 Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for joining this session. And it's a very unique occasion because I'm told this is the first time World Economic Forum regional event in India is having a science and health stream also. And there are several sessions which have been lined up on science and technology as well as health which some of you would be attending. And the timing of this session itself I believe is, session is called Scientific India. It could not have been better. And this week as we know we are celebrating science. The Nobel Prize session is on. So it's a very right time for a discussion on science in India and its various facets. Especially the subject of Nobel Prize often evokes different kinds of reactions in India. Very often people ask what can India do to win a Nobel Prize. I'm not going to ask that question but that's a question which is, you know, uppermost in the mind of several people including policymakers. I'm sure if there was a politician on the panel he or she would have asked this question. There's no, when people even have asked is there any magic formula to win a Nobel Prize. But if we have a policy goal to make India one of the top three science superpowers by 2030, then we need to look for solutions. If certainly not a magic formula to win a Nobel Prize. Of course India has done a lot right in science if you know. I mean I'm not going to get into that, you know. We have had several achievements to start with your space and atomic energy, the green and white revolutions. All those are great achievements for a country because a number of countries achieved independence at the time when India did. And very few of them are at the stage where India is today. But at the same time we need to ask some hard questions, we need to go to the next level. If the goal, the stated goal is by 2030 we need to be science power, whatever that means that's stated in the policy. And part of that discussion we are going to focus on today afternoon. I'm very privileged to have such an illustrious and diverse set of people sitting on the dais. And if I start introducing all of them I will have no time left for the discussion. But to put it briefly the kind of expertise we have today. And we have Ramgopal Rao, the director of IIT Delhi, who was earlier at IIT Bombay. As you know IITs are the top most technology and engineering schools as well as innovation hubs of India. He himself is a renowned nanotechnology stand-in inventor. He is close to three dozen patents to his credit I believe. So he can talk from his personal experience as well as a technology leader. And he is also co-founded a company called Nanosniff Technologies Limited while he was at IIT Bombay. We have Chris Gopalakrishnan for a business audience or a forum like WEF. I don't think I need to introduce him. I mean he is one of the technology industry founders having been a co-founder of Infosys. And a deep interest in philanthropy and basic science. In 2014 he announced a donation of rupees 225 crores to the Indian Institute of Science to start a centre for brain research. Which is a unique donation not only in the history of Indian Institute of Science but I would say in the history of Indian science itself. There has been no such single donation devoted to basic sciences. So that stands as an example and shows his deep interest in promoting basic research. And very few examples like that we can find. And next to Chris is Sucharita Sebastian. He is an associate professor of physics at Cavendish. And what I found intriguing about her bio-data while going through her brief information about her. That she also holds a degree. She has been a management consultant and holds a degree of MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. So a physicist turned management consultant. But she is right now at Cavendish teaching physics. And the far end is Shahid Jameel. Again a renowned scientist who was heading the virology group at ICGEB International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. And now he is the CEO of the Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance. Which is a very unique alliance which is easily one of the largest funded collaborative joint collaborative effort between India and another country. Its mechanism has produced some very good results which again adds value to the expertise which we have today. So we have a full set of people to talk about science and technology. People who have done science, people who are still doing science, people who are leaders. And people who have promoted technology and basic science. So its a diverse and cross disciplinary group as well as an audience. I am sure this lot of expertise resides here. So this is going to be an interactive session on science and technology as its called the Scientific Indian. And I am told the session is being live streamed so there are many people who will be watching it live from wherever they are. So the message which will emanate from here will be carried forward. And I am sure today afternoon we will have a meaningful and stimulating dialogue and interaction. So let me start with all the panelists with a brief overview question if you could answer in a couple of minutes each. What are the top 3 or 4 things which we need to do right to achieve that goal of becoming one of the top 3 or 4 leaders in science and technology. Of course we have discussed the problems a number of times. Let us look out for some solutions. What are the things which we need to do right. Very briefly and then we will get on to some of the building blocks in terms of investments, in terms of innovation network and in a few other things. So shall I start with Dr. Rao. Thank you. Thank you. So I am in a way representing the IIT system. IITs are often either the poster boys or the whipping