Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson on What Ails Indian Science

Their opinion piece in this week's Nature -- Free Indian Science -- lays out (some of) the problems that hold Indian science back. The entire article is worth reading, so go read it now. I'll use this post to highlight some of the interesting points made by the authors.

Let me come right off and say that this is a great line:

Indian science needs public funding, but not government control.

Many people -- including some clueless journalists -- fail to realize that in terms of funding, academic institutions in India are the bit players; the biggies are the government labs, and it is good to see that Joseph and Robinson hammer this point home:

Nearly 60% of India's science budget2 is now spent on the CSIR, scientific departments and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) — an enormous and impenetrable empire set up in 1958. None of these national institutions has stimulated scientific excellence [...]

Joseph and Robinson also nail a key problem in the grants made by funding agencies to faculty members in academic institutions:

... [Although] research in the leading institutions is well funded, [...] the funding is subject to unsuitable restrictions applicable to the entire government bureaucracy. These include limited foreign travel and no travel support for research students, ruling out regular participation in leading conferences and research gatherings.

Their analysis of the problems that plague Indian science leads to a four-part solution. The first part is about insulating the funding agencies from government control:

The first step towards reinvigorating Indian science must be to create an empowered funding agency, staffed by working scientists, some of whom could be non-resident Indians. A possible model is the European Research Council, which deals with a complex of national governments no less formidable than India's 29 state governments, yet manages to focus on supporting research excellence. The crucial requirement is obviously that an Indian scientific research council be permitted to set its own criteria for the evaluation of research proposals, independent of direct government control, and disburse government funds accordingly.

There's a lot more in there -- go read the whole thing.

* * *

Thanks to Prof. S. Ranganathan for the e-mail pointer.

Bell Labs

Among the American private sector industrial R&D labs (such as those at GE, Ford, IBM, Xeros, ...), Bell Labs has a such a special status that one finds an article appearing every once in a while telling us what a great place it was, and trying to extract some management wisdom about what made it so great. Here's the latest, from Jon Gertner.

Gertner appears to trace the decline of the Bell Labs to the US industry's decision to move their factories to other parts of the globe:

... Bell Labs was sometimes caricatured as an ivory tower. But it is more aptly described as an ivory tower with a factory downstairs. It was clear to the researchers and engineers there that the ultimate aim of their organization was to transform new knowledge into new things.

Steven Chu, secretary of the Department of Energy, won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work at Bell Labs in the early 1980s. He once said that working in an environment of applied science like Bell Labs “doesn’t destroy a kernel of genius, it focuses the mind.” At Bell Labs, even for researchers in pursuit of pure scientific understanding, it was obvious that their work could be used.

... Bell Labs’ satellite facilities [were set up] in the phone company’s manufacturing plants, so as to help transfer all these new ideas into things. But the exchange was supposed to go both ways, with the engineers learning from the plant workers, too. As manufacturing has increasingly moved out of the United States in the past half century, it has likewise taken with it a whole ecosystem of industrial knowledge. But in the past, this knowledge tended to push Bell Labs toward new innovations.

E.A.S. Sarma: Premier Scientific Institutions and Conflict of Interest

Dr. E.A.S. Sarma has written a letter today to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about an issue that is worth discussing.: if our scientific institutions "are forced to function as consulting institutions [to industry] in order to raise resources, their independence and credibility are adversely affected," and "... their professional objectivity will continue to get eroded."

The letter has been doing the rounds on various mailing lists and, with Dr. Sarma's permission, I am reproducing it here in full:

Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

  Subject: Premier scientific institutions- Conflict of interest

As a part of the economic liberalization measures launched in 1991, the government had rightly encouraged many public institutions to become self-reliant by raising resources on their own to minimize their financial dependence on the government, thereby enhancing their own functional autonomy. It has certainly enabled many such institutions to become self-sustaining and have a greater freedom in their functioning. It has been a positive development.

However, during the last couple of decades, some of the premier scientific institutions that constitute the backbone of India’s scientific and technological research have, no doubt, gained some financial independence from the government, only to be pushed into the waiting arms of the industry and MNCs who have been trying to poach on their knowledge in return for funding! In some cases, the institutions which are expected to provide objective inputs to the government on scientific and technological issues have fallen prey to the industry and lost their credibility as professionally independent institutions.

