A People Problem
The most serious problem in Indian science is with respect to human resources in general, and leadership in particular. Symptomatic of this problem is the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the largest chain of public-funded laboratories in the world. It had not had a director-general for nine months after R.A. Mashelkar retired late last year. Six CSIR laboratories are now without directors. Committees who meet to select heads of scientific institutions repeatedly find themselves short of good candidates. This is a far cry from the scene 10 years ago, when all the committees had at least five or six outstanding leaders to choose from.

After the year 1997, when funding increased for science and technology, the quality of equipment had begun to catch up with the rest of the world. Now they are almost on a par with the others (last year science and technology departments received a budget increase of 28 per cent, the highest in two decades) but national laboratories find themselves without high quality scientists to use them. The reason for this problem is not far to seek — the increasing attraction of the private sector. Says Hiro Bhojwani, advisor to the minister for science and technology, “For the first time in India’s history, the private sector is rivalling the public sector in R&D.”

At the beginning of liberalisation, the amount of private sector research in India was negligible, and so was the number of scientists employed by private companies. Things started changing in the mid-1990s, spurred by investments by the Indian pharmaceutical industry and the influx of multinational R&D institutions. For example, for many decades, the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI) in Lucknow was the only institution that did drug research. Now, Indian pharma industry has made such high investments that CDRI is rapidly becoming redundant. Indian companies and more than 300 multinational R&D centres employ around 80,000 researchers, a number that rivals that of national laboratories. So there is no doubt that the private sector will rapidly leave the public sector behind as the largest employer of scientific researchers.