Abstract
It is indeed a huge challenge to evaluate the status of higher education in India. A commendable one that has been widely thought about and discussed is the article by Pravin J. Patel is ‘Research Culture in India’. It provides us with historical and comparative perspectives on the state of natural sciences in India. His perspective has been perhaps moulded by Robert K. Merton’s famous essay on ‘Science and Democratic Social Structure’ (1942), a pioneering study in the field of the sociology of science.
It is but natural that it is sociology and not, for example, chemistry that forms the analytical framework for this study. To understand the development of natural sciences in society over time requires a broad knowledge of history, politics, economy and society. However, I am not a sociologist of science, so my comments arise from my experience of Indian universities and society over the last half a decade or since 1966–1967 when I was a student at Annamalai University and PSG Arts College in Tamil Nadu.
Prof Patel’s picture is grim: compared to China and other Asian countries, India and its universities definitely lag behind in scientific achievements within the field of natural sciences when compared with the international norm and the number of research publications.
But history is paradoxical. It all started long ago when India was a world centre of knowledge in mathematics and astronomy, a heritage that eventually transmitted Westwards via the Arabs to peripheral Europe. The invention of the zero was the opening up of India’s science of advanced mathematics and digital analysis.
Then came a period of occupation and subjugation. British colonialism brought with it a degeneration of Indian sciences in the sense that it commanded the height of knowledge, historical and otherwise. One can ask: Is India’s higher education path dependent? Given that it was established after 1857 and modelled on the University of London, which focused on the teaching and transmission of knowledge developed elsewhere; underlying the need for an educated Indian elite to help rule an unruly continent.
In the mid19th century, Humboldt University of Berlin was the first model for a research university, which was behind the rise of Germany as a world leader in the chemical industry. Other European countries followed suite only to be overtaken by USA which now is positioned at the world’s commanding height.
In India, the path of learning was colonial submission and eventually postcolonial dependence. Hierarchical and authoritarian in style, innovative research took a backseat, almost feudal-style professors ran their departments with staff under a form of serfdom. A doctoral student presenting a thesis that was contrary to the knowledge of his professor would soon be down and out.
However, it was not only caste with its segmentation of knowledge that hampered the development of knowledge. The stagnation of India’s economy and its very backward mode of production also made science and innovation obsolete. The ‘social carriers of technology’ (Edquist & Edqvist, 1978), such as entrepreneurs, capitalist firms, government administrations and so on, were missing for a long time. India, in the meantime, became known for its use of small-scale technology, Gandhian style, followed by the Small-is-Beautiful approach articulated by Schumacher (1999): a stimulating, innovative foundation for applied research, famously known in environmental circles, but hardly a spring board for advances in basic sciences.
When India started to take off as an economy with the Green Revolution based on new foreign made seeds, Indian science was also following a trail of innovations. By successfully developing domestic varieties suitable to different soils and climates, a new and fresh beginning was being made. The more recent successful adoption and development of genetically modified seeds in India is another example.
The full realisation of India’s science potential to change the world came with gradual liberalisation and integration with the world and knowledge economy. This was especially innovative, for example, in the field of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry, with the Indian patent law protecting formulas and making India a merciful and helpful Samaritan of the poor and the sick across the world.
This is not to say that everything is on track. India’s comparatively small manufacturing industrial sector makes it a rather limited ‘social carrier’ of technology. This is so even if China decelerates itself as the industrial workshop of the world. The re-industrialisation of the West is also on its way. Maybe the best chance for India is the making of robots and ‘cyborgs’ for the industry. Indians are now everywhere in the global system and contributing strongly.
One field in which India could make great progress is solar energy. As the history shows, solar energy was first developed in USA under the Carter administration, which provided the necessary research funding and subsidies to the industry to guarantee the market. This, however, was stopped by Ronald Reagan thinking that this was undue interference in the free market. The leading role was then taken over by Japan, which engineered a similar programme later to be overtaken by China, which is now world leader (Jerneck, 2015). India, in acute need of fossil free energy, could certainly enter this field with success. But no new technology will be forthcoming unless it is driven by strong political and economic forces.
There is also an urgent need for climate, hydrological and basic irrigation systems, given the strong and devastating evapotranspiration of surface water storages, such as dams, ponds and so on. Waterborne disease infections make up another field of urgent basic research, given the very fast urbanisation now taking place. It is where the natural, social and political worlds intersect in a local environment which will provide an inroad. 1
A field where basic and applied sciences could go hand in hand is, for example, IT and programming. Indians have special talents in mathematics and languages which have ensured success so far. The sky has no limit in this case.
Today, Indian scientists lead a double life. They are often trained in traditional and rigid institutions but if they are successful, they have the whole international academic world as their playing field. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Indian students and researchers in the US and other parts of the West comprising the most visible and excellent diaspora of researchers in universities and specialists in computer firms, laboratories and so on. More recently, Indians have started entering Swedish universities and firms and are making their presence strongly felt.
There are also remarkable institutional exceptions in India like the numerous Indian Institutes of technology and administration respectively. Alumni from these institutes are working in US or European universities and other institutes and they alternate back and forth. 2 IT firms, recruiting people from all castes and faiths, are creating democratic profiles that facilitate creative inventions. No other country can compete with these highly multicultural power houses.
There is a strong potential in all of this. The many vacancies and lack of senior professors could be turned into a boon. Institutional reforms, strengthening of finance and recruitments of bright researchers also from abroad could, over a fairly short time period, turn these regenerated elite universities into world leading institutes. What is needed is a democratic revolution in the academic world.
Neo-liberalism in ideology and practice threatens all this. The entry of private business into public universities and privatisation of knowledge and research results are contrary to the ethos of science as democratic and communist sharing (Merton, 1942). Can India resist this trend effectively?
Today, advanced sciences, especially natural sciences, need very sophisticated equipment and modern laboratories. There is no doubt that all of that can be built in India today. Yet, some new laboratories are acknowledged global centres, for example, the European Spallation Source (ESS) under construction at Lund University. This ESS is the most advanced in Europe and the world outside USA. According to its homepage, ESS is
a unique facility for materials research (….). The ESS will be a multidisciplinary scientific research centre harnessing the world’s most powerful neutron source. Researchers will be able to study the materials of everyday life, from plastics and proteins to medicines and molecules, in order to understand how they are built up and how they work. The facility can be likened to a giant microscope, where neutrons are fired at different types of material so that they can be analysed in detail. ESS will be responsible for future research breakthroughs in medicine, environmental science, climate, communication and transport. (
This and other global laboratories are joint venture between states and universities and not under the control of private capital. Therefore, Indian scientists would be well advised to apply for funding and make use of these facilities for the advancement of basic science and the common good. It is also possible to follow online the experiments taking place and the analyses being made. Using these laboratories would almost certainly result in Nobel Prizes for Indian scientists in the future.
To strengthen the link with society and to get in contact with the real ‘social carriers of technology’, India needs much more than global research contacts or multinational firms and their need for innovations. It needs a knowledge society. Therefore, primary education and health are basic prerequisites and must be strengthened all over. This should be possible now with a strong economy and a ‘post-postcolonial’ situation with India, firm in its online presence, and interweaving close networks in the world of communications.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Lars Eklund, Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), Lund, for his valuable inputs.