There are several such premier scientific institutions. National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), for example, is the only institution that has the capacity and the credibility necessary to advise the government on the coastal environment and help Ministry of Environment & Forests (MOEF) in determining the CRZ parameters in an objective manner. National Environmental and Engineering Institute (NEERI) is an institution that could have played a pivotal role in advising MOEF on environmental issues. Similarly, on seismic and other geophysical concerns, National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) is the institution on which the concerned government agencies would necessarily depend for an independent appraisal. If these institutions are forced to function as consulting institutions in order to raise resources, their independence and credibility are adversely affected, as it has already happened. Many of these institutions have undertaken consulting work, giving rise to a conflict of interest in their respective roles. As long as they function as paid consultants of the industry, their professional objectivity will continue to get eroded.

On the other hand, institutions such as Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are engaged in frontier research in crucial areas of national importance, such as, genetic science and engineering. Any dependence of these institutions on the industry, especially MNCs, to raise resources will cause a large scale flight of knowledge and intellectual property to the funding companies, to the detriment of the national interest. I am not sure whether the expert committees such National Knowledge Commission have adequately applied their mind to this aspect. This is far too an important issue that can be ignored by the government, as many MNCs and external agencies have already started poaching on the precious knowledge wealth of the country.

Against this background, I would request you to take the initiative in identifying and prioritizing such institutions and formulating a well thought out scheme to strengthen the institutions professionally and provide them government funding so as to enhance and maintain their independence in the true sense. If these very same institutions are assured of government funding, it will go a long way towards protecting the national interest in terms of the enormous intellectual property that these institutions are capable of building.

In my view, the government should constitute a group of eminent persons to consider the issue I have raised in depth and detail. The persons to be chosen to be the members of such a group should have the necessary vision and they should have the national interest at heart. The names of eminent scientists like Prof. Pushpa M Bhargava readily come to my mind in this context. There are several others who could be identified in advising the government on the issue I have raised.

I hope that you will take the lead in constituting such a group to advise the government on the modalities.

Regards,

  Yours sincerely,

  E.A.S.Sarma
Visakhapatnam
30-10-2011

Dr. Sarma was a member of the Indian Administrative Service during 1965-2000. His website is here.

Gender gap in academic promotion: Evidence from Spain

Manuel F. Bagues and Natalia Zinovyeva at VoxEU: Does gender matter for academic promotion? Evidence from a randomised natural experiment. Here's the abstract:

Several countries have recently introduced gender quotas in hiring and promotion committees at universities. Evidence from promotions in the Spanish university system suggests that quotas are only effective at increasing the number of successful female applicants in promotions to top positions. This column argues that, given that sitting on committees reduces the available time for research, gender quotas should be implemented only for more senior academic positions.

Mashelkar's Adventurism

Three links to comments from others; I have nothing to add to whatever I have said here (see also the comments section) and here. [And I'm off to the wonderful Tata Steel City; I'll be able to come back to blogging only after I return Sunday.]

1. Arunn Narasimhan at Unruled Notebook: Maverick Academic Blogger Rants Off.

2. Giridhar: Adventurism and Irreverence.

3. P. Balaram (Director, IISc) in a Current Science editorial: Irreverence and Advancement [pdf].

Indian Science in Two Figures

Gangan Pratap has been having too much fun with data on India's standing in the world of science and science funding. The following two figures taken from his most recent publications in Current Science should go a long way in demolishing the spurious claim that a shortage of 'the spirit of adventurism' is what stands between India and S&T superpower status.

The first figure is a comparison based on two variables: (a) the proportion of researchers (defined as FTER, Full Time Equivalent Researcher) in the population and (b) proportion of GDP spent on R&D:

The second figure is a comparison based on (a) percentage share in world GDP and (b) percentage share in S&T output. This figure packs a lot of data since it tracks the progress of each country (or group of countries) during the period 1995-2007.

Mashelkar on the Spirit of Adventurism

The Beatles sang some four decades ago, "All you need is love." Raghunath Mashelkar sings now, "All you need is irreverence."

I know it sounds all wrong. But nothing, it appears, is right about science in India. Mashelkar has diagnosed the missing ingredient: irreverence. And he has gone public with it in an editorial in Science.

