I expect India to take the lead in 3D tech: Mashelkar

Raghunath Anant Mashelkar was four years old when India became independent. An internationally acclaimed chemical engineer, Mashelkar has a ringside view of Indian science primarily due to his 30-year-long association with the CSIR, of which eleven years as its director general. One of the most well-known Indian scientists who championed innovation, Mashelkar spoke on India’s progress in science and technology in the last 75 years. Excerpts

How do you see the progress of Indian science and technology in recent years?

India’s rank in science is rapidly rising. It is now the world’s third largest publisher of peer-reviewed scientific research papers, after China and the US. Between 2008 and 2018, India had an average annual growth rate of 10.73%, against China’s 7.81% and the USA’s 0.71%. But more than research publications, we must see what difference Indian science is making to society. Let’s look at the year 2020 itself. Although it will be known as the year of the pandemic, it can also be called the year of Indian science, so magnificent was the response by the scientific community to taking on the challenge of the pandemic.

When the pandemic arrived in India, we had the negligible diagnostic capability, no point of care diagnosis, no vaccines and no therapeutics. The biology and mechanism of action of the virus were unknown. Our scientists delivered on each one of these and more. This was due to the strong base through long-term investments in science and technology that have been made over decades. India would not have proudly announced its 200 crore vaccinations if it did not have its own indigenous vaccine, namely Covaxin by Bharat Biotech.

What have been the high points of Indian science and technology in the 20th century, especially in the pre-independence vs the post-independence era?

It is good to look at what the well-known scientist Jayant Narlikar says in his book ‘Scientific Edge’. He gives a list of what he considers the top ten achievements of Indian Science and Technology in the 20th century. In the pre-1950 era, he includes Srinivasa Ramanujam’s mathematics; Meghnad Saha’s ionisation equation (c. 1920), and S N Bose’s work on particle statistics (c. 1922), CV Raman’s discovery that molecules scatter light (c. 1928) and the Raman Effect.

Track full coverage of Independence Day here

Post-1950, Narlikar lists the development of nuclear power and capability (founded in the 1950s), Green Revolution in agriculture (the 1960s and 1970s), GN Ramachandran’s pioneering work in structural molecular biology (c. mid-1960s), Indian space programme (from late 1970s), high-temperature superconductivity (since the late 1980s) and transformation of the CSIR towards an industry-oriented, performance driven and accountable organisation (in late 1990s).

Narlikar noted the shift from ‘individual scientist in the pre-1950 era’ to ‘organised science in the post-1950 era’. Further, he made a point that the scientists identified by him in the pre-1950 era were ‘Nobel Prize class’.

We note that in the post-1950 list of achievements, there is none that came from industry. The only place, where industrial R&D figures, is in the 1990s, during the transformation of CSIR, which, incidentally, I was privileged to lead. We note that all the achievements in the list like that in agriculture, space, nuclear technology, etc., were driven by organised mission-driven research funded by the government. As regards excellence at an individual level, to use Narlikar’s words, there was no ‘Nobel Prize worthy’ breakthrough in science, as existed in the first half of the 20th century. The sum and substance are that although India’s averages have risen as seen by its third rank after US and China, it has not created those Everest-like peaks in the pre-independence era.

China seems to have surged ahead of India in Science and Technology, although we were ahead of them in the 1990s. Can you throw some light on this? How far are they ahead? And why?

India and China were on par in the 1990s as far as science, technology and innovation were concerned. Today China is way ahead of India. China’s research and development expenditure are now seven times higher, China’s science and technology publications are four times higher, the number of researchers per capita in China is five times higher, the number of patents filed in China is eight times higher and the high-technology exports by China are four times higher than ours.

The comparative advantage is all about retaining top talent, isn’t it? How have India and China dealt with the issue of brain drain?

Consider China first. In the early 2000s, only one or two of every ten Chinese students studying abroad returned to China after graduation. In 2017, around eight in ten students chose to go back home. China implemented several policies such as the ‘Thousand Talents Plan,’ ‘Red Son Plan,’ etc. to attract and rehabilitate returnee scientists. In 2017, it reformed its visa programme to allow Chinese companies to more easily hire foreign graduates on work visas. The number of foreigners working in China grew three times to 220,000 between 2000 and 2010. China recently stated its ambition to become Asia’s top destination for international students by 2020, targeting 500,000 foreign students enrolled per year by then.

Now take the corresponding efforts by India in reversing the brain drain. India had its own schemes to catalyse the return of scientists too. These included Ramanujan Fellowship, Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) Faculty scheme, Visiting Advanced Joint Research (VAJRA) Faculty Scheme, etc. The number of scientists returning to India increased from 243 during 2007-2012 to 649 during 2012-2017. Contrast this with China’s Thousand Talents Plan alone attracting more than 7,000 scientists back. So there has been a vast difference between both the quality and intensity of effort as well as the magnitude of the impact.

Since you championed the patenting movement, what has been the comparison between India and China in this respect?

We started the patenting movement in National Chemical Laboratory in the early 1990s and subsequently spread it to CSIR and other Indian institutions and industries. While India and China matched each other during the 1990s, the 2000s witnessed a divergence between China and India. India’s patenting began to stall from 2003 onwards, as China’s patenting took off.

It is interesting to note that in 2003, CSIR had topped the list of prestigious Patents Cooperation Treaty filings, ahead of leading South Korean companies like LG and Samsung with Huawei from China in 4th place. The same Huawei, with 4,411 published PCT applications, was the top filers of patents among all the industrial enterprises in the world in 2019.

In fact, China has been the main source of global growth in worldwide IP filings in 2018. The IP office of China now accounts for 46.4% of patent filings.

What do you think is the real competitive advantage of Indian science and technology?

I did an interesting exercise recently. It was to calculate the scientific research publications count per unit R&D spending in 2020. India was the highest. Let me give you an approximate comparison. It was better than UK (twice), China (five times), Germany (six times), USA (7 times) and Japan (13 times).

This has had a positive repercussion. The first is that the intellectual capital generated per dollar spent in India is the highest in the world. And that is why we have more than 1100 R&D centres, set up by multinational companies, making India a global R&D hub. They employ over 350,000 scientists. Some of the companies generate one-third of their global IP from India. This has also led to the phenomenon of brain drain to brain gain to brain circulation. How? A large number of Indian scientists from abroad have returned to join these centres, reversing the brain drain and then they move on to other Indian R&D, giving the benefits of their advanced skills to India.

The second implication of this chart is obvious. India has been stuck at the investment levels of 0.7% of GDP in R& D over the last 25 years. Just imagine the impact of raising this expenditure to 2% of GDP, a promise that has been made for the last 25 years. India will be three times more competitive than it is now. As I always say, India produces ‘more from less for more’ and Indian science is no exception! We must leverage that advantage.

How do you see Indian Science, Technology and Innovation in 25 years' time?

I expect India to take lead in 3Ds that will be the drivers of competitiveness and growth in the world — digitalisation, decentralisation and decarbonisation. If invested properly, they will enable India not only to become a global leader in several industries but also create a major socio-economic transformation in our nation. The exponential rise of India as a science and technology powerhouse is possible if bold policy initiatives by the government are backed by massive investments in R&D with a substantial share by the industry as also great facilitation of doing research and innovation with a strongly supportive science, technology and innovation ecosystem.