boys depending on where you go. And I think government still does spend a lot of money on IITs. But again the question is how have we contributed to the nation building. I think it all depends on how you look at it. But overall if you look at the Indian scenario, India is doing pretty well. Not many of you might know. In terms of research India is actually doing pretty well. We are ranked at the fifth or sixth level in the world right now depending on which databases you look at. We are either at the fifth position or sixth position in terms of our scientific content, scientific output. Count the number of papers written from India. So I think things have become pretty good. In terms of nano technology we are ranked third in the world right now. Only behind China and US. And in fact according to some of the recent statistics per dollar spent. Indians write more papers than anybody in the world. Much better than China. So I think we have become experts at converting money into research. So that part I think Indian institutions are doing very well. You give us more money we will write more papers. I think that there is no problem at all. But I think one of the things which we are very poor at is converting that research back to money. That we have not been able to do very well. I admit that even IITs though we are now talking about it and trying to do that which might take some time. But I think converting that research back to money that ecosystem is missing in IT kind of sectors. Since Mr. Gopal Krishna is here I think in IT sector probably that has happened. But in hardcore technology kind of areas it has not happened. And we are all struggling with that particular kind of an aspect. But there are reasons why we have not been very good at it. In India coming from a cultural background that we all have. For Indians we worship different goddesses for wealth and knowledge. And bringing Lakshmi and Saraswati together is often a challenge in any Indian system. And in academic making lots of money there is a peer pressure within the institutes that this guy must be doing something wrong or not teaching very well, not writing papers only after making money. I think there is a kind of a peer pressure against people who are supposed to be seeking knowledge. But then at some point they tend to focus more on money. I think these are all cultural issues which we need to overcome. But I should tell you that the younger generation is our hope. I think they are at least in IT is the kind of students we are seeing things are looking better. I think one thing you know though we are writing lots of papers one thing which is definitely missing in our system is context and relevance. The relevance of our research the context to our what we do I think that part is missing. But that is missing simply because we are a government of India funded institutions. Our money comes primarily from MHRD and we have all the autonomy to work on whatever problem we want. People are not giving us enough problems. The industry, academia interaction in this country has been pretty weak. I think we all have to blame both the sides for that. And there is lot of trust deficit between these two institutions. And that is something which we are all trying to correct. But unless industry interacts with academia more closely, I don't think this relevance problem will ever get solved. And also you know our education is also quite fragmented right now. If you want to build, do science we go and start science institutes. If you want to do medicine we go and start medical institutes. Want to do engineering start IITs. But we have not been building universities or institutions which are focusing you know the whole thing holistically. And we are not putting problem first in all our research thing. We don't look at you know how can I improve agricultural productivity what technologies are required. And then once you know identify that as a problem then all these disciplines everything will vanish. But that we are not doing enough. You know if you are an electrical engineer you work on electrical problem, mechanical, mechanical problems. In the process we are not solving the problems the way we should be doing. I think this fragmentation of education is something we need to consciously you know overcome. That is one thing we need to do everything possible to bring in industry you know closer to academia. And I was recently in some government of India meeting. Now government is expecting a arranged marriage to happen between industry and academia which is not happening. And no I am sorry the government is expecting a love marriage to happen between academia and industry which is not happening. And I am telling them you know you arrange the marriages. You just make sure that industry has no choice but to come and you know invest some part of their money in these academic institutions. And over a period of time there will be win-win kind of relationships. Some of them will succeed they will come back again. I think you know we need to somehow make sure that industry has no choice but to work with academia. You know the industries like Infosys are doing a great job in the Infosys the Science Foundation and all of them. I think are making an effort in the direction Infosys also runs the triple IT and all that. But I think that has to happen with more of these multinational industries more of other industries. I think unless we make that happen I don't see much future. We will continue to write more papers and beyond that nothing much will change in this country. Thank you. Chris the ball is in your court. Thank you. Would you prefer an arranged marriage or a love marriage? Thank you. Let me start off you know you talked about this is the season of Nobel Prize right. The Nobel Prize for physics went for the work