What could be the challenges for Indian diaspora scientists wanting to explore career opportunities back home during the novel coronavirus pandemic? Sayan Dutta, a doctoral fellow in the Neurodegenerative Disease Research Laboratory at Purdue University, analyses the key learning from a recent global meet.
Sayan Dutta{credit}Bappaditya Chandra{/credit}
As the global economy took a hit with the coronavirus pandemic, and science job opportunities seemed up in the air, more than 400 diaspora Indian scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs got together in early September 2020 to make sense of what this ‘new normal’ might look like.
At the Science and Research Opportunities in India (Sci-ROI) annual meet – which was forced to go virtual this year, like many other conferences worldwide – this bunch of engaged scientists and researchers heard 40 eminent speakers over four days, keenly picking up nuggets on the current and future projections of the career landscape in India.
A volunteer-run organization established in 2015, Sci-ROI is a gateway for young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs in the U.S. to access professional opportunities across academic, industry and private sectors in India. When we were wrapping up Sci-ROI’s annual event in 2019 at the University of Chicago, its founder Prof. Aseem Ansari prodded me gently about the new challenges we had vowed to undertake in 2020. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that the “new challenges” would entail organising a full-scale virtual event amid a global pandemic.
Back in April 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic shook the world necessitating complete lockdowns, it seemed impossible to organise this year’s in-person event in September. After deliberations, the organising team became sure about two things – that the event should go virtual, and that no one had the slightest hint on how to host a virtual event. But soon enough, a diverse team got working overtime – countless hours of online meetings, event planning, programing, technical troubleshooting, media moderation and visual media creation (all by hidden talents in parallel to being postdocs), were unleashed.
Speakers from 39 Indian institutes joined the panels to address attendees from more than 150 institutes around the world. The deliberations revealed that there has been no major setback in India’s research funding due to the pandemic yet. Most Indian academic institutions are still actively engaged in the hiring processes, and funding agencies have taken steps to mitigate the challenges thrown up by the pandemic, though in the long run things might slow down.
A session discussing perspectives of new faculty who have relocated to India saw high participation at the virtual event.
Unique sessions such as entrepreneurial seminars and careers beyond the professoriate spotlighted opportunities in both the sectors. India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to widen its support for new biotech start-ups and deep-science entrepreneurial ventures. The conference also brought forward India’s growing career landscape in the sectors of science communication, management, administration, and policy making available to researchers after Ph.D.
Through online polling, participants at the event, mostly from the diaspora, actively identified some major challenges they face while trying to transition back to India. Among them were the age barrier of 35 years on entry level positions (such as assistant professorship), lack of a centralised and transparent recruitment process, and slow or no correspondence and follow-up emails on their application status from Indian institutes. In view of the pandemic, researchers also strongly advocated making academic applications completely paperless.
Although we did not realize it at the onset, the virtual format of the event turned out to be more informative and far-reaching (involving even the Indian diaspora outside the US) than the traditional format.
A global pandemic got us out of our comfort zones, and we found unique solutions for unforeseen problems. We realized that while in-person interactions are irreplaceable, enabling effective virtual communication is the need of the hour. Sci-ROI’s “by the scholars, for the scholars” event represented a model of such an emerging community, critical for global brain circulation. Alongside the annual event, a virtual recruitment week in October and a central STEM job portal will hopefully enable the growth of stronger collaborations between scientific communities within and outside India.
(Sayan Dutta coordinates collaborations at Sci-ROI, a U.S. based volunteer-run organisation, helping diaspora Indian scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs access professional opportunities in India. He can be reached at sayanm06@gmail.com.)
It’s a race against time to produce accurate and efficient diagnostic results, says Shanti Kalipatnapu, as she walks through IISER Pune’s testing centre, one of the 1047 across India checking samples for the novel coronavirus.
Outside the COVID-19 testing centre at IISER Pune.
Mridula Nambiar, a biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, begins her day early to be at the COVID-19 testing centre, on a rather deserted campus of her institute – most students went home just before India’s two-month national lockdown that began 25 March 2020.
Nambiar is one of the 30-odd volunteers at the testing centre at IISER Pune approved by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) among the 21 in the city of Pune. It is unlike any other diagnostic centre since the institute, primarily engaged in undergraduate science education and research in the natural sciences, does not handle clinical or infectious samples on a normal day. However, some researchers at IISER Pune use the RT-PCR assay to decipher the inner workings of fundamental biological processes. This assay is also the key diagnostic tool for COVID-19.
Setting up a COVID-19 testing centre
Owing to this core RT-PCR expertise, when IISER Pune began to explore the possibility of setting up a testing centre, a group of faculty members from the institute’s biology department formed a COVID-19 action team. They used national guidelines to draft the standard operating procedures for the Centre. Team members used help from engineering colleagues to remodel some rooms at the institute to minimise the corridor and building space that the hospital samples would have to pass through.
Health and biosafety protocols firmly in place, the institute drew from the experiences of other already established testing centres in Pune – National Institute of Virology (NIV), Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) – and elsewhere, to fine tune procedures and safety guidelines, and to ensure an efficient testing pipeline.
Putting together essential supplies for the centre.
Supplies needed to create a mini-research lab of sorts – protective equipment, gloves, masks, tubes, tips, small and medium-sized lab equipment – were procured, backed by an organized inventory. A call for volunteers saw over 570 PhD scholars, undergraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty and staff members of the institute signing up. A nodal officer was appointed to coordinate the process from receipt of samples to timely submission of results and effective communication with hospitals.
Within a month and after a few dry runs, volunteer training sessions and a formal approval from the ICMR, the centre was all set to begin testing samples on 21 May 2020. Nodal Officer Anjan Banerjee says by the end of June, the centre had tested over 4400 samples.
India has tested about 8.3 million samples (by June 2020) since the beginning of the pandemic. It is widely acknowledged that more testing is essential to combat the spread of COVID-19.
