Chennai: As the temple town of Chidambaram gets ready to welcome Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Annamalai University where the 94th Science Congress begins on Wednesday, questions are being asked: whether science in India will wither?
India has not been able to manage even simple natural calamities including floods and droughts, which continue to spell disaster for thousands across the country, year after year, season after season. And there is enough reason to discuss climate change and monsoon forecast.
There will be 21 core sessions at the congress to discuss these issues.
The theme of the congress will be Planet Earth. It is being held at a time when India is planning to step on the moon and the common man on this coast wants to know why a tsunami warning system is taking more than two years to set up and has been promised only by September 2007.
The Department of Science and Technology website, vintage 2003, does not tell us what the nation's major scientific achievements have been in the last two years, except on the space and nuclear sector.
If one was to believe the information on the site, India spends less than Rs 300 billion (about Rs 216.40 billion in 2005) for research and development while the US spends nearly $300 billion.
China spends $20 billion. For 2006-7, the country will spend just $4.5 billion.
This is less than one per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP) and less than one per cent of India's GDP, when a small country like Israel spends more than five per cent.
India grants about 1,000-odd patents to Indians, nearly as many to foreign companies.
The state governments spend less than 10 per cent of their budget on research and development, the Indian public sector about five per cent.
As for the Indian industry, lauded for giving India its shine, it spends less than 1 percent of its sales turnover on R&D.
"In terms of scientific publications, India trails China. For example, in 2002-3, Indian researchers published 19,500 papers in scientific journals listed by the Science Citation Index compared to 50,000 by Chinese researchers," says analyst Seema Singh.
India has about 17,000-odd colleges offering science courses and 13 national institutions of excellence but only about 7,000 science doctorates are awarded every year.
Science teachers, scientists and researchers in pure science are becoming difficult to find as a postdoctoral fellow's monthly salary is about Rs 25,000.
India has about eight scientists per 1,000 people, when Canada has 180 and the Russian Federation has 140 per 1,000.
As for women scientists, 97 per cent of the time the prestigious S S Bhatnagar award goes to men, says analyst Vineeta Bal.
Only 17 of the 236 fellows of the National Science Academy are women and only 8 percent representatives of advisory councils of research institutions across the country are women.
In the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, only 46 of the 193 faculty members are women, in the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)'s institute of communicable diseases there are just seven women in a faculty of 33.
The Bose Institute, Kolkata, has just 14 women teachers. In Delhi University's science faculties, there are only six women doctoral level teachers, in the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University there are about a dozen women teachers in the science departments as against nearly 70 male teachers.
India's defence budget is Rs.890 billion, but most of it goes in upgrading, upkeep and overseas procurement.
There is little money for new research and innovation even at utility factories like the Avadi Heavy Vehicles Factory, near Chennai, which is now more a workshop for assembling 200 Russian T-90 tanks than making the Arjun tank or new innovations.
India's refinery development gets about Rs.220 billion but research in the sector is at a nascent stage.
The budget in the road transport sector is Rs.100 billion, rural infrastructure has a budget of Rs 100 billion but roads are flooded every monsoon in Mumbai and Chennai.
To get to villages from a highway still takes hours and in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and many villages share just one telephone, despite the telecom revolution India is boasting of.
The national rural health mission has a budget of more than Rs 80 billion but still malaria and encephalitis, even polio, continue to be problems.
Research in the health sector is low key. Foreign-funded AIDS vaccine research has the highest profile.
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