Some 225 countries of the world publish more than 1.5mn research papers, with USA topping the list. Over the years however pursuit of science has become more widespread so that the US share (but not the quality) is now lower than before. From 1996 to 2012 India improved its rank from 7 to 13; and China from 9 to 2. The share of both in citations however is low. India was the first country outside the Western world to take to modern science. I discuss why India has not been able to make any use of the early start.

1. Indian National Science Academy
Indira Gandhi Prize for Science Popularization Oration
IISER Mohali 18 February 2014
Rise and Decline of Modern
Science in India
Rajesh Kochhar
Mathematics Department Panjab University &
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research,
Mohali
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

2. It is a matter of great honour and
pleasure for me to receive this prize for
science popularization. The prize is
twice blessed. It is given by Indian
National Science Academy and it is
named after Indira Gandhi.

3. The current year is the 120th anniversary of an
international event which interestingly is more
significant for India than the rest of the world.
The German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the
discoverer of radio waves, died on 1 January 1894.
By way of obituary notice, the English experimenter
Oliver Lodge wrote ‘very simple and precise
instructions’ for constructing radio detectors which
now ‘could readily be duplicated, even by unskilled
hands’.

4. It was Lodge’s publication that introduced J. C.
Bose to the exciting new world of radio waves
and thus began modern scientific research by
Indians. Bose, who had had nine years of rather
uneventful existence as professor of physics at
Presidency College Calcutta, published his first
results in the May 1895 issue of the Journal of
the Asiatic Society.

5. According to his colleague the chemist P. C. Ray
who shot to fame at the same time with his
discovery of mercurous nitrite, Bose did not realize
‘the importance of the new line of research he had
hit upon’. Bose sent a reprint to his former teacher
Lord Rayleigh who immediately saw its worth and
got it republished in The Electrician. Thus
encouraged, Bose launched into a brief phase of
inspired experimental research.

6. But, let us begin by taking a look at the things
as they stand now.
• USA remains the world leader in science
as measured by the number of research
papers published and their citation.
• Some 225 countries of the world publish
more than 1.5 mn research papers.

7. • During 2008-12, as many as 23% of research
papers were published by USA whose share in
the citations was even higher at 39%.
• This gives USA a Relative Citation Index ( share
in citations divided by share in papers=39/23) of
1.71.

8. • Over the years pursuit of science has become
more widespread so that the US share (but not
the quality) is now lower than before.
• From 1996 to 2012 India improved its rank from
13 to 7; and China more drastically from 9 to 2.
The share of both in citations however is low.

9. World share India World share
China
World share USA
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
1996-2000 1.89 0.57 3.14 0.41 27.88 1.69
2008-2012 3.45 0.63 14.58 0.64 22.93 1.71

10. • India’s expenditure on R&D remains a lowly
0.9%.
• China is taking its science very seriously. Since
1999 it has been increasing its R&D spending by
20% every year so that in 2012 it stood at an
impressive 2% of GDP.
(Sources for data: Scimago, Royal Society, NSF; Table by B. M. Gupta
personal communication)

11. • Permit me to narrate a personal anecdote which
provides valuable insight into official Chinese
thinking.
• In 2005, the Chinese Deputy Science Minister
with his team visited us at NISTADS ( National
Inst of Sci. Tech & Development Studies, New
Delhi)

12. • A short time previously, Business Standard had
published a big article arguing that just as China
had become the world hub for manufacture,
India should become the hub for services.
• I wrote a short letter ( Business Standard , 5-
Oct-2005) saying that the prescription is wrong.
China has become the hub for low-skill
manufacture; India should become high-skill

13. • manufacture hub.
• I gave a copy of this letter to the Chinese
Minister who took my permission to keep it.
• Then he made a very significant statement in
English>

14. • The Chinese Minister said: We know we cannot
compete with the West on today’s technologies.
We are therefore making money from
yesterday’s technologies and investing it in the
technologies of tomorrow.
• A typical example indeed of the Chinese
farsightedness>

15. • ‘[a] search of the Science Citation Index for the
first eight months of 2004, using a
comprehensive and precise 92-term query for
the highly critical field of nanotechnology,
retrieved the following results for the 20
countries reporting the most research papers:
• China ranks first, 14% higher than the United
States in this crucial technology. In the top six
countries, the Asian countries of China, Japan,
and South Korea (7,894 publications)

16. outproduce the Western nations of United
States, Germany, and France (6,587
publications) by 20%.
• A decade ago, the United States (1,034
publications) outproduced China (271
publications) by 380%, and these same Western
nations (2,481 publications) outproduced these
same Asian nations (1,694 publications) by
46%.’