How tests are done
Five teams of volunteers work in shifts of four hours. Each team of three members carry out a specific set of tasks. Hospitals send in throat and nasal swab samples in sealed tubes with a small bit of buffer solution to extract the sample into. These samples are collected from a designated location just outside the centre and handled by volunteers in room 1, equipped with level 2 biosafety (BSL-2) norms. Their task is to retrieve the buffer solution which would have extracted the essence of the swab, transfer the solution into fresh tubes, and release the viral RNA, should any virus be present in the sample. This is done by dissolving the outer lipid coat of the virus using detergents.
Inside the testing rooms.
This RNA is then handled by volunteers in rooms 2 to 4, first to convert it into complementary DNA (cDNA) and then to amplify the cDNA to make enough material for detection. Primers that specifically bind to the COVID-19 virus are used, so that amplification (and thereby detection) occurs only if the sample originally contained the virus.
Since room 1 deals with samples that could potentially contain live virus, volunteers mandatorily wear a full set of personal protective equipment (PPE) — cover-alls, safety goggles, head and feet covers, and two layers of hand gloves. It takes them about 15 minutes to don this protective gear. In spite of the temperature and humidity controllers in the room, it gets rather hot inside the suit. Nambiar says they try and coordinate the transitions between the shifts in a way that volunteers need not be in PPE for any longer than they need to.
Since the virus is inactivated, processing of the samples beyond Room 1 is less risky and requires lesser protection. Nevertheless, it still needs utmost care as RNA is a notorious molecule to handle, with high chances of degradation and contamination.
Following RT-PCR runs, large datasets are carefully analyzed and validated by faculty members before the results are shared. A few faculty members from Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) have joined the testing efforts with two more RT-PCR machines. The team tests about 250 samples every day, and plans to enhance capability by automating some steps in the testing pipeline.
Data management
The data management room of the testing centre is a great collaboration between technical expertise and administrative prowess. Managing data does not require the technical know-how of performing the tests; it however requires a keen eye to handle a screen full of lists.
From the time the samples come in to delivery of results to the hospitals, it works like a relay race. The baton needs to be passed on to the next player, with no room for error.
Handling data.
Volunteers in room 1 receive the hospital data sheets along with the samples. They assign a code to each sample, scan the information sheets and send them to the data room where volunteers digitize them and keep the files ready for recording the final results later in the night. When final results become available, they share it with the hospitals and feed the information onto government portals that maintain detailed records of each test conducted.
The day ends rather late for Nambiar, as it does for many of her fellow volunteers at the Centre working into the night to relay the test results to hospitals. Insitute faculty Sudha Rajamani, who has been supervising this massive exercise, says the same team of 4 to 5 members has been working seven days of the week, late into the night, with steadfast alertness keeping in mind the huge implication of accurate data for patients.
Each day, the testing centre presents a grim reminder of the lurking virus. But, it is also an exemplar of the power of collaboration, the human bond that shines through in times of crises, of what people in a community can stand up for beyond the confines of their everyday jobs.
Pictures courtesy: COVID-19 Action team, IISER Pune
(Shanti Kalipatnapu is the Head of Research Communications at IISER Pune. She can be reached at shantik@iiserpune.ac.in and tweets from @skalipatnapu).
Nature India’s latest coverage on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic here. More updates on the global crisis here.
Karishma Kaushik, an assistant professor and Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellow at the Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, University of Pune, India thinks that learning to share details of her personal life at work has made her a better academic mentor.
The Kaushik family at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon.{credit}Bryan Rupp Photography{/credit}
Out of breath and running late, I entered the room to discuss my latest research updates with faculty members and graduate-school colleagues. Flustered, embarrassed and more than seven months pregnant, I proceeded with the important presentation, not mentioning the false contractions I had woken up to that morning.
It was July 2011, and I was just a year into my PhD programme at the University of Texas at Austin, after graduating with a medical degree in India. At the time, I drew strict lines between my professional and personal lives. This stemmed from the fear of being perceived as ‘not serious about science’ or ‘having a life outside the laboratory’ — something I felt was part of academic culture.
However, choosing to become a parent in graduate school meant that my academic and personal lives could no longer be completely separate. Those rigid divisions between ‘work’ and ‘non-work’ weren’t as solid as they once were.
After my child was born two months later, I continued being discrete about my ‘non-work’ life, avoiding topics related to health concerns, child-care conflicts or personal upheavals.
This came from both self-imposed and institutional pressure to operate within a system that did not account for a ‘non-conventional’ graduate student, be it a young mother or an older candidate.
I defended a major research proposal a few weeks after childbirth, silently accepted curriculum plans that scheduled teaching at 8 a.m. and continued my very heavy workload of course requirements for the PhD programme.
This made an already difficult academic career phase even more challenging. I felt like I was struggling alone professionally, and I felt isolated as one of few new parents in graduate school. I rarely spoke about my child at work, and I hesitated to share insights into the happy moments of my life outside the lab — moments such as celebrating my son’s first birthday or summer plans for a family road trip.
My approach to being open about work–life balance changed through the years of my PhD. During this time, I successfully navigated several crucial milestones in my programme and my research, both of which I had previously struggled with in the early years of my PhD.
Every small accomplishment left me feeling more sure of myself as a scientist, and I gained confidence in my ability to effectively navigate work–life balance.
I realized that my previous approach of putting work above all else, or having no time for life, was farcical, superficial and dishonest to myself and those around me. It disturbed me to think that I was perpetuating the stereotype that to be committed, scientists should have no life outside of science, when in reality I was attempting to do almost the opposite: to raise, in my son, an entire life outside of science.
I resolved to share and openly prioritize parts of my life I had previously kept hidden, including both the responsibilities I shouldered outside of work and the joys of parenthood. I formally requested that my institution reschedule my teaching to a later hour, making it clear that early-morning classes were difficult for a young mother.
I politely excused myself when meetings stretched into the late evening, saying I needed to relieve the nanny, and would catch up later. Over lunch conversations with colleagues, I shared anecdotes of my son’s growth milestones and my plans to host a dinosaur-themed birthday party.
Openly prioritizing and planning my work and life around each other greatly enhanced my competency and enthusiasm at work. My teaching reviews — based on student feedback — went from average to exemplary, The quality and pace of my research output strengthened, and accolades and recognitions for research, teaching and science outreach started coming my way.
