Indian Science Management: Challenges and Way Forward

Context: 

This editorial is based on the news “The problem with India’s science management” which was published in The Hindu. This article expresses the concern over the administrative ability of Indian science and Scientific advances.

Examining Challenges to Indian Science Management and Advancement

• Low Expenditure on Research and Development: India spends only around 0.7% of GDP, compared to 3.5% for the United States and 2.4% for China.
• Inconsistency in the direction and organization of Science: In 2022, the Indian Space Research Organisation stood a distant eighth on launch numbers. 
  • India is also missing an opportunity in optimizing use of nuclear energy, genomics, robotics, and artificial intelligence. 
• Inconsistent Management: The administration’s inconsistency is inappropriate for the crucial role science must play.
• Dominance of Public Sector: India’s science is dominated by the public sector. 
  • There is absence of the ability to commit to long-term steady funding of critical projects when faced with the inevitable occasional failures. 

• An Outsized Role by Scientists

  • Centrality by Senior Scientists: India’s science administration is the centrality of its senior scientists, some pretend to be top international level academics. 
  • Misconception: The basic assumption is that scientists in Indian science administration is that a good scientist will also be a good science administrator. 
  • Lack of Comprehensive Training: Scientists are not trained to prioritize between time, cost, or precision, and certainly not in what proportions.
    • The fundamental role of an administrator is to prioritize one undertaking over another in line with policy and to ensure assigning of adequate resources. 
  • Conflicts of Interest: Such academic roles within administrative positions lead to conflicts of interest, affecting the overall quality of science administration.
  • Absence of All-India Transfers: It is missed for both scientists and science administrators. There are downsides in allowing system insiders to be chimeric regulators of the system.

• Historical Factors

• • Poverty: It forced the country to concentrate high-end equipment in a handful of institutions, primarily the Indian Institutes of Technology in the 1960s. 
  • Gatekeepers System: These institutions had exclusive access to certain equipment, a system of gatekeepers emerged, which slowly began to capture positions and power.
    • Many bright scientists’ careers and lives have been destroyed due to their conflicts with this oppressive network of gatekeepers. 

Way Forward to the Indian Science Management and Progress

• Need to Address Core Concerns: Administration needs to be taught and practiced separately from the subject matter being administered. By addressing the core concerns, India’s science establishment will achieve justice to its economic and strategic aspirations.
• Need More Investment: It is pivotal to allocate money wisely and focus on high-impact projects.
• Reassessment of Role: As India remoulds its scientific establishment, a reassessment of the role of scientists in administration is required. 
• Proper Management: Time has come for a balanced and required management. The vital role which science must play going ahead.
• Separation of Roles: There is a need for the separation of administrative and scientific roles within science establishments.
  • Example: In the U.S., with labs being embedded in the university ecosystem and run by scientists, select scientists for an administrative role quite early on in their careers. 
• All-India Science Administration Central Service: An American middle-way arrangement, where scientists are selected and trained in an all-India pool of a science administration central service is desirable. 
  • In such a dispensation, university vice-chancellors would have greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the bureaucracy within the university as well as that of the ministries.
• Training Programs: Establish training programs to groom administrators separately by emphasizing skills like tact, realism, flexibility and firmness.