17. • Scientometric studies have their limitations.
• But they can be considered indicative especially
while making comparisons in some respects.
• For reliable inputs into science and education
policy, India needs a National Repository and a
National Science Data Base ( say under the
Planning Commission).

18. • Year-wise number of Ph.D.s given by UGC,
CSIR, DST, ICAR varies widely! We need
authentic information on number of Ph.D.s; of
research papers, pattern of authorship;
contribution from universities; foreign
collaboration; foreign affiliation; women
scientists; subject-wise break-up; average age;
etc.

19. • Normally an activity begins modestly, reaches
the peak, stabilizes and then slowly declines.
• For China the present situation thus is an
improvement over the past.
• Modern science in India however began at the
top and has had no place to go except
downward

20. • Decline in Indian science is ironic because India
was the first country outside of Europe and
America to take to modern science.
• J.C. Bose and P.C. Ray are the world’s first non-
Western modern scientists.
• Similarly C.V. Raman’s Nobel prize (1930) was the
first one to go out of the West. It is noteworthy that
Raman almost missed the prize.

21. • Chronologically speaking, two Soviet physicists,
Leonid Mandelstam (1879-1957) and Grigory
Landsberg (1890-1957) observed what came to be
known as Raman Effect a week before Raman did.
• If these researchers had been West European
rather than Soviet, their publication would have
preceded Raman’s and the prize gone to them.

22. • In retrospect, it would perhaps have been better
for India if Raman had missed the Stockholm bus.
• The freak individual honour raised false hopes and
has made a clear-headed analysis of Indian
science difficult if not impossible.

23. • It will be instructive to look at the past 12
decades of Indian science with a view to
understanding how we have ended where we
are and where we go from here.

24. THE INDIAN PURSUIT OF SCIENCE
can be discussed in terms of three sequential phases:
• (i) Nationalist Phase (1895);
• (ii) International Phase(1945); and
• (iii) Globalization Phase (c.1990).
- The first phase can be assigned a precise beginning,
1895, when Bose’s first paper on radio physics appeared.
- The second phase can nominally be taken to begin with
the 1945 setting up of Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research, Mumbai, by Homi Bhabha.
- The third phase, now on, began with the onset of
globalization.

25. • As we move down the phases, there is a general
decline in the quality of Indian science and in its
impact on the world.
• I would argue that there is a striking correlation
between these three phases and the stages in
the diminishing role perceived by the middle
class for itself in the national scheme of things.

26. NATIONALIST PHASE
• Although creativity-wise, Bose’s personal research
ranked higher than Ray’s, the over-all impact and
long-time influence of Ray was far greater.
• Bose carried out his experimental studies on the
optical properties of mm-length radio waves in his
personal lab, did not train any students or assistants
and gave it up altogether in 1900 or 1901. He chose
to devote the rest of his life to a study of the living
and the non-living which work at the time was
considered to be pseudo-science.

27. • Bose could have made millions from his radio work,
but he did not.
• If he had done so, India would have learnt to
appreciate science as a producer of wealth and
physics-based industries would have been started.
• As it turned out, industrial physics never ever took
roots in India.

28. • In contrast, Ray carried out his chemical researches in
the College lab, set up a flourishing school as well as
industry.
• While the driving force in Calcutta was nationalism, it
needs to be appreciated that Dacca University emerged
as a strong training centre under a British chemist
Edwin Roy Watson (1880-1926) who remained there
from 1906 till 1921 excluding the war years when he
returned home for war-oriented research.

29. • If Indian chemical and the pharmaceutical
industry are an internationally recognized
success story, and if in contrast there is no
physics-based Indian industry worth the name,
the reasons can be traced back to the 1890s
and later decades.