My openness also improved my professional relationships and my understanding of the scientific community. Because I was open, others were more open with me, too. While my concerns centred around childcare and managing dual career paths with my spouse (an engineer in the private sector), I discovered that my colleagues had their own hurdles to jump: mental health, immigration concerns or financial constraints.
Today, I am very open with researchers and students in my group about the day-to-day juggling of my personal and professional roles, and I encourage them to be the same. I believe that this fosters honest and respectful professional relationships and a constructive work atmosphere in which we do not hesitate to share the need to manage personal priorities. Not only does this make us more humane, empathetic and approachable individuals, but it also, in a small but powerful way, makes academic science a more inclusive and considerate place.
Many scientists embrace the artistic medium to infuse new ideas into their scientific works. With science-art collaborations, both artists and scientists challenge their ways of thinking as well as the process of artistic and scientific inquiry. Can art hold a mirror to science? Can it help frame and answer uncomfortable questions about science: its practice and its impact on society? Do artistic practices inform science? In short, does art aid evidence?
Nature India’s blog series ‘SciArt Scribbles’ will try to answer some of these questions through the works of some brilliant Indian scientists and artists working at this novel intersection that offers limitless possibilities. You can follow this online conversation with #SciArtscribbles .
Mukund Thattai, a physicist practicing biology at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), talks to us about bio-art and how some bio-artists from Bangalore are challenging scientists’ new-found power to edit life.
Mukund Thattai
Genetically enhanced humans have long been a staple of science fiction. He Jiankui’s announcement in November 2018 of the birth the world’s first genome-edited babies drew flak for flouting ethical norms governing the use of genome editing technologies. This wasn’t the first time scientists had used the DNA cutting-and-pasting tool known as CRISPR to modify genes in embryos. It was, however, the first time such embryos had been implanted and brought to term in their mothers’ womb. The modifications introduced into the twins’ genomes confer no medical benefit, and may even cause harm. It is an irreversible human tragedy: the baby girls, who never asked for this, will spend the rest of their lives as scientific specimens.
Nevertheless, genome editing is here to stay. Will we learn how to use this technology responsibly?
This is the central question that animates iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition. Inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) robotics competitions, iGEM looks at a future in which engineering and biology are indistinguishable. What would happen if we could build new types of cells?
I was at MIT in the early 2000s when iGEM was founded. Though I was doing a PhD in the physics department, I’d grown fascinated with biology. Across campus in the computer science department, Tom Knight and Drew Endy were thinking about how to bring notions of abstraction and design to biological engineering. In 2003, they threw out an inspiring challenge to MIT undergrads: could they engineer bacteria that would blink like Christmas lights? The very next year, undergrads from five US universities tried their hand at engineering cells. In 2005, 13 undergrad teams from the US, Canada, the UK, and Switzerland participated in the first international iGEM at MIT, in what has now become an annual jamboree of creations for student teams from around the world.
Science with a dose of fantasy
iGEMmers think of cells as computers, running an operating system that provides basic functions such as the ability to replicate DNA, translate genes into proteins, and convert nutrients into energy. Designer genes are like applications running on top of the operating system. iGEM teams remix components known as BioBricks, an enormous collection of DNA-based “standard biological parts” that give cells new chemical and physical abilities. Over the years iGEM has featured applications that allow cells to keep time, store a digital bit of information, sense toxic chemicals, and carry out basic computations.
The ethos of iGEM, and indeed of the entire synthetic biology community, has always included a culture of openness, sharing, and excitement for science, coupled with rigorous engineering and ethical practice. In the early 2000s, iGEM embodied a bracing and idealistic vision of our biological future, with a dose of fantasy. At the time our actual ability to manipulate genomes was rather limited. With the advent of CRISPR, this has now changed.
From 2012 to 2014 He Jiankui was the leader of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTC) iGEM team. In December 2018, the iGEM Foundation released this statement: “We are stunned and disappointed by Dr. He’s actions, particularly as a former iGEM team leader. Conducting human genome engineering – and further, doing so without proper research or backing from the broader scientific community – is a clear violation of iGEM’s standards as well as those of the scientific community at large. Had this project been proposed within the iGEM competition, it would have been disqualified for violating iGEM’s policies.”
The power of genome editing is rapidly outpacing our ability to predict its effects or regulate its practice. To deal with this monumental challenge, biologists will need to go far beyond the routine laboratory spaces in which they operate. They will need to partner with historians, social scientists, ethicists and artists. An energetic collective of bio-artists is leading the charge.
Making bacteria that evoke petrichor
In 2009, a group of art students from Bangalore stood before the iGEM judging panel describing an unusual summer project: to construct bacteria that would synthesise geosmin, the substance responsible for the evocative smell of the first monsoon rains. The team’s presentation documented their journey of discovery, as they learned the language and techniques of the life sciences and explored its cultural, ethical, and aesthetic implications. As one of their team leaders, I sat nervously in the back row. My nervousness evaporated when we received thunderous applause from a packed hall. One of the iGEM judges declared: “This changes the way I think about synthetic biology.”
Here’s a little back story to this extraordinary scene.
In 2004, I relocated from MIT to India to set up a synthetic biology lab at the NCBS in Bangalore. Reshma Shetty, an MIT graduate student working with Drew Endy, and I discussed how to put together an iGEM team from India. In the summer of 2006 I ran an open workshop called “A crash course in designer biological networks” to overwhelming response. We assembled an NCBS student team that brainstormed on the kinds of “genetic circuits” that could be built. We zeroed in on one old classic idea: teaching cells to blink. But then we confronted the messiness of biology: all the circuits we built expressed the right proteins and seemed to be correctly assembled, but did not do what they were supposed to.
The team went to MIT as the first from India, and competed with 31 others, only to report three negative results. These were later published in a paper which (to my great surprise) has actually been cited! (In 2012 Navneet Rai, a student guided by K.V. Venkatesh at IIT Bombay and me, finally succeeded in making blinking cells as part of his PhD research).
The iGEM atmosphere was electric, and each one of us came away with a lifelong memory of being present at the start of something big.
