Monthly Archives: January 2012

Saving whales

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Siddharth Chakravarty

Siddharth Chakravarty

It was inspirational to hear about a young sailor from Maharashtra, India who is storming the icy waters of the Southern Ocean right now in a crusade against whaling. Siddharth Chakravarty, a third generation sailor from Nashik is a qualified seaman and the first volunteer from India to sign on for the high-risk, direct-action campaign by the international non-profit conservation organization Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Chakravarty is currently taking the Japanese whaling fleet head-on, the first time an Indian is at the helm of the society’s flagship vessel M/Y Steve Irwin. He will be navigating the vessel through mountainous seas riddled with icebergs to track down and intercept the Japanese whaling fleet. The 28 year-old sailor will guide and steer the ship on a course that will bring it into direct conflict with the whalers.

His primary task will be to find the fleet’s factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, and block its stern to prevent any whales being dragged up the slipway. “The aim is to bring an end to so-called scientific whaling and protect the southern hemisphere’s whale population from further slaughter. We want to permanently end illegal whaling in the Southern whale sanctuary which is protected by an international moratorium”, the young sailor says.

A decade of ferrying oil tankers and forest products around the globe nudged his conscience about the environmental impact of his work . The research he subsequently started led him to realise the discharges at sea of marine oil and other waste. “I felt conflicted by the consummate callousness of the shipping industry which manifests itself most clearly in the pollution of the waterways, arising out of commercial shipping operations, and accidental discharge from ships which, in turn, have crippling effects on marine life,” he says. Thereafter he has worked to stop illegal poaching of the endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya.

All the very best to the crusader!

Early honour

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Right after the year-ending award-rain of 2011, its award time again, plonk in the opening month of the new year.

Sandhya Koushika

Sandhya Koushika

Sandhya Koushika of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore has bagged the prestigious International Early Career Scientist (IECS) award instituted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) based in Maryland, USA. In all, 28 young scientists from 12 countries got the award in its inaugural year. “These are  the people who, 10 years from now, we expect will be the scientific leaders in their countries,” HHMI President Robert Tjian said in a release.

Each of the awardees will receive $100,000 a year for five years. Alongside that they will get $150,000 the first year for major equipment purchases and other investments. The funding starts next month.

Sandhya studies “long-distance transport of organelles within neurons using the tiny transparent worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model. To understand how such transport is regulated, she uses genetics and live imaging combined with interdisciplinary tools and approaches”. Here’s HHMI’s awardee profile of Sandhya and the NCBS page detailing her work.

Apart from her scientific pursuits, Sandhya has been a keen organiser of many international meets and events as part of the NCBS team. It has been our pleasure to hear from the enthusiastic scientist who has co-authored a series of meeting reports for Nature India over the years [1, 2, 3, 4].

“I think in few years time, India will do very very well in such fora, like the Chinese,” Sandhya said responding to a congratulatory message. She thinks India is getting good scientists back in larger numbers. “I hope more young people consider India as a destination to build their independent scientific careers.”

Here’s wishing her great success in her scientific journey!

Race defense

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University of Connecticut Health Center researcher Dipak Das found guilty of fabrication and falsification of data has raised the ‘Indian therefore harassed’ card heard so many times in the past in western scientific circles.

Dipak Das

The researcher who worked on the health benefits of a chemical in red wine fabricated data in 145 separate research projects, a three-year investigation by the university has found. University officials have notified 11 scientific journal studies co-authored by Dipak Das of the fraud. The Jadavpur University alumnus, whose work focused on the grape skin antioxidant resveratrol, responded to the inquiry in a 2010 letter saying it was a “conspiracy against Indian scientists”.

“Careful examination of these papers (the inquiry report) would result in a striking feature. All the accused authors are of INDIAN ORIGIN…it is an entirely racial issue – war against Indian community and unfortunately I am also an Indian,” he said in a lengthy response to the inquiry defending himself and his Indian co-authors.

Now, why does this sound familiar? Why is it that falling back upon the ‘racial’ defense is the first response of many researchers found guilty of  misconduct. We discussed the feeling of ‘third world alienation’ in another blog post earlier and got some pertinent responses.

It would be good to hear from our readers — based on their analysis of the charges by the University of Connecticut and the defense provided by Das — as to whether they think the racial card is played with or without much substance in many such cases. What’s your view of the whole issue as a case study in this regard?