30. • The spectacular achievements of the Nationalist Phase
(including Nobel prize-winning work of Raman and the
Nobel-class theoretical researches of M. N. Saha and S. N.
Bose) were made possible by a fortuitous combination of
circumstances.
• (i) Modern science was young then. It was just a short step
ahead of, or rather a continuation of, M. Sc.- level studies.
-Thus Raman could publish research papers in international
journals while still a student and establish his credentials
as a world-class experimentalist working part-time.
-

31. - There was hardly any difference between a classroom
textbook and a research journal.
• Saha and S. N. Bose as young lecturers produced the first
ever English translation of Einstein for use as course
material.
• Saha and before him J.C. Bose could identify research
problems by reading popular accounts.

32. (ii) Another very important feature of this phase was that the
caliber of teachers was exceptionally high.
- Teaching was the best career option after the civil service.
- Surendra Nath Banerjee after being unfairly dismissed
from ICS became a college professor (He taught P.C. Ray
English literature).
- Since Saha could not enter civil services because of his
pronounced nationalist leanings, he became a university
lecturer. Raman left a cushy civil job to become a
professor.

33. (iii) As J.C. Bose noted, in his time the Presidency College
Calcutta was among the best equipped anywhere in the
world.
- The infrastructural and technological requirements of
experimental research were very modest and easily
available at the level of college teaching.
- Ray had a B.Sc. - failed assistant, Jitendra Nath Rakshit,
who “Out of a few bits of rejected glass - tubing” “could
improvise an apparatus, which hitherto could be had from
a firm in England or Germany after months of anxious
waiting”.

34. • Raman used to boast that his equipment cost
only 200 rupees. Raman missed the point
completely. What is important is not the cost, but
the fact that at the time world-class research
could be carried out in a college practical lab.

35. (iv) The take-off stage of modern physics coincided
with the enhanced sense of Indian nationalism.
- Making scientific discoveries requires a certain
amount of defiance.
- The suppressed semi-articulated resentment
against the colonial rulers provided that defiance.
- Paradoxically, while Indian achievements in
science were perceived as part of the nationalist
movement, at the same time honours bestowed
by the colonial rulers were coveted and even
flaunted.

36. • In the early days when India was new to modern
science, it was natural that recognition be sought
from the West.
• A very serious shortcoming of Indian science
has been and still is that it never became self-assessing.
• Scientists have continued looking towards the
West for guidance, encouragement, support and
recognition.

37. • In the pre-Gandhian years, the nationalist
movement was strictly a middle class affair, with the
leadership still making appeals to the Empire’s
sense of noblesse oblige.
• In this scheme science and public affairs reinforced
each other. Things changed with the emergence of
Mahatma Gandhi on the scene.
• Leadership remained in the hands of the middle
class but its constituency became more broad-based.

38. • As a strategy, Gandhi put the West on the
defensive on ethical grounds. Since modern
science was largely seen as a part of the
Western civilizational baggage, it went out of
focus during years of Gandhi’s ascendancy.
• Science returned centre stage with the
emergence of Jawaharlal Nehru as the
undisputed leader of independent India.

39. Second World War and Independence
• At the time of the Second World War (1939-1945) there
were two mutually exclusive streams in Indian science:
routine science under the government, and nationalism-inspired
research activity by the Indians in the universities.
• The twain met during the war.
• The government needed the help of Indian academics in
its war effort. And it was a foregone conclusion that the
British would leave India after the war.
•

40. • Indians were already in important
positions in government.
• Though still working under British
auspices, they sought to dovetail their
country’s post-independence interests into
the British exigencies of war’.

41. • Throughout the world, all available scientific expertise
was mobilized by the governments for their war effort.
• But as soon as the war needs were over, universities
were re-energized.
• Not so in India.
• Unfortunately what was an out-going foreign
government’s temporary compulsion became the
abiding philosophy of a new nation.
• Independent India opted for government science labs
at the cost of universities.

42. CSIR
• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR) was set up on 12 March 1942. Its
scientific head was Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar
who had been brought two years previously from
Punjab University Lahore as Director Scientific
and Industrial Research.

43. Two years later. In 1944, CSIR sanctioned the
establishment of five research laboratories the
foundation stones of which were laid between
December 1945 and April 1947 and which were
opened between January and November 1950.

44. • In the enthusiasm for science too many labs were
opened in too short a time. Since there was no felt
need for them and they were being opened for the sake
of opening extraneous arguments were proffered and
accepted for their establishment and location.
• National Chemical Lab was located in Poona to be
near Bombay which was already a major hub for
chemical industry. ( It was funded by the House of
Tata which even wanted it to carry their name.)