Next year, with help from a summer research fellows programme at Indian Academy of Sciences, I assembled a team of six undergraduate students from six Indian institutions. Our project was a proof of principle: “How to build and test a genetically engineered machine in six weeks”. 2008 saw a group of IIT Madras students mentored by their professor Guhan Jayaraman, raise funds with institute alumnus and biotech entrepreneur Shrikumar Suryanarayanan. The team was judged as having the “Best Foundational Advance” at iGEM 2008, and got a special prize for the “Best Engineered BioBrick device”. Many members of this team went on to co-found, with Suryanarayanan, the biotech company Sea6 Energy.
Later IIT Madras iGEM teams have also had great success: the 2011 team was awarded the “Best New BioBrick Part” for a light-induced pump, and in 2013 it received the award for “Best Human Practices”. Since iGEM 2009, which involved 100 teams from 25 countries, multiple teams from India have made consistent appearances each year. Credit for this goes to iGEM mentors across the country, and also to India’s Department of Biotechnology, which encourages and supports the teams through the Indian Biological Engineering Competition (iBEC).
Breaking boundaries
At iGEM 2009, we broke many boundaries.
I had just started working with Yashas Shetty from the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. Yashas combines art and technology, pushing the boundaries of synthesis and sensation. He wondered whether a living piece of art would be an appropriate iGEM project, something that could provoke and inspire people to think about biology. He then narrowed down the problem, asking: “Could we make a biological device that can influence human emotions?” Out of this was born the “Smell of Rain” project. Yashas and his students landed up in my lab, where they learned molecular biology under Navneet’s experienced stewardship, and formally signed up as iGEM contenders. Describing themselves as “outsiders” in a competition dominated by engineers and scientists, the very existence of the team was a unique experiment in art-science collaboration.
It marked the beginning of an unusual and fruitful collaboration between NCBS and Srishti, under the provocative name ArtScienceBangalore. Building on their “Smell of Rain” success, in 2010 the students imagined a “post-natural ecology” exploring the interactions of genetically-engineered bacteria and worms on a petri-dish, in collaboration with Sandhya Koushika and her student Sunaina Surana at NCBS.
In 2011 the team went even further with their project “Searching for the ubiquitous genetically engineered machine”. They imagined a far future in which bioengineered cells from iGEM covered the planet. How could we tell what was natural and what was artificial then, if we did not establish a baseline today? The students sampled ecosystems across the state of Karnataka, including urban, rural, and forest areas, and used a sensitive method called PCR to search for any evidence of BioBricks in the environment. They did not find any, implying that any future BioBricks in the wild must come from human activity. This foundational effort was awarded the “Best Human Practices Advance”, with the judges particularly praising the role of art-science engagement.
These ArtScienceBangalore projects have gone on to win honourable mentions at the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica prizes, and are currently displayed at the Science Gallery in Dublin.
Does science belong just to scientists?
The idea that artists should be taught molecular biology strikes some scientists as frivolous, and appears to others as dangerous. Is it a worthy use of genetic engineering to make bacteria that can evoke the smell of rain? Why should non-scientists – “outsiders” – be trusted with these hard-won powers? But by the same token, it is reasonable to ask why scientists should be trusted with these very powers.
Scientists and inventors have used genetic engineering to probe the inner workings of cells, as well as to create new medicines, cure diseases and improve crops. The combined benefit of these activities to humanity has been tremendous. In this backdop, cases like He Jiankui’s are an aberration. Nevertheless, the genome-edited baby controversy is a critical opportunity to move the conversation forward.
It is the responsibility of the scientific community to continually earn society’s trust. In this ongoing process, artists have a unique role as observers of the human condition. Bio-artists push the limits of what can be done using the tools of science. They do this to provoke, to make us uncomfortable, to make us think. They do this now, today, so we are forced to imagine and prepare for what might happen in the future.
[Mukund Thattai is at the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. He can be contacted at thattai@ncbs.res.in.]
Microbiologist Yogesh Chawla was part of the team that led the protests demanding hike in research fellowships in India during 2014-15. He rues in this guest post that not much seems to have changed in the country’s treatment of its research scholars since.
Yogesh Chawla
Following months of agitation by young scientists across India, the Indian government announced a hike in fellowships for research scholars earlier this month (February 2019). The stipends for junior research fellows (JRFs) were raised from a monthly Rs 25,000 to Rs 31,000, and that for senior research fellows (SRFs) from Rs 28,000 to Rs 35,000.
The research scholars have been protesting every few years to bring to light the abysmal pay parity, delayed and irregular disbursal of stipends, semester fee charges, and scarcity of fund allocated to science. The protests typically last for a few months reaching a crescendo on social media, and finally end with the science administration promising and then delivering a hike. India’s current government has enhanced their fellowship twice, almost doubling it from Rs 16,000 in 2014 to Rs. 31,000. It is a step, albeit small, in the right direction to bridge the gap in pay disparity of researchers.
However, the challenges facing India’s research scholar are far from over.
History of protests
During the fellowship hike movement of 2014-15, five of us scholars represented the protesting researchers in negotiations with the institutional authorities and government representatives. Several issues were discussed at length then, and still remain unresolved. Policy changes that were mooted then to streamline the system are still pending. A hike is not the only thing to fulfill the vision of better scientific rigour or improvement in the quality of Indian science. One of the objectives of such fellowship hikes is to attract talent to science disciplines by providing economic emoluments parity, laurels, awards and recognition.
The need of the hour is to have a multi-pronged approach to bring Indian science at par with world standards, to make Indian research relevant to the country’s needs, to transform India into a torch bearer of scientific excellence, technological advancements and innovations. These are important but imposing challenges for India and the country’s science policy is a key tool to overcome them.
Researchers gherao Indian science administrators during a protest to demand hike in fellowships in July 2014.
Rewarding merit
How do we bring rigour into India’s science? Can we have measures to reward scholars – the backbone of our scientific quest – who work tirelessly beyond stipulated office hours? Will rewarding the first author for publishing quality research be a game changer? Publishing in high impact journals may not be the ultimate or accurate parameter of judging the quality of science but it is a practical parameter. A thorough scientific study in a reputed journal does suggest a work of excellence. Impact factors, citations or the impact of research on problems specific to India can be taken as criteria to judge merit. The overarching idea is to reward hard work, judged and scrutinised for scientific quality and rigour by independent peers. This way, we would be able to bring equity to the hard and diligent work. Any scientific misconduct or falsification of data should be made punishable.
