by K. VijayRaghavan

(reprinted with permission from Current Biology, May 1998, Vol. 8, Issue 10)

(Posted June 12, 1998 · Issue 32)

What is it like doing science in India? Let me make the operating rules clear before I answer. Every question about India has two "correct" answers which say exactly opposite things. Furthermore, each of the one billion Indians will disagree with one another and with what any outsider has to say about India.

Being a scientist in India is wonderful. Really. Every good grant proposal gets funded. Everyone is pretty much tenured. You can't get fired, even if you do not come to work - ever. The students are great (this is true). Your colleagues are supportive. And every day is a surprise; anything can happen, and does.

Let me elaborate on some of these points. Most Indian biologists submit grant proposals to the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and/or the Department of Biotechnology (DBT). Although government support has, unfortunately, declined substantially in real terms, DST and DBT committees will recommend funding for every good proposal. In addition, review committees often help revise poorly rated proposals and get them to fundable quality. On the downside, levels of funding are usually not optimal and grant checks are often slow in coming.

Most research and teaching positions are tenured, yet, for the most part, this does not lead to complacency; it is impressive how much effort many scientists in poorly equipped and poorly funded places put into their work. Unfortunately, because changing jobs is virtually unknown, there is a certain amount of stagnation. Even in the reputedly very good institutions there is a very wide range in the quality of scientists, and a significant minority of "career committee-members," whose sole purpose seems to be to encumber intellectual activity.

For a country in which superstition and credulity are part of daily life, there is a strong respect for science in India. Encouragingly, applications for doctoral positions in biology have increased enormously in the past few years, perhaps because the growing Indian middle class sees biology and biotechnology as areas of opportunity. But this boom has been concentrated on the elite research institutes or the few high-profile universities. Many excellent university-based researchers have difficulty in attracting top students, largely because of the cumbersome bureaucracy I mentioned and the failure of most universities to recruit nationally rather than regionally.

In science, as in most of Indian life, there are strong contrasts between the "haves" and the "have-nots."

Thus, although the universities do a great job of training undergraduates - the standards of teaching and curricula in biology are good - the elite university departments and research institutes take the cream of the students.

The quality of graduate students is of great importance because they, rather than postdocs, are the engines that drive the successful Indian laboratory. (Good postdocs are rare in India, because most good students go abroad for their postdoctoral studies.) Students and their supervisors typically deal with all the needs of the laboratory - diesel generators in case the power supply fails, backup water supply, purchase orders, and so on - in addition to getting the science done. But despite these responsibilities the atmosphere is usually sociable (students essentially live in the lab) and supportive.

Sadly, most of the postdocs we export never return to India. But things are changing. Several new institutes have been started, such as the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and the National Institute of Immunology in Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Science has recently been revamped, all of which has greatly increased the critical mass of biologists. Until recently, these new places have been funded generously, but their future success will depend on their ability to attract new funding because, even as the Indian economy expands and opportunities for interactions with industry increase, government support is declining.

As with most aspects of Indian life, in research there are strong contrasts between the "haves" and the "have-nots." I am fortunate to work in an institute that has levels of infrastructure and support comparable with those in the good laboratories in the West, but many of my peers struggle with ancient laboratory equipment or limited reagents. This is all the more reason why we few fortunate scientists should aim to be world class. "Not a bad job for a lab from India" is not an excuse in which we should find solace.

India is full of surprises - as I said, anything can happen here. I once came into Bombay airport with two suitcases containing 2,000 tubes of Drosophila, fully expecting to have to spend weeks getting them cleared through customs. Instead, the customs officer, a Ph.D. who perhaps could not get a job in research, gathered his colleagues and gave us all an hour-long lecture on polytene chromosomes before he waved me on my way.

K. VijayRaghavan is a member of the National Centre for Biological Sciences at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore, India.

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