Are there big contrasts between US and Indian science?
Societal context makes a great difference. Take physics, for example. Most of our students wish to do theoretical physics. If you ask them why, they have no real reason, it is just that society places a higher value on things driven solely by the brain. This is in dramatic contrast with the US, which is a society that adores building things. There, many brilliant scientists are also adept with their hands. Another contrast is that the relationship between science and technology – the idea that science leads to technology, leads to commercial activity, leads to the generation of wealth for the nation – is very poorly understood here.
In space and nuclear science, Indian researchers take great pride in doing science “for the country”. Does that extend to TIFR?
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I think this is a kind of Gandhian ethos of selfreliance. It is still present, but it is not as apparent here at TIFR as it is in places like nuclear research centres.
But science is not national, it’s global. Do you think India is losing out with this attitude?
I consider this one of the central dilemmas of science in India. There has been a strong historical emphasis on self-reliance and indigenisation. In my childhood, something built in India was a source of great pride. Whether it was built well or not was a secondary question. And this idea still lingers on in places. But not so much at TIFR.
I like to say, tongue in cheek, that there is no such thing as a “Bombay electron”. An electron does in Bombay (Mumbai) pretty much what it does in Boston. An electron discovered once is discovered for good. In science you cannot be second, because the first person at the frontier is the frontier. TIFRwants to be at the frontier.
Do you push your inventions out to industry?
We try to. I have a colleague who has a new optical technique that has great potential. But in India there is no capacity to exploit it. So we are in negotiation with European companies Zeiss and Leica to see if they are interested.
Why is industry absent, then?
If you go back to 1930, when C. V. Raman won India’s Nobel prize for physics, Indian industry was not capable of even making paper clips. It was very backward. So when the country became independent we had a few isolated but significant scientific accomplishments set against a backdrop of essentially no industrial capacity. This is very unusual if you think of the European and western context where science and technology progressed together.
This led the scientific community to develop a sort of disdain for things that are technological. As a result, the best and the brightest saw science as an end in itself: essentially an intellectual pursuit without any regard to what it can give back to society.
What about the state of Indian science, is it healthy?
No it is not. That’s my personal view. I think what has been devastating to Indian science is the weakening of the university system in terms of science, research and teaching put together. And unless that is corrected I don’t think Indian science will ever be healthy.
You cannot build a robust scientific infrastructure on stilts – isolated centres like ours. It has to have a base, and that is the university system, where a large number of students get a high-quality education. If they go for a master’s degree or whatever, it should happen in an environment where research is done, where there’s a sense of vitality.
What do you want to achieve as director of TIFR?
TIFR needs to reorientate itself. This is quite controversial. One difficulty of our society is that we are often not willing to rethink things for ourselves, particularly in institutions that were built by giants. There is a tendency to say that the giants have done all the thinking for us for all time. If I achieve one thing it will be to get people habituated to the idea that we must re-examine ourselves routinely.
I’ll give you an example. Physics was a very important thing in the 20th century. In the 21st century it is a very mature subject. Should TIFR have the same composition in the various sciences today as it did 50 years ago? I strongly doubt it. If we don’t rethink we are not going to change and science will leave us behind.
It’s about taking risks?
It is about taking risks by rethinking the kind of science we do. I’ll quote you something attributed to Wolfgang Pauli. He said there are three kinds of science: the best is where the results are right. Then there are the results that are wrong. Then there are the results that are not even wrong. We cannot afford to do the third kind of research.