45. • In contrast, there was however no obvious venue
for the Physical Lab. It was decided to locate it in
Delhi rather than Calcutta on the irrelevant ground
that this would enable the laboratory ‘to keep in
touch with the government’.

46. • Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute
was opened in Pilani on the personal request of
Ghanshyam Das Birla (1894-1983 ) whose birth
place it was.
• Central Electro Chemical Research Institute was
set up at Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu because a
wealthy local landowner (Alagappa Chettiar)
offered 300 acres of land and 15 lakh rupees
provided it was located there.

47. • For the distinguished guests assembled for the
opening ceremony, Chettiar hosted a lunch where
‘plates and goblets used were silver or gold’.
We get this interesting piece of information from
the 1957 chemistry Nobel laureate, [Sir, later Lord]
Alexander Robertus Todd.

48. • The research carried out by Indians in the
universities was basic in nature.
• Sudden creation of national labs without creating a
pool of trained personnel beforehand robbed the
universities of talent.
• It also blurred the distinction between applied and
basic research.
• Without linkage to economy, a laboratory would
merely be an office.
• Government science in general is more
government than science.

49. • The first Indian research Institute ( as distinct from
colonial government establishments and the
personal Bose Institute Calcutta) was Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research set up in
Bangalore in 1945 and shifted to Bombay before
the year end. It was the result of Homi Bhabha’s
initiative whose father’s sister was married to Sir
Dorab Tata.

50. • Apart from TIFR two more laboratories were
opened: Physical Research Laboratory
Ahmedabad (1947) and Bangalore-based
‘Research Institute of the Indian Academy of
Sciences, directed by Sir C.V. Raman’ (1948).
• CSIR supported all three. Though legally private
entities TIFR, PRL and RRI. became for all
purposes national facilities.

51. • Nehru had a soft corner for persons with an
aristocratic background.
• He was more comfortable with a Bhabha than with
a Saha.
• On his return to India from Cambridge in 1939,
Bhabha held temporary appointments in the Tata-owned
Indian Institute of Science Bangalore.

52. • Bhabha turned down offers of regular appointment
from Allahabad University as well as Indian
Association for the Cultivation of Science Calcutta,
because he was ‘only interested in research and
not in teaching’, which to him constituted ‘routine
duties’.

53. • And yet, before leaving for India, Bhabha applied
for a Reader’s position at Liverpool, but was not
selected.
• Bhabha would teach in England, but not in India.
• He was a beneficiary of the British University
system and was ready to become part of it.
• But he would not extend a similar courtesy to an
Indian University.

54. • As director of Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research Bombay (1945), Bhabha could comfortably
deal with people whom he had inducted into his
social club.
• It would be tempting to speculate on the impact an
aristocratic Bhabha would have made on the rank
and file of Indian students in a classroom and vice
versa.

55. • Incidentally, we have it on the testimony of a leading
nuclear scientist of the time, Otto Robert Frisch (1904-
1979), that at the time of his return to India in 1939 Bhabha
did not know how to use a Geiger counter, the most
elementary gadget in experimental nuclear science.
• He however knew the significance of the new emerging
field.
• Early 1946, CSIR set up an advisory Atomic Research
Committee under the chairmanship of Bhabha, which
eventually led to the formation of Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC).

56. • Bhabha is important on two distinct fronts.
• He initiated India’s foreign-policy related big
science, and he changed the social setting of
fundamental research.
• Bhabha headed both TIFR and AEC which thus
enjoyed a symbiotic relationship.

57. • And yet, they were guided by different philosophies.
• While the atomic establishment was to be self-contained with
its own rigorous manpower training programme, TIFR was to
be integrated socially and intellectually with the West.
• It is as if the Trombay Bhabha was distinct from the Colaba
Bhabha

58. • Earlier interaction of Indian scientists with their Western
counterparts had been through the pages of research
journals and in the lecture rooms.
• In the Nationalist Phase, Indians hoped to excel in science
while retaining their own cultural identity.
• Thus Raman was very proud of his distinctive turban, while
Chandrasekhar would sit in a first class train compartment
as an equal of the Europeans but in his South Indian attire.
• In contrast, Bhabha insisted that Indian scientists integrate
with the Western scientific community at social level also.

