Amidst all the debate on the rise and fall and rise of Indian science, this piece of news in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament, was quite uplifting. Many might dismiss this as the regular politician’s occasional figure-rattling exercise, but sampe this: 38% of all doctors in the US and 36% of NASA scientists are Indians, as it turns out after careful inspection of payrolls.

What’s more, 12 per cent of all scientists in the US of A are Indians. Research is on the upswing with the number of PhDs from India going up from 17,898 two years back to 18,730. The Union minister of state for HRD D. Purandeshwari merrily announced plans of creating 1,000 more positions for research scientists in this country.

More happy figures: Micrososft has 36% Indian staff, IBM 28%, Intel 17% and Xerox 13%.

Very optimistic statistics. What do we make out of this?