on gravitational waves the LIGO project as it's called. You know the three people who got the prize Rainer wise Barry Barish and Kipthon. They have been working at it from 1970 onwards you know 40 almost 40 years. And only recently they you know they saw success. In fact if I read right I think Barish left his work went and did something else and they came back to MIT and restarted his research because you know he felt he was not getting anywhere. There's another reason why I wanted to say this. As many as 37 Indian scientists from nine institutes are actually part of this effort you know overall about 1000 people around the world are part of this effort. So what 37 people have actually fully contributed and co-authors of this research paper. People like Sanjay Durandhar the IUCAA has been working at it for 30 years. So large ambitious projects take long periods of time. And the cost of LIGO project is in billions of dollars billions of dollars actually. So let me now come to you ask the question and what are some of the solutions. One you know we need to have ambitious mission more programs a few of them. And when we do that I'm confident in saying I agree with Ram Gopal. Our scientists are actually second to none but they are narrowly focused. It's typically one professor one PhD student very small fund amount of fund and very narrowly focused. Of course in theory one person can come out with breakthrough but in you know any other field you know some experiments like this. We need large setup large amount of money large groups. We need some mission more projects that's my first thing. I think we have to think big and since these are all multidisciplinary you will find ways in which there are different groups that can contribute to that. Second I firmly believe that the funding to research has to increase. Today India invest 0.9% of GDP in research. It has to go to at least 2% countries like Korea invest 4% because we are behind I think we should target 4% of this 0.9% industry invest 0.3%. So my first request to my industry colleagues is take it to at least 1.3 1.7%. So your contribution becomes 2%. The government invest the remaining 0.6%. Government has to put in an additional 1.4% so we let's target to 4%. I think we need to do that. This is required to secure the future because the future will be built through innovation driven knowledge driven economy. So we need to increase the funding for research. The government has a scheme for CSR funding. Ram Gopal mentioned this. Can we allocate 1% that's 2% of your profits have to be allocated for CSR. Out of that 1% goes to solve existing problems and 1% goes to solve future problems which is research. So can we now subdivide this 2% into 1% for current problems and 1% for future problems. We also need to create ecosystems around institutions for the translational work that needs to be done. Every large department at least at the institute level we need to have a function for translational research. If you go to MIT, Cambridge, etc., you will find a department, full-face department looking at translational research and things like that. I have seen personally at IIT Madras Research Park more than 100 startups are already there up and running. If you look at the Economic Times Award, out of the 5 awards startups got 4 were from IIT Madras ecosystem. It is working. A government has allotted money for I think 6 more institutions to start research park. They are at various stages but none of them have been started yet. I think we need to accelerate and we need to get that going very quickly because these ecosystems help in the translational work. Bottom line, I firmly believe that we have good talent, we have good science, good scientists. We have to make some changes, we have to increase the funding, we have to create the ecosystem. We have to bring businesses closer, especially in the translational part of the work. We will see big results and we need to have ambitious goals. For example, personally, I am looking at aging and the brain. I am looking at how can we look at the brain and understand new models of computing. So think big and you will see results happen. So I think probably I am closest to fundamental researchers so I will speak a bit about that. My career has mostly been outside India so I studied at Stanford and now I am faculty at Cambridge. So at least in my field, I work in physics and experimental physics. So I would say it is a little bit self-congratulatory to say we are doing fine and our research is okay. At least in my field, if you look at scientific output, I would say of the top papers in nature and science, there is almost nothing coming out of Indian institutions. That is not to say Indian researchers are not premier but they are not at Indian institutions or often at institutions abroad. I think we need to acknowledge that and I think it is not a question of how much output is coming out. It is what is the caliber of it and I think we have got used to mediocrity. When we talk about we have this many papers, what is the quality of the papers, how many of them are in the top journals, are they in the nature or science quality journal. So in my field, even if you look at TIFR, I did a summer research project at TIFR. The researchers there are excellent but there was one science paper that came out and it was a very good paper but this was some kind of cause for immense surprise that there had been one paper that had come out of TIFR and I do not know, like a decade. So I think we need to recognize that a culture of excellence in fundamental research is missing right now in the Indian context. And in order to change this we need to acknowledge that there is a vacuum right now. And I think excellence in other fields is recognized so obviously we are familiar with say excellence in