We need to make heroes out of our scientists: Former Infosys Director TV Mohandas Pai

Science and innovation in India has been gathering pace in the past few years. Not only has India grown leaps and bounds in the space sector, but it has also been an attractive destination for investment in the fields of science and technology. According to a report on Indian Science and R&D Industry by IBEF, India is the third most attractive investment destination for technology globally.

Apart from this, the report also states that India is among the top countries as far as scientific research is concerned, while being positioned in the top five nations for space exploration. In the South Asian region, India is the only country to find a place on the Bloomberg Innovation Index, 2021, in which it ranked 50th. In the Global Innovation Index for 2021 that looks at 50 countries, India was at the 46th position, an improvement from its 48th place last year.

The investment in the sector from the government’s end is increasing steadily, and many new science and technology hubs have also been established in the country. Moreover, private players are increasingly being encouraged to expand their role in this sector.

Against the backdrop of this expansion of the field of Science and Innovation in India, Financial Express Online’s Bulbul Dhawan talked to Former Director of Infosys Ltd TV Mohandas Pai, who is now in the Board of Trustees of Infosys Science Foundation, which has recently awarded its Science Prizes for the recipients’ significant contribution in various arenas of science. TV Mohandas Pai spoke about the deficiencies in the Indian science sector, how we can improve, the importance of more PhD programmes and more. Edited Excerpts:

Could you give me an overview about the progress of the Indian science and research community over the last decade?

Last decade has been pretty good because there’s some increase in funds, and then the national research labs have been more proactive. They’re connecting more with universities. We are also seeing joint projects with India and other countries. Defence has become slightly more proactive. ISRO is proactive, so I think it has been much better. But we suffer from some fundamental problems with the model that we have.

India chose the Soviet model for research after Independence, which in my opinion was not the right decision. They set up the CSIR labs, which are a black box.They never funded the universities. And they set up DRDO later, which is again a black box. The ISRO was also set up and it is only now opening up. The most important thing is public funding should be primarily with universities for research, and the private sector and other institutions should be involved where public money is being used.

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