Science nationalism

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I had picked up the copy of Raghunath Mashelkar’s book ‘Reinventing India’ with great expectations. I had always loved interacting with him while he held the highest office at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Over the years, I have heard him speak in myriad conventions and symposia and always felt inspired. His book, however, does not do justice to the towering personality, quite literally so, who has charmed many an audience to convince them that the “I in India stands for innovation”.

Here’s my review of the book written on invitation from a national magazine:

Raghunath Anant Mashelkar deserved better.  The man behind India’s scientific intellectual property rights (IPR) revolution, a visionary administrator, an inspirational orator and one of the most humble scientists of his times, Mashelkar certainly deserved better publishing counsel. His book Reinventing India — a compilation of some of his electrifying speeches — falls short of inspiring. It is another story altogether that when the tall, dark, charismatic scientist delivered these very speeches with a glint in his eyes and smile on his lips, not a single soul went back home untouched by the power of his delivery. The pride of being Indian — something he wears on his sleeve — is infectious. Sadly, the spirit does not rub off on the book, which also suffers from poor editing and redundancy.

Why would you want to read page after page of rhetoric applauding the glory of Indian science? What would make you sift through chapters dedicated to a single theme unless, of course, you belong to the genre of science nationalists? How many from this genre are alive and around – who is the book written for? If it means to inspire gen-next scientists into believing in Indian science, then unfortunately, it does not speak their language or address their issues. If it means to be just a compilation of Mashelkar’s speeches and essays, then it should perhaps say just that on the cover.

Some take homes (if you are a Mashelkar fan and read through the book to know more about the man, that is,) are his thoughts on inclusive innovation, his incredible personal journey to become what he has and truckloads of optimism on the power of Indian science. At times, the optimism comes across as overkill, if one were to see through objective and not tinted glasses. Cynics will find this oozing nationalism slightly irritating – why is Indian science in a bad shape if all’s well and this is the ‘decade of innovation in India’ as Mashelkar says? He does make an attempt to outline the barriers to progress – inhibiting culture, poor budgets, poor IPR and legal skills, market illiteracy and the grand dad of all things evil in India – its bureaucracy. But they are tucked under the layers of effusive praise and unadulterated pride.

Interestingly, there’s this tiny newsy bit on use of social networking for governance that does not miss a keen journalistic eye, primarily because of the debate currently raging in the corridors of power. Mashelkar’s take on social networking: there’s need for innovative policy measures to use positively the capacity of new media, to engage young Indian population in the democratic process. Hope Mr. Kapil Sibal is listening.

For the man credited with transforming the way India conducts its scientific pursuits, changing the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) into a profit making, IPR-savvy body and fondly known for his resonating ‘I for India’ slogans, one can only hope that this book will be overwritten by another one. One that does justice to this unmatched bundle of energy and salutes his contribution to this country’s science.

Science meet

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The 99th edition of the Indian Science Congress happening this week in Bhubaneswar appeared different from its recent predecessors in one big way — on day one, the halls were packed to capacity and were spilling over. Some of the plenary talks saw standing crowds. A particular talk by Nobel Laureate Rolf Zinkernagel from the University of Zurich actually had over 200 scientists and researchers banging at the auditorium doors, which were closed by the organisers to avoid overcrowding inside!

Now, is that an indication of the growing popularity of the annual mega-meet of scientists, policy makers, researchers and science students? Organisers said close to 15, 000 delegates were expected to attend the event over six days.

The second day onwards, however, the crowds started to thin. Some sessions were cancelled as the speakers did not turn up. Special sections were dedicated to children and women scientists, though they also failed to attract too many participants or interested onlookers. Delegates were missing in hordes, perhaps allured by the many tourist destinations in the state of Orissa.

Despite these usual goings-on associated with a mega event of such nature, there have been a few bright sparks. One among them was a session discussing the new science policy being formulated by the India government.

It saw some key science policy makers of the country — Planning Commission member K. Kasturirangan, Secretary to the Indian government V. M. Katoch, Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Samir Brahmachari and secretary to the  department of science and technology T. Ramasami among others — deliberating on what must go into the new science policy. At the inaugural session of the congress India’s science and technology minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had promised to give the country a new, “well-balanced, transparent and evidence-based science policy”. Ramasami confirmed that “we will present to you the new policy before the next science congress”.

Nature India will discuss the new science policy in some detail soon.