the area of cricketing or Bollywood stars but when it comes to scientific excellence there is like the Nobel Prize and then there is this big vacuum as though a Nobel Prize is going to appear out of nowhere if there isn't a pool of excellent research happening. And as I mentioned so I think there is a couple of things that need to change so obviously funding needs to be increased but so say at TIFR or ISC. Specifically funding is not an issue because I think the limited amount of funding there is it's concentrated in a few locations. But I think the amount of funding increasing is necessary for a volume of excellent research to be built up so I've considered coming back to TIFR, places like that but the challenge is not funding because you get grants. The challenge is there are excellent colleagues, is there a culture where you collaborate to do fundamental research you need collaborations, you need people to work with, you need peers you can discuss things with and so there needs to be a large ecosystem where it's not just like one person who's excellent and this is not going to survive in a sort of barren ecosystem. Just because doing research is challenging in and of itself and you need a support mechanism you need excellent researchers to increase morale, to increase the pool that you can collaborate. So I think funding increase needs to go into volumes of excellent researchers and not just one or two here at Bayer. I think in terms of attracting back scientific diaspora I don't think India is doing a very good job at all. I think China is doing an excellent job. So in my class at Stanford you had both Indian origin researchers and Chinese origin researchers and faculty as well and I think there's a big push by the Chinese government to bring back researchers at all levels so not just say at the post-doc or system level at the level where they lead institutes so they can come back and establish institutes in China and there's a drive for them really to compete and say we're the best at this and they're going toe-to-toe with the US and the Indian researchers just get sucked into the US system which for understandable reasons there is no drive to bring them back, there's no incentive so in China there's an incentive called I think it's like a thousand leading lights where there's different mechanisms for people to come back either full-time or spend a few months in China and contribute to research there so there's various different schemes but this is an actively promoted way for the scientific diaspora to come back which I don't see in India. So all of these are not problems from which there is no recovery and the tragedy is that actually scientific researchers from India are of course among the top calibre that everywhere you look at a paper it has a slew of Indian names on it, they're just not at Indian institutes so to me that's the challenge and finally I think the fundamental applied connection so I think as Chris mentioned so I think one of the things that needs to be recognized is that in order for applied technology to come out there needs to be a vast background of fundamental research again it's not going to come out of a vacuum so when say communications was invented so cell phones, the telegraph, radio this was built on the back of electromagnetic waves and this was a discovery that was a purely theoretical discovery so Maxwell conjured up these equations, they were just purely mathematical equations and this was purely curiosity driven and decades down the line all of contemporary technology is based on this but I think for the government to say okay let's tackle these immediate problems go away and do some research and solve these problems that affect society today of course it's critical to be addressing these problems and for research institutions to work hand in hand with industry and I think this is critical but I think that fundamental research in and of itself needs to be valued and with the understanding that it will take time for it to percolate to technological translation this doesn't mean it's not important it just means that there needs to be a vibrant fundamental pool of research in order for applications to emerge and it's not going to emerge out of nothing thanks Anish you know there's a good thing about speaking last that you've heard what everyone said but the bad thing is that everything useful has been said so let me reattract a the next round will begin from your end let me reattract a couple of points I think you made a very good point about basic and fundamental research suddenly the atmosphere in the country is that all you should do is applied research CSIR has been told for example that no basic research will be funded they should be working only on applied things, products, processes and there's a fundamental flaw in that and she mentioned it very clearly that you need a very large background of good basic work for good products, processes to come out of that this is the Nobel Prize season you were hearing every day a prize being announced just the other day the chemistry prize was announced for cryo electron microscopy now cryo electron microscopy which is being used today to solve structures that will lead to drug discovery and many other things was a very very fundamental problem when it was studied you look at gene editing which has become very hot right now the CRISPR-Cas technology which is at the base of this gene editing developed because people were interested in studying how bacteria protect themselves against viruses that affect bacteria a very very basic problem and this technology came out of that so the point is and there are thousands of such examples the point is that you need a very good background of basic research for good things to come out of it and the same really goes for innovation you know