Let's get real and frank here, shall we? The thesis that Indian scientists are held back because of lack of irreverence is amazingly self-serving, coming as it does from a man who led a massive organization for scientific research -- the CSIR -- for over a decade. It says, in effect, that Indian scientists have failed in spite of an abundance of water, electric power, intertubes, money, infrastructure, and yes, leaders.

If only they had a bit of irreverence ...

Tsk, Tsk!

* * *

[If that link doesn't work, use the one at the end of this note at SciDev.net].

* * *

Let's turn to (some of) Mashelkar's arguments. Here's how he explains the origin of Indians' purported reverence:

1. The situation has deep roots in Indian culture and tradition. The ancient Sanskrit saying "baba vakyam pramanam" means "the words of the elders are the ultimate truth," thus condemning the type of irreverence inspired by the persistent questioning that is necessary for science.

2. The Indian educational system, which is textbook-centered rather than student-centered, discourages inquisitive attitudes at an early age. Rigid unimaginative curricula and examinations based on single correct answers further cement intolerance for creativity.

3. And the bureaucracy inherited from the time of British rule over-rides meritocracy.

Let's leave aside the silliness of blaming the Raj, even obliquely; the British left 60 years go. Let's also ignore the blame-the-bureaucracy argument; it's disingenuous when it comes from a man who headed that bureaucracy for over 10 years.

Blaming rote learning won't get us far as an explanation for lack of creativity. Exceptions abound -- especially in music, a field famous not just for mind-numbing repetition during the early years, but also for institutionalized reverence.

Finally, as stereotypes go, reverence to authority is seen as a defining feature of not just the Indian culture, but of Asian cultures in general. And as arguments go, it's too convenient: When you are down, it explains why you are are not competitive; when you are competitive, it explains why you are not creative; when you are creative, it explains why you don't get Nobels.

It's one thing for the Westerners to beat the Asians with that stick. It takes a certain "reverent Asian mind" to peddle that argument to his own people, and bask in the audacity of it all!

* * *

I don't wish to go on. I'll just say that Indian scientists work under conditions that take a lot of basic, essential things out of their control -- from funding to electric power to water. What they need from their leaders are the resolve, the skill and the mental wherewithal to solve these little problems, so that they -- I mean the scientists -- can go about solving Big Problems.

Leaders who are impotent -- or, were impotent -- to get the little things right for their scientists should, at the least, shut the fuck up.

* * *

Mashelkar's little lecture about irreverence does many wonderful things -- for the leaders. It underplays -- conveniently! -- their role in ensuring the success of the scientists working in their organizations. It puts the blame for lack of success -- conveniently! -- on the working scientists themselves.

It allows leaders like Mashelkar give a grand and statesmanlike sheen to their high-profile outpourings -- it doesn't get any more high-profile than an editorial in Science! -- even though what they're doing are trashing their own people and peddling mindless boilerplate. Just think about it: wouldn't Mashelkar's editorial work even when we replace irreverence with initiative, proactive nature, big-think, audacity, or creativity? In fact, Mashelkar himself uses creativity synonymously with irreverence.

As a synonym for irreverence, Mashelkar also uses something else: 'spirit of adventurism.'

Yes, you read that right: it's adventurism, not adventure.

All I can say is: Sic!

The unravelling of Shiva Ayyadurai ...

... has begun.

Vinod Scaria has started a forum discussion thread on Ayyadurai at the Nature India website [Update (6 December 2009): Scaria's post has been removed by the forum administrators at Nature India; it's archived here, though]. Scaria is a scientist at IGIB (a CSIR lab), New Delhi; in his post, he says quite a few things that shatter Ayyadurai's self-portrait as a professional who -- before he gave up, or, was fired -- fought against immense odds for 'freedom for science' at CSIR.

Sidebar: Updates
(in reverse chronological order)

4. Rahul has an update in which he questions the ethics of Nature Network's removal of the forum posts by Scaria and Sivasubbu, while keeping alive Ayyadurai's 'commentary' on the front page of Nature India.

3. This post at The Shiva Ayyadurai Fan Club presents quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Ayyadurai may have misrepresented his affiliation with MIT. If this suggestion proves true, it will completely damage his credibility.

2. Wow. Things are happening fast. A second CSIR scientist, Sridhar Sivasubbu of IGIB, has joined the fray, with a separate post in Nature India forums [Update (6 December 2009): This post has also been removed; it's archived here, though].

