I came across this article about "What will it take for a Indian Resident to Win a Nobel Prize" (see pdf or converted html), written by CSIR boss, R A Mashelkar, with whom I had the pleasure of shaking hands once during IIIT's R & D Showcase. Little did I know Mr Mashelkar then.
The article talks about how the Indian society acts, in the name of conservation, to not only discourage original out-of-the-box ideas, but in some sense to even penalize them. In the history of science, a mere 7 Nobel prizes have gone to people of Indian origin, which is a shameful number. The Indian Society is so resistant to change that even original and novice ideas get lost very soon. At CSIR, Mashelkar did not have the difficulty of finding funds, but that of finding original fundable ideas. Even today, there's no lack of employment but the lack of employable people.
Nobel prize requires not only original ideas and path breaking work, but also hard work and luck. Considering the amount of investment India makes in research, it's hardly any surprise that all thinkers flee to USA or Germany. Not coincidentally, these are the two countries which have the highest number of Nobel prize winners.
India's answer to this appears to be -- well, we don't get enough Nobel prizes, we deserve more, let's reserve a certain number of them for Indians. That's what has been done with professional education lately. That's what is being done for jobs. At this pace, it's rather stupid to bear the brunt of being an Indian and sing patriotic songs. Fleeing to other countries not only makes sense, it also becomes necessary for survival -- I'm talking about the kind of people who need to think free to survive.
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4 comments:
hey, thanks for sharing the wonderful article :)
Thanks for this very informative article. It hurts every time to see M K Gandhi in the list of those who didn't make it.
Although I concur with quite a few of your observations/comments in the post, fleeing to another country can only be described as leaving the battlefield when things get a bit too hot to handle. If I don't like what currently exists in India, I should try and make a change rather than rushing off. One can look at India's current predicament as an opportunity to make a grand contribution. We are in dire need of innovative solutions to the problems in the poor and rural India. Nobel prize can't be the only incentive driving a passionate researcher.
Here is an inspiring example of an Indian lady who did her PG in public health from the US and returned to her home town - a tribal town in Maharashtra - to cut back its infant mortality rate through her "innovative and powerful approach of research with the people and for the people" - http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=32470. She was given a national award last month by the president of India.
@Nirnimesh
49.5% is too high to be called 'reserves'(in National educational Instis). Agreed with you.
@Pulkit,
I think I have read somewhere(a news article/editorial) that the people who were scrutinizing various entries for Noble Prizes at that time, thought that even Noble Prize itself can't express the world's appluase towards the great man history has ever seen! So, he is up above those prizes..
Nice, really nice!
I read some article about why Gandhi was not awarded the Nobel Prize.
I think the one below gave me a lot of information
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/gandhi/index.html
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