59. • Bhabha insisted at least with the TIFR senior faculty that they
come in a tie. Those without it were expected to avoid high
visibility.
• Two separate canteens, aptly designated the west canteen and
the east canteen, were constructed for the upper crust and the
lower crust respectively.
• The European cuisine of the west canteen immediately became
the talk of the town.
• In Bhabha’s time chapati and rice were banned from the west
canteen.
• In a minor concession after Bhabha’s death, rice has been
permitted, but chapati still remains forbidden.

60. • At the professional level, TIFR had some very
constructive features.
• Bhabha believed in identifying persons and
building institutions around them.
• In contrast, CSIR first built buildings and then
scrambled to fill the posts.
• At least in the early years, TIFR offered higher
salaries than elsewhere in India.

61. • Bhabha’s greatest asset however was that he lay
outside the caste hierarchy and beyond regional or
linguistic parochialism.
• He could thus build a truly Indian institution.
• Contrast this with the situation in the sisterly Indian
Institute of Science Bangalore, where ‘ early in 1943,
there was a serious agitation by students against the
construction of a common dining hall, since they
preferred the already existing four different messes
which were run almost on a regional basis.’

62. INTERNATIONAL PHASE
• During this phase, at least in the earlier part,
nation building was a recurrent theme.
• Attempts at industrialization, reverse
engineering, irrigation dams, agricultural
production, strategic science, health-care and
desire for expansion of science and engineering
all placed science (including technology and
engineering) in a pivotal place.
• This rubbed onto basic scientific research also.

63. • Generally speaking, research in the International Phase
was of lesser quality than in the Nationalist Phase.
• This is understandable because in the interim science
had developed faster than India had.
• Indian science depended on foreign collaboration and
visits; and had an eye on the man-power needs of post-war
West.
• Yet, it fitted in with the national desire to harness science
for economic development and as an instrument of
national prestige.

64. • Although political power now vested in elected
representatives, the distance between them and
the middle class was still small.
• The distance has since increased to such an
extent that middle class has lost whatever sense
of national obligation it had cherished earlier.

65. GLOBALIZATION PHASE
• Globalization has transformed Indian economy
as well as the Indian middle class.
• Before the recent slow-down, India enjoyed a
growth rate of 8-9% for many years.
• Acting short-sightedly, India has neglected
agriculture and manufacture and focused on
service sector.

66. • Since the service sector is manifestly science-less,
the value of science in education and daily
life has declined. Thus paradoxically while our
dependence and fascination for new technology
has gone up, respect for science itself has gone
down. If the economy of a country becomes
derivative so will its culture.

67. • Globalization has introduced Upper Class India
to a consumerist lifestyle that is beyond the
intrinsic strength of Indian economy. This
lifestyle can only be maintained by servicing the
Western economy. Children of this class
therefore will generally be not interested in a
career in science

68. • There is however a way out.
• Throughout the world science provides the quickest,
shortest and the surest route for entry into the middle
class and for upward social mobility.
• Our state education system should rigorously train
boys and girls coming from socially disadvantaged
sections, for whom a science-related career in
universities, defence, national labs, public sector
undertakings, etc., would be a social step upward and
would therefore be enthusiastically accepted.

69. • During the colonial period, the production-of-wealth aspects of
modern science were looked down upon.
• There was an economic role for science under Nehru’s
influence, but the phase soon came to an end.
• The lessons of the past 12 decades of Indian pursuit of India
science are very clear to anyone willing to learn them.
• During the nationalist phase there was this desire to show the
world.
• That spirit somehow vanished on the way. It needs to be
revived again.

70. • Personally, I would like to judge a country not by
the quality of its researchers but by the quality of
its teachers.

71. • Science cannot flourish in a society whose
economy does not require science.
• The purpose of science is to produce wealth
and improve quality of life.
• The purpose of this wealth is to support science.
• This symbiotic relationship needs to be
established because a country cannot sustain
science as a purely cultural activity for an
extended period of time.

72. • If science is to survive, leave aside flourish, in
India, it must play a leading role in GDP.
• At the same time fruits of rigorous state
education should be made available to those
whose parents did not enjoy these fruits.

73. Science belongs to its harnessers
not its worshippers.

74. Thank you