An elite failure to support science risks hobbling India’s ambitions

The recent success of India’s moon mission has certainly boosted the country’s scientific reputation. However, its likely effect on domestic attitudes towards science is less clear.

All other things being equal, you would expect such a technological success story to boost general appreciation of science. However, the Indian government itself apparently retains a distinctly ambivalent attitude towards science as it is commonly understood.

Ever since Narendra Modi’s government came to power in 2014, it has repeatedly promoted what is widely considered pseudoscience. The situation has become so bad that even scientists themselves have been getting in on the act – perhaps with a view to finding favour in government circles.

For instance, the director of IIT Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, Laxmidhar Behera, recently shocked the Indian scientific community by claiming that the recent landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh were happening because of cruelty to animals. “So what do you need to do to become a good human being?” he asked a group of students. “Stop meat-eating,” he answered his own question, urging the students to vow to do so.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) helmsman and rocket scientist S. Somanath claimed that the Vedic people of ancient India knew how to make aircraft.

Another celebrated Indian computer scientist and mathematician, CK Raju, made some extremely unpalatable comments in September at a lecture at Delhi-based thinktank the Vivekananda International Foundation. According to him, Albert Einstein was a fraud who never really understood relativity, Euclid was invented by a church that used mathematics as a form of religious propaganda and the West stole calculus from ancient India without understanding it.

There are also concerns that India’s National Education Policy, launched in 2020, is, according to opponents, “introducing unscientific and fanciful subjects in the curriculum under the umbrella of the ‘Indian Knowledge System’” and excluding such staples as Darwinian evolution.

Two recent government moves, widely criticised by the scientific community, underline the perception that ministers are uninterested in promoting genuine Indian science. The first was the announcement a year ago that scores of science awards and several fellowships in science, including private endowment awards, were being scrapped.

Most recently, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has pulled out of the 2024 edition of the annual Indian Science Congress. This event has been held for more than a century and, since independence, it has always been inaugurated by the prime minister and funded by the department, as an emblem of the importance of science in society.

The congress was scheduled to be held in January at Lucknow University, but the university withdrew after the department’s attempt to get involved in the organisation led to a legal dispute with the event’s organiser, the Indian Science Congress Association. The university was reportedly concerned about losing funding from the department if it did not comply with its conditions; the DST provides the most extramural research and development funding in the country.

The department then withdrew its funding and logistical support for the congress after the ISCA moved the venue to Lovely Professional University at Jalandhar. The DST said the government’s permission for the shift of venue was not sought and that “the ISCA annual event has lost its relevance among the scientific community and lacks a professional approach”. But, as an autonomous organisation, the ISCA does not require permission from the government to choose a venue. Many suspect that the government’s withdrawal of support, which could jeopardise next year’s event, is meant to erode that autonomy.

Meanwhile, the government still supports the India International Science Festival. Launched in 2015, it promotes swadeshi (ancient Indian) science.

The government has also scrapped the cash component of a highly respected award known as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, given to scientists below the age of 45. Instituted by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1958, the award, for outstanding research in applied or fundamental science, most recently came with a cash prize of 500,000 rupees (£4,800) and a monthly allowance of 15,000 rupees as long as winners remained in government service.

It was scrapped because the government feels scientists do not need cash for recognition and should work for the love of science. The Nobel Prize committee, whose prizes come with a cheque for 11 million Swedish krona (£840,000), might take a lesson from the Indian government on that score.

All of these moves risk undermining ordinary Indians’ faith in science and stifle critical thinking. That could hamper India’s development and see its rocketing economic ambitions crash back down to earth.

Mukhtar Ahmad is a former professor of electrical engineering Aligarh Muslim University, India.