Research work at Universities and Labs in India
Many years back when I was doing summer internship in a university in Karlsruhe, my prof had invited one of the researchers from CSIR for a talk. He came and lectured us on some really complex reactions in chemistry, which was obviously not one of the most interesting things I had heard in my life. Hence, there is not much I can recall from it except for one thing. Just after this researcher had finished talking, one of the German profs asked him about the applications of the reactions which he had discovered. Researcher's response was appalling to say the least.
He said, "we do this for the fun of chemistry"
Well, he was not an exception at CSIR. Recently, we had a case discussion in one of our classes about one of CSIR labs. The case was about how the labs have been unsuccessful in commercializing their discoveries, some of which the scientists even assume/ describe as breakthrough.
They didn't have any experts of IP, the requirement of which they had realized in 1994. However, nothing has been done till date. A minuscule percentage of their work has made it to market till date (<6%). Most of the money is spent on basic research.
So a couple of scientists from the same lab came to class while we discussed how we could change all that. They heard us for about one and half hour, when we banged our heads against each other to decide how they can give incentives to scientists so they help start ups and prevent misuse of their innovations.
Then, scientist finally concluded what he thought about the situation. I must say he was once again very disappointing.
He said that they have excellent talent with them, they pick people from across country to get the best people in their labs. Then finally, they give them full freedom to do basic research and they don't see that perspective changing in future too.
Now, let me understand this. Since last 50 - 60 years these labs continue to work on stuff which has not won any global recognition due to path breaking research work, leave alone Nobel prize, something really beautiful that the whole world acknowledges. Then these people might argue that these awards are biased and other such blah.
But the bigger problem is how can possibly in a country like India, best talent be made to sit in labs doing this kind research which not one person other than there so called 'interest' satisfies. I mean this is height of selfishness that the lab sits with so much talent and money of this country doing no good other than publishing papers in journals, which they dont even bother to get patented, in case it has any utility to human kind.
What is so fancy about calling that scientists do things bec they love science? How can they show such disinterest in society and waste its resources? They are thankless people with no intention to payback people. So the industry keeps starving for innovations while these people do research for 'fun of chemistry' and our industry keeps lagging behind on global innovation frontier.
We still buy defense weapons from other countries when these organizations have been existing for decades, completely funded by government. These labs give no benefit to government what so ever, except subsidy burden. Tell me what is point of publishing useless molecule discovery, or useful molecule discovery which a German company uses in its applications without paying a penny to our labs.
No accolades, no application. And the worst thing is that they think it is very prestigious and feel they are above other petty /greedy people.
He said, "we do this for the fun of chemistry"
Well, he was not an exception at CSIR. Recently, we had a case discussion in one of our classes about one of CSIR labs. The case was about how the labs have been unsuccessful in commercializing their discoveries, some of which the scientists even assume/ describe as breakthrough.
They didn't have any experts of IP, the requirement of which they had realized in 1994. However, nothing has been done till date. A minuscule percentage of their work has made it to market till date (<6%). Most of the money is spent on basic research.
So a couple of scientists from the same lab came to class while we discussed how we could change all that. They heard us for about one and half hour, when we banged our heads against each other to decide how they can give incentives to scientists so they help start ups and prevent misuse of their innovations.
Then, scientist finally concluded what he thought about the situation. I must say he was once again very disappointing.
He said that they have excellent talent with them, they pick people from across country to get the best people in their labs. Then finally, they give them full freedom to do basic research and they don't see that perspective changing in future too.
Now, let me understand this. Since last 50 - 60 years these labs continue to work on stuff which has not won any global recognition due to path breaking research work, leave alone Nobel prize, something really beautiful that the whole world acknowledges. Then these people might argue that these awards are biased and other such blah.
But the bigger problem is how can possibly in a country like India, best talent be made to sit in labs doing this kind research which not one person other than there so called 'interest' satisfies. I mean this is height of selfishness that the lab sits with so much talent and money of this country doing no good other than publishing papers in journals, which they dont even bother to get patented, in case it has any utility to human kind.
What is so fancy about calling that scientists do things bec they love science? How can they show such disinterest in society and waste its resources? They are thankless people with no intention to payback people. So the industry keeps starving for innovations while these people do research for 'fun of chemistry' and our industry keeps lagging behind on global innovation frontier.
We still buy defense weapons from other countries when these organizations have been existing for decades, completely funded by government. These labs give no benefit to government what so ever, except subsidy burden. Tell me what is point of publishing useless molecule discovery, or useful molecule discovery which a German company uses in its applications without paying a penny to our labs.
No accolades, no application. And the worst thing is that they think it is very prestigious and feel they are above other petty /greedy people.
I think you brought across a very valid point. I feel that a very common response among scientists is that we are doing fundamental research or 'for the fun of it'. In my experience I have never seen this kind of flexibility allowed in research here. Every person is funded either by the government or some company, and they only give money if they see some benefit or some application to that research. I can go on in much greater detail but for the sake of this comment, all I would say is that for India there need to be tighter controls on the funding allocation for research. See here there are several groups vying for funding and it becomes very competitive and only certain projects become funded. But in India , the gov allots a certain portion of its funds for research, and there is not much competition for it, and almost all projects get funded irrespctive of their quality. I also doubt that there is any serious review on whther the funds are giving proportional results.
ReplyDeleteI have several more thoughts on this issue - maybe we can discuss sometime :) !
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