Challenges for scientific research in India

India has an impressive scientific heritage. Scientific research — in fields such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine and material science — has been carried out in the Indian sub-continent since ancient times. However, in today’s time a remarkable gap has persisted between this scientific knowledge and the ‘common’ man and woman and, until recently, almost no effort has been made to bridge this gap. However the challenges are manifold in such a diverse society, language and traditions.

Large country, large issues

Illiteracy and ignorance are major challenges. While literacy levels are increasing, scientific literacy is still drastically low. Given India’s large population, limited resources and multitude of languages, mass science education faces particularly great challenges. Without more attention on local languages, much of the population will miss out on science communication efforts.

Problems with Institutions

Today, education institutions share no common clearly articulated purpose with lack of scalability of individual efforts. It is still more profound as a Colonial legacy mixture of research and teaching. Universities with some honourable exceptions have turned into, teaching shops while research is carried out by specialised institutes.

Problems of Administration

Dominance of bureaucratic administrative structure in Indian research units and political interference in day to day activities of research institutions by government is in conflict with intellectual sum. Public access to science and scientists is limited. No proper interaction between interaction of the scientific community with administrators and lawmakers for public engagement and societal support for science and the scientific activity.

Folk science on backburner

Lack of curiosity-driven research and role of indigenous knowledge or “folk science” in a diverse bio and geo sphere has pushed India backwards. There is no proper networking between practitioners and experts from diverse field into a national platform and share the same with scientific community and students. It is very sad that a globalize economy like India, very little engagement of basic science with industry is seen. There is no “cross-cultural” interaction between natural and social scientist meaning no coordination b/w science and humanities. The age old dilemma of doing research on traditional lines still prevails. A large fraction of children of school-going age, especially residing in rural areas, are effectively denied good science education at the crucial early stages of their education because of poverty, infrastructure thus destroying the seed to curiosity. Students fear to take BA, BSC course to pressure a career due to societal pressure and parental autonomy to fill monetary needs.

Traditional universities in many cases have been reduced to degree awarding bodies, with highly unsatisfactory undergraduate education that serves neither the purpose of post-school skill formation nor provides the necessary intellectual exposure or training required for research. Also renowned national institutions have failed to meet the needs of research in long term, but they still they prevails as big safe houses to study or to go abroad. Science is not succeeding in attracting mass media interest. It rarely appears as a lead story, as editors and reporters do not consider science to be ‘news’ in the normal sense. On average, science only accounts for around three per cent of coverage by India’s mass media. Additionally, readership of popular science magazines has declined — people no longer rely on print material as their only source of information.