Currently, Indian authors publish around 100,000 articles every year but their average citation impact is around 0.8, which is nearly half of the citation impact of articles published from USA or UK (~1.6)1. Rewards for and equity to good quality work would boost the overall scientific rigour. It wouldn’t cost much to the government exchequer but would certainly impact the morale and enthusiasm of researchers favourably. It could be a robust way to kick start ideas, innovations and excellence. Likewise, universities, departments and institutions should be rewarded for their scientific excellence.
However, when impact factors of publications become the criteria for a reward, they potentially exclude scholars and scientists looking at grass root problems (that may not be very popular research areas but are high on social benefits) or high impact work in a scientific journal. Scholars of such fields should be recognised through other laurels and awards.
Another policy change that may ensure a respectable life for senior researchers wanting to continue research in India is to enhance the fold increase of the fellowships between JRF to SRF and SRF to the postdoctoral level (say, around 1.4 to 1.5-fold of their previous level). SRF and postdoctoral researchers are generally in their late 20s or early 30s, a time they typically start or support a family.
Scholars who earn their PhDs in Indian institutions should be rewarded since many JRFs leave Indian PhD programmes to pursue PhDs in foreign labs or institutes. JRF fellowship shouldn’t be a stop-gap arrangement for aspiring graduates of foreign universities. A JRF scholar who continues research in India and gets promoted to SRF should be rewarded with a healthy raise in stipend to pursue research in India. The same logic applies to postdoctoral fellows.
The long-debated issue of brain drain could have a solution in a good postdoctoral fellowship with independent grants. The Chinese initiatives “Thousand Talents Plan” and “Thousand Youth Talents Plan”2are great examples of how to attract scholars to postdoctoral positions through government grants and fellowships and to pursue them to return and serve home institutions. This way, trained and qualified PhD scientists could fuel the nation’s economic and scientific growth and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cry of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan, Jai Vigyaan and Jai Anusandhaan” would sound real.
(Yogesh Chawla is a PhD from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He can be contacted at yogi1chawla@gmail.com.)
As young physicists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai circa 1981, Alak Ray and Prajval Shastri experienced an exciting era in the life of the institute, set up by visionary scientist Homi Jehangir Bhabha in 1945.
The campus of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research around the time of inauguration of its new buildings in January 1962 in south Bombay (now Mumbai).{credit}TIFR archives{/credit}
After seventy years of the government of independent India nurturing scientific enterprise, even in the face of criticism of its investment in the fundamental sciences, it is a good moment to review the story of what many regard as the prized jewel of them all – the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which was founded in 1945 by the physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha with the help of the Dorabji Tata Trust.
Growing the Tree of Science (Oxford Univ Press, New Delhi 2016) by Indira Chowdhury treats us to a visit of this famous institute and its history. The reference to a growing tree in the title comes from an address by Bhabha in 1963 at the National Institute of Sciences of India: “A scientific institution… has to be grown with great care, like a tree.”
Chowdhury distills the history of the institute from years of effort she put in to set up the TIFR archives. She explores the early efforts of scientific institution building around the time of India’s independence in 1947, when science was envisaged as being serviceable to the nation and a tool of nation building, but the need to nurture institutional spaces without borders was also recognised.
Bhabha undertook this nurturing with enthusiasm, though juggling multiple responsibilities within a few years of founding the institute left him little time for research. He concentrated on creating the conditions for conducting good research, in enticing stellar scientists to visit, and to recruit established scientists to lead various programmes. A largely unknown initiative by Bhabha was his invitation in 1952 to Richard Feynman “to spend a couple of years or more here as a Professor of Theoretical Physics”, which Feynman declined.
A poignant story of Bhabha’s sense of science without borders concerns the Chinese mathematician S. S. Chern. During the intense civil war in China (1948), Bhabha wrote to Chern at the Mathematical Institute of the Academia Sinica at Nanking, which Chern himself had founded in 1946 after returning from Princeton. Bhabha wrote, “Although we know the patriotism which prompted you to prefer to work in your own country despite the many attractive offers from abroad, we realise that the present conditions must make work in your neighbourhood extremely difficult, if not impossible… I am therefore, writing to you to offer you the hospitality of this institute… to spend one year in the first instance as a Visiting Professor?” By this time Chern had already accepted J. R. Oppenheimer’s offer at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, but was deeply grateful “for the concern of my foreign friends, which has never failed me”.
Bhabha smoothly and successfully recruited the mathematician K. Chandrasekhar in 1948 and the physicist M. G. K. Menon in 1955, though he failed with astrophysicist S. Chandrasekhar. In 1962, he offered George Sudarshan an Associate Professorship. Sudarshan had worked in TIFR’s emulsion group earlier (1952-1955) at the Old Yacht Club. Then, while on leave from TIFR at the University of Rochester, Sudarshan, with his thesis advisor Robert Marshak, worked out the universal V-A theory of weak interactions, for which they were nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times. But the effort to repatriate Sudarshan failed because Bhabha tried putting Sudarshan on par with others who stayed on in the institute and did their research in India.
Indeed, Chowdhury writes about Bhabha’s notion of “self-reliance which had instilled in him an unswerving faith in the scientists who had trained at his institute”. She elaborates, “It was this group that had been responsible for growing the roots of the tree of science and Bhabha the master gardener was unwilling to carry out any process of grafting a foreign branch which could potentially disturb the stability of the tree itself.”
Chowdhury asks, “The institutional model itself had an unresolved paradox at its core – was it national or international?” She opines that the “ambiguity at the heart of Bhabha’s grand vision presented a troublesome dilemma – how to be international and national at the same time”.
The idea of using modern science for social transformation has been debated among the Indian elite since social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s time in the 1820s. The debate has touched on questions such as: What are the priorities for development? What types of scientific activities are most appropriate for a developing country like India? How can a scientific community be best established within a traditional society? How can scientists working in such a society keep their loyalty to the internationalism of science and at the same time deal with the more local and immediate needs of their own countries? [see “India’s Scientific Development”, William Blanpied, Pacific Affairs, vol 50, 91,1977)].
