Science Research on the Downfall in India

Bangalore: 60 percent of science post graduates and nearly 20 percent of science doctorates are unemployed, reports India’s first national science survey. Hence, it is not surprising that students are no longer excited about specializing in science. Students now prefer information technology to biology, electronic engineering to physics, and management studies to mathematics.

The science journal, Nature, recently carried an article that explains what troubles science in a country whose finest brains and talents have fled its shores.

At the industrial level, there has been no progress to rival the telephone, the transistor or Teflon. Further, at the organizational level, we do not have a postdoctoral system worth its name, and the undergraduate teaching system is in a mess. Plagiarism, misconduct and nepotism are tolerated. Centuries of confinement have made the average Indian submissive and obedient. The mantra followed in the country is ‘Behave yourself and be rewarded,’ as reports Vatsala Vedantam for Deccan Herald.

Furthermore, careers that promise rewarding employment are more attractive than doing research in labs that offer no incentives at all. If science must improve in India, the base needs to be strengthened rather than waste money on cosmetic changes at the top. For this, science teaching in the schools must undergo a huge change. The first twelve years of education must be exciting and intellectually stimulating.

The survey, commissioned by the Indian National Science Academy, found that more than one third of school leavers lack the motivation to pursue science in college because their school years were dull and uninspiring with mediocre teaching and lack of learning material. If universities in our country incorporate research oriented study in undergraduate colleges, it would help awaken scientific curiosity in young minds.