Counter Productive
one of the reactions to the nuclear explo-sions at Pokhran has been the imposition of sanctions by the United States on various Indian institutions. These include all research institutes funded by the Depart-ment of Atomic Energy like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research ( tifr ) in Mumbai and the Institute of Physics in Bhubhaneshwar and various other insti-tutes and companies which ostensibly work on projects that could be used for helping India's nuclear programmes. There has been a lot of hue and cry about the effects of such sanctions on Indian science. Already, a letter has been circulated among the various universities and institutes pointing out the disastrous effects this would have on scientific progress in India.
What do the sanctions mean? Scientists working in targeted institutions cannot collaborate with any institution in the us now. They will, in all likelihood, be denied visas for visits or conferences to the us . Equipment cannot be bought for laboratories from us companies. Are all these necessarily calamitous for Indian science?
What constitutes Indian science?
Before we can answer such a question, we need to ask ourselves what constitutes Indian science? Without going into debates about swadeshi vs international science, I think an operational definition could be that Indian science is what is done by scientists working in India. Though by no means a non-controversial definition, it is certainly the least value-loaded one. Once this is accepted, it follows that we need to look at the various dimensions of science as it is being practised in India.
With the second largest scientific human resources in the world, we certainly have an impressive scientific infrastruc-ture. We have a large network of laboratories associated with atomic energy, space and defence. Besides, there are csir laboratories, regional research laboratories as well as the research institutes like tifr and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. At the lowest level, we have some 225 universities. Of course, the scientific world is also divided into "haves' and "have nots'. The budget for atomic energy, space and defence is presumably huge though the government rarely discloses the allocated amount. Research institutes, which are relatively few in number, get a disproportionately large percentage of the total amount of funds.
The universities, on the other hand, are constantly starved of funds for even basic facilities. So we have a scenario where a few research institutes are lavishly funded in terms of infra-structure as well as other scientific resources, while the univer- sities by and large languish with a chronic shortage of money even for teaching, let alone research facilities. The state of libraries, classrooms and laboratories in most of the univer-sities, including prestigious ones like Delhi University, has to be seen to be believed.
It is no one's contention that the research institutes are not doing good science. The point is that the whole idea of promoting a few islands of excellence while depriving many others is short sighted. If for nothing else, the science planners have to realise that science is ultimately done by human minds and if the nursery for scientific talent
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