1. Check out the blog of The Shiva Ayyadurai Fan Club.

* * *

While we are not in a position to comment on what really went on in those meetings (for example, Scaria paints him as not just unprofessional, but unethical as well), we can certainly form an opinion on what is available on the web. Scaria does a good job of unearthing this stuff for us:

... I am not amused to find a Nature Biotechnology in his CV with the word “submitted” in small type and his claim to have written a commentary in Nature , while it is nothing but a Blog in nature India.see it for yourself here. The homepage even features a PDF with a complete nature.com logo.

Here's the entry for his 'commentary'; as of now, it's No. 1 in Ayyadurai's resume under "Selected Publications":

S. Ayyadurai, Commentary: Innovation Demands Freedom, Nature, December, 2009.

Scaria is right: this 'commentary' is something that appeared in the Nature India website -- which is distinct from Nature, the science journal. To claim that it's a commentary that appeared in Nature (within a couple of days after it appeared at Nature India) says something about the man who has cried 'unprofessional' at every bloody opportunity.

[Thanks to this comment, I checked out this page that reproduced his 'commentary'; at that time, it featured 'Nature.com' logo prominenty, right at the top, as some sort of a 'masthead'. Evidently, Ayyadurai has been following blog comments; the masthead now features Nature India.]

[Similarly, I'm not able to locate the 'Nature Biotechnology' paper (which Scaria refers to in his scathing post) in Ayyadurai's CV, probably because this entry has now been 'corrected'.]

Science, Bureaucracy, Government

In an op-ed in the The Hindu, Narlikar, one of the finest popular science writers in India, describes recent experiments by Indian scientists from TIFR, CCMB, NCCS and ISRO, with very interesting the (sci-fi like) implications in astrobiology.

Astrobiology not the only topic that animates Narlikar's article, however; here's how he sees the impact of this work on Indian science:

This inter-institutional accomplishment illustrates the indigenous capability in successfully fabricating experimental set-ups of entirely new types. This trend for originality and creativity augurs well for Indian science. With fresh wind blowing in bringing global competitiveness and collaboration, attitudes to scientific research will change from that of a routine job to an adventure in creativity.

While that's a pretty positive outlook, there are concerns:

Perhaps the greatest hindrance to planning exciting experiments and achieving important results is the bureaucratic framework of our research institutes. The hierarchical structure, especially pay scales of our research institutes mimic the government’s administrative structure. However, the creativity and efficiency of a scientist vis-À-vis the administrator evolve differently, with the scientist bringing differential skill and qualification requirements to the table. Besides, a young scientist is in the prime of his creative life and an administrator, on the other hand, gains maturity with age. To base the promotion criteria of a scientist on the same pattern as for an administrator is to ignore this fundamental difference. This more often than not leads to frustration among the younger generation of scientists as they see their bright new ideas getting ignored or going unappreciated.

Narlikar's views reminded me of a perceptive analysis of science administration in India in a presentation by T. Jayaraman (ppt). Since our government funds scientific research, it treats science as a 'government department', with pretty serious consequences in the way it impacts the scientists' ability to get on with their work:

• Scientific research is incidental to smooth functioning of the institution.

• Individual research work (as opposed to `projects’) [is] simply a route to acquiring `personal benefits’ for the individual researcher.

• Increasingly, even routine requirements (like adequate funding to invite and host visiting scientists program) have to be bundled as `projects'.

• Financial and administrative accountability is central while scientific accountability is pushed to the background.

• Mobility for research work [is] seriously affected.

• Human resource management practices [are] hooked to that of government.

Here's an earlier post about Jayaraman's talk.

This is a good place to link (yet again) to Jayaraman's stinging critique (from 2005!) of the way our science policies are made and our science institutions are run.

Shiva Ayyadurai ...

... is back in the news.

1. Through a blog -- Freedom for Science -- written by card-carrying members of Ayyadurai Fan Club. The blog has also made public the report by Ayyadurai and Sardana (check the side bar of that blog). The really juicy bits that led to Ayyadurai's dismissal (he claims that he resigned) are in Chapter 7. The report is also noteworthy for its atrociously sappy (and shall I say, 'unprofessional' -- see below) 'Dedication.'