In the first two decades after India’s independence the international network that Bhabha built worked together with India’s nationalism and was happy to contribute to the development of institutions for a newly independent India. (The most notable scientist in this network was Nobel prize-winning experimentalist P. M. S. Blackett – see “Empire’s Setting Sun?”, Robert Anderson, Econ. Pol. Weekly, vol 36 (39), 3703, 2001). Chowdhury points out, “The sense of national self-realisation and an awareness of international cooperation went hand in hand.”
Bhabha also successfully drew a strong connection between fundamental science and technology development. Bhabha in his letter to the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in 1944 wrote, “It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school for research in fundamental physics, not only in the less advanced branches of physics, but also in the problems of immediate practical interest to industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing and of very inferior quality, it is due to the absence of sufficient numbers of outstanding pure research workers who could set the standards for good research.”
Growing the Tree of Science paints the picture of TIFR and its journey of undertaking science in a newly developing nation on a wide canvas. The story however is somewhat less richly textured for the period after Bhabha’s death. Chowdhury does discuss the beginnings of molecular biology, radio astronomy and other disciplines in TIFR with the recruitments of the geneticist Obaid Siddiqi in 1962 and the radio astronomer Govind Swarup in 1963. Her story is however mainly concentrated in the earlier phase of these groups. The hits and misses of the Bhabha era affected TIFR’s later development and the future it looks into. One wishes that a deeper appraisal of the era that followed could be put together in greater detail.
Given constraints on independent positions across India’s scientific institutions, a new career option — research management — beckons PhD degree holders, says our guest blogger and seasoned research management consultant Savita Ayyar.
Backed by a decade of research management experience at Wellcome Trust London and National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, Savita says attractive remuneration makes this profession a good alternative for scientists keen on exploring a non-academic research-related career.
Savita Ayyar
No more a lonely path
Nobel Laureate Sir John Gurdon’s elegant experiments in 1958, transplanting whole nuclei into frog eggs, have laid the ground for much of our current thinking in the field of stem cell research. While the same spirit of enquiry and joy of experimentation still exists in research today, the current generation of scientists have to grapple with a far more complex research environment. Researchers have to master the art of raising and managing funds from diverse sources, navigating ethical considerations around research, doing ‘team science’ in large consortia, scrutinising research impact and translating basic research to benefit society.
The good news is that scientists don’t need to walk this path alone. A new army of ‘research managers’ offer that helping hand needed to facilitate their science. These research managers juggle work across several fields and help researchers navigate a labyrinth of processes and details, making modern research possible.
Research management has evolved as a profession over several decades. The need for this profession arose from institutional needs to manage a diversity of research awards. It has continued to develop in response to the changing international funding landscape1. Many research-intensive organisations worldwide have research offices catering to the needs of both individual researchers and institutions. Research managers and administrators play key roles in such offices, working proactively to manage a gamut of processes enabling external research funding. Success in this field hinges upon helping researchers make optimal use of all available opportunities while minimising risk to institutions.
So, what are the key skills that could make you an effective research manager?
• It’s a combination of professional skills, personal attributes and an enabling environment.
• A broad-based background in science and administration, such as knowledge of funding agency processes, can significantly enhance a research manager’s reach.
• A natural flair for working with people, willingness to learn about new areas, attention to detail and strong organizational skills are crucial, as is an enabling institutional work environment that recognizes the value of facilitation.
• There is room here for a diversity of skills and interests, ranging from academic to administrative, all of which add value to the organization seeking to raise and manage external funding.
Research management in India
In India, science-led research management has taken wings in the last decade. The National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore was among the first to start a research development office in 2010 to support the external funding needs of a growing campus. The office was unusual for India, and quickly began growing a team of scientist administrators who facilitated research funding.
Several others such as the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, Centre for Stem Cell Research (CSCR) Vellore, National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Shiv Nadar University, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Tata Translational Cancer Research Centre (TTCRC) and George Institute for Global Health (GIGH) have been recruiting research managers and building research offices. There is now a growing group of scientists in non-academic roles including grant management, scientific outreach, ethics and others, working alongside researchers, administrators and staff at external agencies to facilitate research at Indian institutions. Individuals with a first-hand understanding of the research process are taking up such roles, gaining professional acceptance from their academic peers and building trust-based working partnerships.
With attractive remunerations, the profession is also proving to be a good alternative for individuals with PhD degrees, who wish to develop their careers in non-academic research-related roles. This is particularly significant, given constraints on independent scientific positions across India’s scientific institutions. Such efforts have considerably expanded the scope of support available to researchers at these institutions, bringing in much needed links between science, external funding and societal engagement. There is now a growing awareness of the role of research management as a new and important element of India’s developing research ecosystem.
The road ahead
While these are welcome developments for Indian research, much of these efforts have been isolated. Research management is needed for science in India to progress and for Indian research institutions to be globally competitive. For it to secure firm footing in India, more institutions need to create such structures and research managers in India need to be trained with the requisite skills and to gather into a professional network that aids their career development.
Earlier this year, the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance launched the India Research Management Initiative (IRMI) with workshops that brought research managers together to share their career stories and experiences (Linkedin page). The collective is designing online training courses and networking events. Indian research managers also participated at INORMS 2018, a large international conference, interacting with peers from 45 countries. These developments demonstrate the immense value of creating training and networking opportunities for current and future research management professionals in India.
So, what does the future hold for research managers in India? Science in India needs additional support from non-government sources such as industry and philanthropy. Research-intensive institutions would do well to have structures in place that allow their researchers to tap into diverse sources of funding with ease and clarity, participate in collaborative research and work to find solutions for national and global challenges. It is time India boosts its research ecosystem with research managers as academic support workforce. With good training and a supportive environment, this dynamic new profession is poised to make a welcome and significant change in the research landscape of the country.
Ref.
1. Langley, D. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education. 16, 71-76 (2012) doi: 10.1080/13603108.2012.659289
(Savita Ayyar can be reached at sayyar@jaquarandatree.com. She tweets from @SavitaAyyar)
Senior academics must step up and take the lead in discussing intolerance, says Devang Mehta, a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Plant Genomics at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
Mehta, who moved to Europe from India as a graduate student, regrets not having talked about such concerns with supervisors during his PhD.
