Can we enhance India's research quality and volume?

There’s always been comparison of research in India to those in China and in USA, and we always end up realizing how much we lag behind those two giants, be it research in basic sciences or in technology, be in the number of papers published (in journals of international repute), be it number of patents filed, be it number of PhDs awarded and so on. Some people blame it on lack of funding, some people blame it on poor resources (equipments for experiments, etc.) available and some people blame it on the inability of the government and research institutes on attracting the talent pool towards research in India. There’ve been lots of discussions, debates and proposals in this regard, both at the blog/media level as well as at the institutional/academic/governmental level. To my understanding, the amount of funds released for research in India (by the government) presently is not so less as it used to be; I heard somewhere that it’s 1% of GDP or something like that. So, funding may not be that big of an issue any more. Next is the issue of the inability to attract the vast majority of our talent pool to pursue a career in research. Sadly, it’s true. There must be some reasons as to why most of the smartest and the brightest students graduating out from various top engineering institutes of our country either i) take up a job in a company that pays them ridiculously high salaries, or ii) pursue MBA either in India or abroad, or iii) pursue MS/PhD/research abroad. The case of students majoring in basic sciences (B.Sc.) is skipped here. The reasons for the above three points will also be skipped here. Sure we can, in some ways, try to attract the talent pool in a greater proportion but that depends on the mindsets of the ‘talent’ pool of students. The question is – can we carry out world-class research at par with USA and China with the existing PhD students, faculty, research tools/resources and money?

                                                                                                      

With relatively only an insignificant amount of time spent in research, I have near-zero levels of knowledge, understanding and experience in these serious matters of how to enhance research output in India. Nor do my words have any say, any power or any weight in any context. Besides, since I’m not pursuing my PhD in India, I’m unfamiliar with the systems and mechanisms there. There are highly successful and established researchers in India and abroad who have a say or influence in affecting governmental and academic decisions with regard to enhancing India’s research quality and output. What I am writing here is arguing, debating and discussing with myself about if we can bring India’s level up in terms of research quality as well as volume so that we rival USA and China. ‘Research’ in this context means research in technology and NOT in science, for, I’m not in science and so have even less idea. And as usual, being biased, my thoughts and perspectives on technological research get unintentionally dragged in to ‘electronics’ technology.

Why don’t we simply copy the US-model? It’s a no-brainer at a casual glance and I’m not sure what’s preventing us from doing it? May be our mindsets, our ‘chalta hai’ attitudes? What’s the US-model by the way I’m referring to? It’s the US-model of granting/allocating funds and being very strict on reviewing the progress every six months on an average. There may be a few US-models but the most common model which I am familiar with involves groups of professors/scientists from various universities/labs, forming multiple teams and vying for one big grant. Each team comprises of various professors from various universities for the simple reason that research is increasingly becoming multi-disciplinary which means experts in one particular area cannot possibly be able to achieve the stated goals. In my area for instance, highly specialized experts from electrical engineering, physics and material science are required, and the leading experts in these various areas may be scattered in various institutes. Each team will write its proposal explaining why it can achieve certain goals faster and better. Ultimately one team is awarded the grant (say of a few million USD), with a strict deadline of a few years. The Office of Naval Research for example, names these grants as MURI (Multi University Research Initiative: http://www.defense.gov/news/d20110422muri.pdf). Every six months, there will be a review chaired by top level officials from the award-granting office, and the various team members will present their latest results and progress. If progress is not satisfactory, funding may be terminated mid-way too. This ensures that the goal specified in the initial grant application is reached at the end of the 3-year or 5-year term as the case may be. Thus, it ensures that the various research groups forming the grant-winning team keep on working and producing useful results and keep on publishing journal papers with technologically useful data.

So, if we come to the scenario in India now, shall we be able to implement the same idea? For instance, a group of professors from three IITs form a team and compete against another group of IITs/IISc, or there may be multiple groups as well. But they all compete for a governmental (DST may be) grant of say a few crore rupees. The idea or goal, for example, (in my area) would be to explore the rapidly exploding world of 2-dimensional materials like MoS₂, WS₂, etc. to design and demonstrate novel electronic devices (eg: for flexible, wearable devices) by exploiting the exotic properties of these materials or something like that. There’re tons of ideas! And then, once the review kicks in, the officials from government/DST would be very strict on monitoring the progress and would check if the true progress is close to what’s specified in the original grant proposal. This way, a strong and dynamic cross-university (cross-IIT/IIsc) collaboration would build up which will seek to deliver a technology in a stipulated amount of time, a technology which is useful and relevant for our country & for mankind. The idea is to maintain a continual push or pressure on the participating research groups to keep on working hard, and working smart. May be such a scheme or cross-university research initiative (akin to MURI in USA) is already in vogue in India of which I’m unaware; maybe it’s in a different area and not in electronics technology – I am not sure.

Research is highly expensive in present times. It is all (or mostly) tax-payers’ money which is pumped into research. At least some level of justice needs to be done to that hard-earned money of the common masses. Research is oftentimes exploratory, and a technologically useful result is not always guaranteed or assured at the start of a research effort – agreed. But it should at least be promising in the first place, promising for some useful technological applications. [Reminder: I’m skipping research in basic sciences]. However, in my personal opinion, research should not be done just for the sake of doing it, with an attitude like “Just because I’ve nothing else to do, I’ll do research”. Research (experimental) is equivalent to directly spending tax-payers’ money, in huge amounts.

With only four years of research experience (which is really insignificant), may be whatever I’ve just written is meaningless, laughable and irrelevant.