ICMR-National Institute for Research in Reproductive and Child Health, on how the West is making an experimental technique the standard of operations while India still looks at it as nothing less than an unicorn.
As a student what does playing catch up mean? It means having to somehow manage to perform the experiments stated by reviewers of your prospective publications because:
A. It takes only a fraction of time to perform said experiments in the West versus in India, given the nature of expansive labs in the West with lot of technical help.
B. They order reagents across the city sometimes (?!!), which arrives the next day while we wait for months at the very least.
C. While we are still struggling to keep up with one experimental technique they have moved on to the next advanced version which now they deem the gold standard, and so on.
It seems almost comical to mention here, but all this if you do manage to have access to journal subscriptions to read up those protocols first, and then there's the gargantuan article publishing fees of course. Travelling to conferences and 'networking' is another hurdle. In short, its a scientific catch-up Inception, if you know what I mean.
At this point I turn to stories of countries that took it upon themselves as a challenge to build their S&T sector with year/decade-wise targets. Japan's S&T sector has a glowing wikipedia page to its credit. Japan is considered a poster child for S&T success owing to how the second world war wreaked havoc in the country and it still built everything back, naturally leading to economic success as well, briefly described here and here. China's S&T growth and policies have been topics of intense discussions and debates. Clearly, S&T is at the heart of development of any country and cannot be treated as an afterthought.
None of this to say that India doesn't have a vision or a plan and that's why Indian researchers feel forlorn and disheartened (I can hear you say "Who are you to say that anyway?". Well taken.). India has its own visions and missions too, riding on which we have reached where we are today, post-independence. Somewhere mid-PhD (circa 2019), I was particularly influenced by the book India 2020, authored by none other than Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, with Dr. Y. S Rajan in 1998. The book helped me to visualize Indian science from a zoomed out view, and also to look lightyears ahead. What stays with me is how the book predicted that by 2020 it should be India's target to make artificial organs a mainstay in healthcare. That and from many other vision points in the book, overall, in 2019 I could see how far away we were.
The pandemic has been a test of what Indian S&T sector is capable of. Not taking any sides (here) on how good we fared in quantity or quality of S&T deliverables from within the country, but I still feel this was a time the public seemed to acknowledge the existence of the scientific community as if after hitting the refresh button, with a renewed respect(?). So we can't have done everything wrong, right?
Coming back to the lag in doing science, it is my personal opinion that Indian researchers have to acknowledge that we will have a lag, as long as science from the West will be considered the gold standard. This will help us pivot how we approach problems in ways than if we stay in a state of denial. It is a question of an individual's career advancement versus nation-building. Again during the pandemic the scientific researchers were posed with a challenge of continuing ongoing activities: regulations on procurement of items from abroad. There was much hue and cry, which have been accommodated for, I believe. But in the long-term we will have to come back to fixing the original aim of the regulation: self-dependence. This is something that needs some sound debating but acting upon eventually: self-dependence should be a cure to the playing catch-up, no?
What I liked about one of the articles on Japan mentions how the out of whack work-life culture in Japan led to economic success but harmed the society internally. So balance remains key. Here's where I mention I subscribe to the Theodore Roosevelt quote "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.". I am often told that choosing to stay back in India would translate to having a laid-back mentality about doing science. I strongly disagree— choosing to stay in a system fraught with problems, while calling oneself a problem-solver, is far from being laid-back or unambitious. I know this is one of those "Come back in ten years and show us" kind of statements, and so I leave it here knowingly, bracing myself.
Like I wrote above, holding the book India 2020 in my hands and realizing how far removed from the reality the vision targets were, turned to be an eye-opener. But it only means we should instill a sense of undying optimism, and keep working towards the country's visions, revising the targets when and where required. The thing is that can only happen when we think we are here to solve problems at the bench, off the bench and as threads of a community that weaves into Indian science.
I know that my views may be called naïve. But its definitely a starting point. And I hope not too lagged at that.
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