2. In Heather Timmon's NYTimes story on how expats who choose to return to India find stuff here to be "inefficient" and "unprofessional". And the poster child for that stereotype-laden story is none other than Ayyadurai, whose saga at CSIR occupies over a third of it.

   [Do make sure to read Timmons' report all the way to the end, to learn a bit more about DG-CSIR's unique skills in handling journalists!]

   I have only one comment: Ayyadurai may have a "fistful of American degrees," but his tenure at CSIR was a disaster. For someone who was hand-picked by the top honcho, he had every opportunity to make his job a success -- but he botched it. As Timmons' story reveals, "Within weeks, he and his boss were at loggerheads." [See also Ayyaduraii's report -- with its 'Dedication', the stuff in Chapter 7, the stupid 'historical time-line' in Chapter 1. If that damned thing is not unprofessional, I have to wonder what is...]

   When outsiders fail in their jobs, it's natural for some of them to blame the environment, the 'inefficient' and 'unprofessional' culture of the natives. Timmons has been rather uncritical in peddling the stereotypes mouthed by those who failed in their jobs, fled, and now use martyrdom as a mask.

3. Also in a Nature - India article -- Innovation Demands Freedom [free registration required] -- penned by Ayyadurai himself.

L'Affaire Ayyadurai: Was CSIR wrong to hire a 'foreigner'?

Before I get to that question, let me first link to this post by Rahul Siddharthan, who has linked to Ayyadurai's website. Here's an excerpt from near the end of his post:

... [M]aybe he was already told not to expect to be hired in a permanent position, and his report was his way of venting his grievance at the CSIR DG. Which makes it even more unprofessional. Regardless of the truth or otherwise in his observations, I don't think the report will now be taken seriously, nor should it be.

But that shouldn't detract from two key issues. First, exactly what sort of position was Shiva hired under in the first place, why, and what was his mandate? Second, the need to reform and streamline CSIR remains: what does the DG plan to do in this regard? I suspect the CSIR DG made a mistake (caused by over-eagerness to "get things done") in hiring V A Shiva, and knows it; he should now make amends -- first, by coming clean on exactly what happened; and second, by making sure the need for reforming and modernising CSIR is not sidetracked.

Let me now turn to the question in this post's title. It's triggered by this column (free registration required) in Nature - India by Prof. Gautam Desiraju (who, btw, is now a colleague at IISc -- he moved from the University of Hyderabad recently).

Desiraju frames the issue as one of hiring an outsider -- and more specifically, a "foreigner":

There is no dearth of qualified and highly successful scientists with long and enriching careers in India. CSIR itself has many such scientists. Some of them have obtained PhD degrees from prominent universities abroad and have significant collaborations with respected scientists from around the globe.

Most of these scientists are also well aware of the ground realities in India, meaning they harbour realistic expectations of what may or may not be achieved in India. In short, there is no shortage of hard headed, knowledgeable and practical Indian scientists who have lived and worked in India.

The thought that prominent research organisations feel the need to turn to foreign shores to find 'leadership' for their rudderless bodies is anachronistic. This can hardly be a colonial hang-up: not after 62 years.

Now, it's possible that Prof. Samir Brahmachari, DG, CSIR, hired Shiva Ayyadurai in spite of the availability of a more capable CSIR insider. While we don't know much about why Ayyadurai was hired, what we do know is that he turned out to be a bad bet -- however, we know this only after his report blew up so spectacularly in Brahmachari's face.

But, isn't it too much of a stretch to cite what is essentially a case of hiring FAIL as evidence to oppose -- or, to erect nationalist barriers to -- hiring of outsiders?

Unfortunately for Desiraju, he undermines his own case with the last paragraph:

The rot has set in deep within CSIR and elsewhere. Cosmetic changes here and there would be like dusting rouge on a corpse. In the end, we run the grave risk of perishing.

Huh?

Didn't he start this line of argument with how CSIR is swarming with "qualified and highly successful scientists with long and enriching careers in India"? How, then, does this mighty CSIR morph, in just a couple of paragraphs, into a "corpse" in which "the rot has set in deep"?

Nature on the Ayyadurai affair

K.S. Jayaraman has a piece in Nature entitled Report Row Ousts Top Indian Scientist (probably behind a paywall). Leaving aside the bit about "top scientist," let me focus on the new information in Jayaraman's report. In the following, bold emphasis has been added by me:

1. "Ayyadurai says that the report — which was not commissioned by the CSIR — was intended to elicit feedback about the institutional barriers to technology commercialization."