{credit}Pixabay{/credit}
Last month, anti-Asian graffiti was painted in residences on the campus of my PhD alma mater, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, and Asian students’ work was vandalized with racist slogans. That same week brought allegations that a leading astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, had used racist language towards trainees, among other bullying. (The astrophysicist has defended her behaviour, and says her comments were distorted and taken out of context; see news story.)
When blatantly racist incidents occur in our universities, we academics usually prefer not to address them. We leave their handling to university administrators, who tend to deal only with the most serious cases, frequently long after they have happened. In my experience, scientists often do a poor job of recognizing and dealing with racism in our workplaces. In fact, several colleagues I spoke to while writing this article expressed scepticism that racial bias even exists in the often highly international scientific work environment. This blindness to the issue keeps us from addressing racism within the close-knit structures of academic labs.
{credit}devang mehta{/credit}
My own experiences pale in comparison to others’, but are still worth recounting. I came to Europe as a graduate student from India in 2012, just as terrorism and the refugee crisis were sparking a sharp increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric. However, working in incredibly diverse labs, I felt largely insulated.
This changed when a colleague asked me to tell a Muslim colleague off for having an untidy workbench because ‘they’ respond better to male authority. All I could do was stare, dumbstruck. In another instance, when asked about supporting diversity in a meeting with students, a European professor laughingly admitted to not hiring Asian researchers because he found ‘them’ difficult to work with. And I’ve heard many scientists casually dismiss all published papers from labs in certain countries as bad science, in the presence of students from those very countries.
I deeply regret that during my PhD I did not talk about these experiences with my supervisors. By not doing so, I denied them the opportunity to learn from and address my concerns in the manner in which I’m now confident they would have done. Why didn’t I work up the courage to report my concerns? I didn’t want to rock the boat. Like many scientists from ethnic-minority groups, I was an immigrant lacking the social and economic safety nets that citizens enjoy. It was so much easier to put my head down and race towards that PhD.
Although official policies such as institutional codes of conduct and instruments of redress for serious offences are essential, individual principal investigators (PIs) also need to model the sort of communication that is lacking today. If the reluctance of junior researchers like me to talk about racism is regrettable, the silence, and hence complicity, of senior faculty members is unconscionable. Scientists, as a community, must practise having tolerant conversations about intolerance, unconscious bias, unfair power structures and a friendlier workplace for everyone. And that just isn’t happening: both the targets of and witnesses to microaggressions worry that they are reading too much into certain actions. Relevant incidents rarely reach the attention of PIs.
The lead must come from the top — from PIs, deans, provosts. The first step could be something as simple as showing a willingness to hear about racism and intolerance from students and employees. I have asked around, and I have not heard of a single instance in which a lab head, of any race or ethnicity, male or female, held a lab meeting or sent a welcome e-mail explicitly recognizing that these are real problems they are willing to discuss. I write publicly about these topics, but I find it hard to even imagine raising racism or inequality with supervisors in face-to-face meetings unless they first signalled an openness to talk about them.
It’s not easy to call out colleagues over racist comments or intolerant behaviour, but we must. For inspiration, I sometimes consider the universal ethical code for scientists devised in 2007 by David King, then the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, which requires high standards of integrity for evidence and society (go.nature.com/2u7ydtd). And guidelines exist for essential conversations, for example those from the Massive Science Consortium, a group of more than 300 young scientists of which I’m a member. One tenet is “assume good intentions and forgive”. Talking about race can lead to people feeling persecuted, fairly or unfairly, and forgiveness is needed to move on from a confrontational or racist incident. (Assuming, of course, that the incident was minor, and apologies were offered.)
Another guideline is “step back and step up”. This asks privileged individuals to make sure they don’t dominate a discussion, and to listen to contributions from minorities and less powerful groups.
Perhaps the most important guideline is “speak and listen from personal experience”. In other words, do not instinctively question the validity of someone else’s experience; this happens so often with women and minorities. It is especially apparent when institutions reflexively defend the accused. It is up to tenured professors to protest and demand more introspection from their employers and employees.
Fundamentally, tackling racism and intolerance in science requires an acknowledgement from us all that it exists. I call on senior scientists to speak up and to invite others to do so.
[This piece was first published as a ‘World View’ article in Nature.]
Which of these sounds the most preposterous? (The last one questioning Darwin’s theory, by the way, was delivered yesterday by a minister in India’s Union cabinet.)
For a billion plus population in the world’s largest democracy, such embarrassing statements by people in positions of power have become alarmingly regular. So regular that some brush them aside with a smirk, some make a joke of them on Twitter and some rage over them during dinner table conversations. But here’s the scary bit: many — who either hero worship these people or are blinded or silenced by their stature — believe such random facepalm-worthy comments. And many, who should protest, stay quiet.
This promulgation of unverified ‘facts’ doesn’t even qualify as pseudoscience [dictionary meaning: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method]. This is plain anti-science [dictionary meaning: a set or system of attitudes and beliefs that are opposed to or reject science and scientific methods and principles].
Such statements by India’s politicians and people in powerful offices are bringing to a naught the scientific progress that this country is making in bits and pieces, with ambitions of becoming a science superpower.
These are scary times for those who practice science in this country. An immediate letter of protest by India’s scientific community has challenged the minister’s anti-science blabber saying: “Statements such as ‘humans did / did not evolve from monkeys’ is an overly simplistic and misleading representation of evolution. There is plentiful and undeniable scientific evidence to the fact that humans and the other great apes and monkeys had a common ancestor.” The letter is in the right direction. So was ‘India March for Science‘ in 2017, though the country’s scientists had joined the global call belatedly.
Scotching pseudoscience and irrational thoughts is at one level, tackling the menace on a case-by-case basis with a letter of protest here or a march of solidarity there. But eradicating anti-science may need a deeper combing operation where scientists, science communicators and India’s science administration come together to make a bigger noise, a bigger dent.