2. "Our interaction with CSIR scientists revealed that they work in a medieval, feudal environment," says Ayyadurai. "Our report said the system required a major overhaul because innovation cannot take place in this environment."

3. [Deepak] Sardana [co-author of the report] [has written] to science minister Prithviraj Chavan on 19 October saying that "it is not possible for me to continue working without your immediate direct intervention" because of the problems triggered by the report.

4. "I am more worried that the incident will dampen the enthusiasm of Indian institutions to hire expatriates in the future," says Valangiman Ramamurthy, the former science secretary of the government's Department of Science and Technology, who recommended Ayyadurai's selection.

Just one quick comment. Ramamurthy may have "recommended Ayyadurai's selection," but he's being silly in suggesting that it'll affect the hiring of expats.

Sure, Ayyadurai is an NRI, but are all NRIs Ayyadurais?

For the record, Jayaraman's piece does salvage the situation by quoting several others -- Gangan Prathap, Rajan Sankaranarayanan, and Samir Brahmachari -- who don't see things the same way as Ramamurthy.

Ayyadurai: "[DG, CSIR] believes he knows it all"

In the 42-page document Shiva and Sardana described Brahmachari as the “director general who believes he knows all even though he has minimal depth of information and domain knowledge.”

The duo accused Brahmachari of “maintaining a close coterie of sycophants, mostly incompetent” and not allowing the opposition views for any debate. [source]

That's from the now infamous Chapter 7 of a report entitled "CSIR-TECH -- Path Forward" by Shiva Ayyadurai and Deepak Sardana. This chapter is about "the multiple challenges to realizing a CSIR-TECH company."

The authors also suggest a possible solution to this "challenge" of having to deal with a DG who "believes he knows it all" and who "maintains a close coterie of [mostly incompetent] sycophants". Here is their suggested solution, in full:

SOLUTION: 21st Century Leadership Training both short and long-term to be repeated until basic elements of leadership are learned. Beyond book learning.

May I request you all to stop laughing, now?

* * *

A couple of quick observations:

1. If Ayyadurai chooses to pull this kind of stunt against the man who hired him (and whose support he needs for setting up CSIR-TECH), I have to wonder why he's protesting his dismissal.

2. Having vitiated the working environment with his report, why would Ayyadurai -- a man with 4 degrees from MIT and with 'rich' experience in starting and running companies -- want his job back? Strange ...

Patent balance sheet at CSIR

Hidden in the Mint story about Shiva Ayyadurai's travails at CSIR, there is this revealing statistic:

Over the past 10 years, CSIR laboratories have been granted 5,014 patents in India and abroad. The money earned from these was Rs. 36.8 crore, but the cost of filing them was Rs. 228.64 crore, according to official figures obtained by Hindustan Times (HT) through the Right to Information Act.

* * *

BTW, the previous post on Ayyadurai has comments expressing strong views -- both favourable and unfavourable -- about CSIR. Just in case you are interested...

There's nothing new to report on Ayyadurai, but commenters have also pointed to a couple of links that tell us a little bit more about him and his short career as a 'consultant' at CSIR:

1. MIT News (from September 2007): East Meets West: Armed with 4 MIT degrees, Shiva Ayyadurai embarks on new adventure:

   In the 26 years since he first arrived at MIT as a freshman, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai has earned four MIT degrees and started two multimillion dollar companies.

   This fall, he will use his most recent degree, a Ph.D. in computational systems biology, and a Fulbright Scholarship to explore one of his lifelong interests: the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine.

   Ayyadurai's upcoming project is the latest in a series of personal ventures that have spanned fields as diverse as electronic communications, animation and molecular biology. His experience shows what is possible with an MIT education, he says.

2. Rediff.com: Scientist vs establishment battle simmers in CSIR:

   According to Ayyadurai, it all started when CSIR Director General Samir Brahmachari gave him a handwritten offer and detailed job description of the STIO's post.

   In June this year, Ayyadurai was in India on a Fulbright scholarship. "At that time, a scientist whom I know said the director general of CSIR would like to meet me. I met him the next day and he invited me to join the organisation and make it into a centre of excellence," Ayyadurai said.

   In a handwritten note, Brahmachari promised Ayyadurai that he would be the CEO of various companies he spins off and that he would also be eligible to be stake in such companies.

   "I accepted it because in the United States if two CEOs shake hands, the deal is done. In this case, I got a written offer few days later and it was fine," Ayyadurai said, adding, "It was much later on that I realised that according to Indian law, he can't even promise those things."

   Meanwhile, immediately after taking over, Ayyadurai set his sights on creating a structure for CSIR-Tech -- a company that would work with CSIR scientists to spin off their inventions into moneymaking products.

The Curious Case of Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

Ankita Anika Gupta of Mint has the scoop.

Here's a basic outline of the plot: Ayyadurai, a 45 year-old NRI scientist / technocrat, was parachuted into the CSIR system at a plum salary (by Indian public sector standards -- Band Pay of Rs. 60,000 + Grade Pay of 12,000).

It's not clear to me what exactly his mandate or job description was, but he ended up producing a report that was critical of the leadership at CSIR.

Result: he has been fired!

Here is a summary of where the two parties -- Ayyadurai and CSIR leadership -- stand:

“(CSIR) is attempting to remove me (in) reaction to my addressing well-known, intrinsic leadership issues during the course of my professional duties to serve the cause of Indian science and innovation,” said Shiva Ayyadurai in a 30 October letter, a copy of which is with the Hindustan Times. [...]

Samir Brahmachari, director general of CSIR, said Ayyadurai’s services were terminated because he was a “financial mismatch”. “He was demanding too much salary,” said Brahmachari. “Everyone told me I was pampering him because he came from abroad.”

With so much of he-said-(s)he-said in Gupta's version of the story, I still don't have enough to be able to offer a comment.

Do read that story, though. It'll give you a sense of -- and an opportunity, perhaps, to bask in some schadenfreude on -- the kinds of troubles that our institutions (and their leadership) are capable of inviting.

Ananth Kamath: "Indian graduates lack inspiration, not infrastructure"

Here's the short abstract of the article in SciDev.net: "India should be inspiring science and technology graduates to stay in the sector, rather than building new institutions."

In a study he conducted at IIT-Madras (where he surveyed both faculty and students), Kamath explored the factors behind S&T graduates' career choices. Here's his rather bleak summary of 'economic, non-economic and institutional' reasons behind why students leave S&T careers:

To begin with, students report being de-motivated by uninspiring classroom environments. They criticise textbooks as being sluggish and out of touch with reality.

Many students report that internships, which are supposed to give them hands-on experience of industry, only fuelled further disinterest or indifference towards an S&T career. Many claim they faced a bureaucratic work environment and outmoded infrastructure in the S&T organisations they are sent to, which stonewalls their creativity.

Even seemingly minor factors, like the quality of pre-placement presentations, sway students' minds. Students observe that wealthier multinationals, even many homegrown corporations, are conscious of the attractive power of good presentations and have visibly invested in them, in contrast to presentations by many government-run R&D labs or even private S&T organisations.

And however much teachers strive to make S&T or R&D more appealing and relevant, the long time it takes to gain recognition in a research career leave students uninspired. In today's highly connected and informed world, finding alternative professions or academic opportunities that offer faster recognition — in India or beyond — is easy.

There's also a somewhat more extended summary of Kamath's work.

Where does India stand in industrial R&D spending?

Here's one way to look at it (thanks to Pradeepkumar for the pointer):

The top 10 Indian firms, put together, invested 477 million euro last year for R&D, less than one-tenth of the world's biggest R&D investor Pfizer.

The total R&D spending by top 10 Indian companies is also less than what the lowest ranked company among the world's top-50 spends.

Just after this year's Central Budget was presented, I did an analysis of public spending on R&D in India. My estimate for government support for academic R&D in all our universities was less than half a billion dollars. This figure is exceeded by the R&D budget of each of the top five (and probably many more!) US universities.

The big HR problem at ISRO

A massive 52.82 per cent of the scientists recruited during 2006 have left the Indian Space Research Organisation for the private sector due to better remunerative packages being offered by them. ... [In] 2006, 187 out of 354 scientists/engineers recruited left ISRO ...

Ouch. So, what is ISRO doing?

... [A] host of steps were being taken to encourage and motivate students in schools and colleges to join space studies and space research like providing opportunity for visits to ISRO centres, organisation of open house discussions and exhibitions every year.