Following the “March for Science” in 600 cities across the world on 22 April 2017, Indian scientists gave a call for “India March for Science” on the 9 August 2017. On that day, more than 15,000 scientists, science teachers, research scholars, students, and science-loving people came out on the streets of 43 cities and towns of India.
Scientists within India did not join the global protest. Did they miss the boat? Yes, say Vineeta Baland Aurnab Ghose from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. Along with Satyajit Rath from the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, they joined hundreds of scientists in the ‘India March for Science’ held, albeit belatedly, across the country. Here’s the trio’s guest post on the unique challenges facing India’s science that made the protests timely.
[The views expressed are personal].
The protestors in Pune{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}
There is a need to focus attention on the current trajectory of scientific pursuits in India – we need rationality and scientific temper in our society, and for that, we need the scientists of today and tomorrow.
The process of rational thinking needs to be inculcated early in life by encouraging young children to ask questions, by providing avenues for finding logical answers, by discouraging blind faith and acts associated with the perpetuation of blind faith. In many of these contexts, formal education can help. Hence there is a clear need to develop curricula which encourage curiosity and experiment-driven learning and discourage faith-driven irrational approaches and unquestioning attitude to learning.
One of the major demands during our ‘India March for Science’ was to increase the budget on education and spend it on developing young minds to think rationally and critically. While the exact proportion of GDP that should be spent on education can be debated, there is no doubt that in India there is a clear need to increase governmental spending on education at all levels.
Another demand during the event was that spending on research in science should be increased. For the last many decades, every successive government has promised to increase allocation for science research for various departments. Departments affiliated to defence research have seen substantial increases in certain years but civilian science research departments have not been as consistently fortunate.
While it is true that in recent years the funds allocated during the budget speech by the Finance Minister of the country appears higher than the previous year and hence can be used to counter the scientists’ arguments that there is no budgetary increase, the larger reality is far less promising. Funding is unpredictable, with even inflation not allowed for in some years, it is seldom available on time, and it is terribly patchily distributed. The Director General of CSIR (the largest network of laboratories in the country) has admitted near bankruptcy, stipends of research personnel are being withheld or delayed; there is thus little doubt that the funding for civilian scientific research in India is sub-optimal.
Science research is a continuous, often long-term, process. It can’t start and stop arbitrarily. Hence there has to be an equivalence between the sustainability of efforts and sustainability of the associated funding. Also, just like in science education, rationality should be the mainstay of any science research. For this to be practised, development of reasonable models based on available data, refinement and testing of these models and evidence-based modification or rejection of the models should be the basis of scientific efforts and policy.
Funding for research where the outcome appears to be already defined is undesirable – a case in point is the Scientific Validation and Research on Panchgavya (SVAROP) project. The research aims to prove the usefulness of panchgavya, a concoction of five cow products (dung, urine, milk, curd and ghee) used in traditional Indian rituals. The Indian Science Congress, a major annual scientific meeting in the country, has also been used as a platform to promote pseudoscience. Such efforts undermine the basic tenets of science where research questions are asked with a hypothesis in mind and the knowledge gained is likely to support or refute the hypothesis. Instead, these regressive efforts foster superstition in society by pretending that pseudoscience is ‘science’.
The Indian march
At least 15000 people participated in the Indian march in several cities. About 700 people participated in the Pune march. Besides demonstrating solidarity with the global ‘March for Science’, the Indian students, teachers and researchers stressed on inculcating rational thinking in the society. The relevance of rationality in society was highlighted by the explicit and public reference to the work done over many decades in Maharashtra by the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, an intellectual who was murdered for his stance against superstition.
{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}
August 9 was chosen for its historic significance as the day of the launch of the Quit India movement against erstwhile British rulers, with an implicit corollary of self-empowerment in making societal decisions. It is World Indigenous Peoples’ Day, underlining the most underprivileged sections of society in need of the empowering potential of science. It’s also Nagasaki Day, which reminds us that science disconnected with society can be used for horrific ends. Together, these reminders make the urgent point underlined by the march for science, that science must be recommitted and reconnected to society, and that society must rediscover the progressive potential of science and value it appropriately as an open-minded, fearless enquiry into causes.
We marched despite direct orders prohibiting some scientists from participating in the ‘March for Science’ and many refraining from joining due to perceived threats to their jobs and possible harassment. The practitioners of science who hit the streets were demanding freedom of speech to express their concerns, freedom for dissent and discussion, assurance of steady supply of funds for pursuing scientific research, provision of more funds for education for all.
In a democratic country such as India, these are basic demands to make. If a country’s scientific community need to take to the streets for such basics, there is serious need for introspection.
Physicist Soumitro Banerjee from the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research Kolkata, who joined the march in India’s capital Delhi, talks about the policy changes that scientists want to see in the wake of the march.
The march in Kolkata
I marched for science in New Delhi because the funding support for scientific research in India is sorely inadequate, having remained stagnant in the range 0.8%-0.9% of India’s GDP for far too long. Other countries with similar aspirations have provided financial support for science exceeding 3% of GDP. It is not difficult to imagine the crisis facing most Indian scientific institutions because of paucity of funds.
The education system that supplies the scientific manpower is also in bad shape. The public school system, where a majority of Indian children get their education, is deplorable. Many schools are without proper buildings, toilets, and playgrounds, have overcrowded classrooms, face acute shortage of teachers and are without laboratory facilities. As a result, a vast majority of children are deprived of the opportunity of being a part of the scientific manpower of this country.
The college and university system is also reeling under acute shortage of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for research.
The situation is crying out for urgent redressal, and the march demanded allocation of 3% of GDP for R&D and 10% of GDP for education.
A bigger area of concern is that in recent times attempts to spread unscientific beliefs and superstition are on the rise. Sometimes, unscientific ideas lacking in evidence are being propagated as science, patronised by persons in high positions. Untested personal beliefs of educational administrators and textbook writers are infiltrating the education system, and mythology is being taught as history.
This is vitiating the cultural atmosphere of the country. There is an article in the Indian Constitution (Article 51A) that demands every Indian citizen to develop a scientific temper, humanism and spirit of inquiry, and the current cultural atmosphere runs counter to that. The march demanded that the government uphold this provision of the Constitution.