The department of space has submitted a proposal to the VIth pay commission for enhanced pay and special incentives as performance based annual increments. [...]

Thanks to Manoj M. Prabhakaran for the e-mail alert.

CSIR: headless for five months!

A while ago, Nature did a story on how CSIR -- India's largest science and technology research organization with some 40 odd labs and nearly 19000 scientists -- has not had a Director General since Dr. R.A. Mashelkar retired at the end of December 2006. Unfortunately, that story was behind a paywall, so I didn't bother to link to it. The Daily News and Analysis (DNA) did a story yesterday, covering many of the angles in the Nature story (and interviewing some of the same people).

While you will have to read the story to get the details, I want to point to a couple of things in it. The first is this sentiment:

The other reason is that truly competent scientists now have opportunities outside the government system without having to worry about the administration.

This is patently absurd. First: as one moves up in an organization -- public or private -- there is certainly more and more of administration. The rare scientist who stays clear of administrative responsibilities does so with the full knowledge about the price of his/her choice: foregoing the chance to shape the course of science in the country, and the accompanying lack of influence among his/her peers. Second, top administrative positions are so rare (by definition!), and there are always a number of capable people willing to take them up.

Sure, leadership at CSIR comes with some difficulties (covered in the DNA story), but it also comes with a great opportunity to show off one's capabilities in the administrative realm. It also comes with enormous influence. It's difficult to imagine that there are very few capable people queuing up for this position. That people are even mouthing inanities -- such as DG-CSIR is unattractive compared to private sector jobs -- is quite amazing.

The other thing I want to point to is this statement attributed to S.K. Joshi, Mashelkar's immediate predecessor the Director General of CSIR:

Real talent from within the CSIR system is scarce because, "except one or two, most of the CSIR labs failed to create a second line of scientists who will take care of CSIR once the older scientists retire".

Coming from an ex-DG of CSIR, this is a bit rich, isn't it? During whose tenure as DG did CSIR fail "to create a second line of scientists" for leadership positions? As a smug, self-congratulatory ex-bureaucrat making self-serving statements, S.K. Joshi is, alas, following certain very illustrious people. As Yogi Berra put it, it's déjà vu all over again!

'Please fail very quickly—so that you can try again'

That is from Erich Schmidt, Google's CEO, quoted in this Economist story on how corporate R&D has changed in the last several decades. It's a little too computing-centric; it covers the R&D philosophy at companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, HP ... For example, here's the bit about Cisco:

The post-war R&D model needs updating ... because companies now have a greater choice of where to shop for ideas. “If you go back to that period of AT&T, there wasn't the same kind of engineering going on at universities, and Bell Labs could not rely on an external cadre of engineers for their research—they really had to do it internally,” says Charles Giancarlo of Cisco.

He admits his company has long been accused of “R&D by M&A”—but he does not see why that should be a problem. Cisco spends $4.3 billion a year on employing over 16,000 engineers around the world, in addition to tapping into the venture-capital industry's start-ups. Basic research inside companies is impossible in a competitive industry, according to Mr Giancarlo. “We might decry this on a public-policy basis, but at least as far as public markets are concerned it is a Darwinian world. You live or die by that.”

Commenting on this article, Gordon Watts makes a valid point:

But this product driven model won’t work for the next big thing. If transistors powered this revolution — what will power the next? You’ll need something hidden away, insulated from the corporate winds, to do that research. Currently only the government has a “business model” that can fund that sort of research.

If basic research (which will lead to the 'next big thing') is the responsibility of universities, Doug Natelson points to some of the problems:

... Anyone who knows how university research actually works can tell you many reasons why this is a bad idea. Apart from low-level practical considerations (publish vs patent? foreign vs. domestic students? export controls?), the big killer here is just one of resources. Back when I was at Bell, if they wanted to they could have put a dozen condensed matter PhDs to work on a problem, along with technical support staff. Given how universities work, with teaching commitments, administrative tasks, student timescales, etc., no university achieve that kind of critical mass.

In comments, Incoherent Ponderer seems to agree:

Universities are not likely to fill the vacancy, for reason Doug mentions - university research happens in small groups, collaborations are often discouraged - everyone wants to claim the intellectual ownership of idea/research. Besides, grant reviews every 3 years makes it difficult to do long-term research.