innovation requires a threshold there has to be a size threshold and a tipping point comes eventually I don't believe we have reached that tipping point in the country because we are really not invested in size as far as the numbers of people who are doing science and technology in the country as well as the amount of funding that is going into science and technology you know I think of the example in very layman terms of Mount Everest Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world but the peak doesn't stand in isolation you know that peak is part of the Himalayan range of mountains if there was no Himalayas there would be no Mount Everest so let's try to create the range I think the peaks will emerge themselves so that's an important idea to take from this like Chris said we need to raise the level of funding we are currently funding at 0.88% of GDP and we must go to 2% of GDP we have been hearing about it for the last 10-13 years two terms of UPA we have been hearing and the last three years we have been hearing it hasn't happened it must happen so the three things Dinesh that you asked us to highlight one of course is funding the other is do good science don't worry about basic science or applied science just do good science there is no basic or applied science there is only good science and bad science so let's try to do good science and the time has come for us to be doing more interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary science which is aimed at solving problems and if we are able to do that then everything that we desire will come out of it and the one point which I don't believe anyone touched on which I would say is on my top three list is that we should nurture young talent there is a lot of young talent that is coming into India today and that is because of improved facilities back home but also very serious funding problems overseas NIH and US National Institutes of Health is funding at 6 or 7 percentile 95 percent, 94 percent of the grants are getting rejected people are not getting funded very very good people some of those people are moving out of necessity so let's grab that opportunity but when I say nurture young talent what I am saying is that you know we should provide these people the right ecosystems to work in this is what I do in a day job the program I run is a fellowship program we bring in people with very good funding and we bring really the best people our funding rate is about 10 percent so 90 percent of people who apply to us don't get it but when we place these people in institutions the institutions are not backing them up as much as they should be backing them up they are not backing them up for becoming future leaders they are not backing them up for communicating their work well and they often have to struggle with something as small as a health insurance policy for their family so you know there are structural issues that institutions need to solve when we before we are able to really for us to be able to really support our young people so I will stop there thanks I think quite a few strands have come out of this very brief discussion one of course is relating to the big issue of R&D and how do you in R&D funding how do you increase that kitty which has been there for a long time is it through CSR is it through a forced marriage with industry or is it to simply enhance government funding and these days we don't even hear about increasing public investment in R&D I mean the government has been telling as you mentioned Shahid that you know get money from the industry or get money from CSR so there is a little bit of confusion on the front of funding how do we increase the basket of funding is it through CSR versus CSIR or is it the government which is going to fund I mean we are still to hear that you know a solid statement from the government that you know we are going to back basic research we are going to back SNT and increase R&D funding because if you look at the Dharadun declaration which has been enforced for almost three years now which clearly says that you know these are the mandated things which the National Institutes are supposed to do and quite a few of them are engaged in doing that so is that the way we are going to go ahead and increase funding or in fact in effect there has been a shrinking of funding I would say in practice people have not been paid for regular projects and there have been no major projects coming up at the same time there have been big commitments which have been made in the past ten years about the India's participation in big science like if you look at LHC, look at the LIGO arm look at the square kilometer array so those are big projects which is a positive and which will have an impact or a spill or effect on the academia on industry it will lead to a lot of you know skill building and need for the next level of innovation in areas of manufacturing as well so those are the positive ones so funding is a major issue second point which has emerged so far is that you know we need an ecosystem to do fundamental research we have been doing the institutes have been there but is that system good enough to produce you know a paper in science or nature every week or every few months or even a few times a year so that is another take away and the third important take away which Dr. Rao raised in the beginning was about the ecosystem of working in collaboration with industry so these are I think three, four take aways which we have had so far and specifically on the sole issue of funding R&D funding if I have to ask a specific question as to how do we really increase is it should it come from the government because if you are talking of CSR money it's a tied fund you know it is tied to something it is tied to the goals of the industry it's like hot money in the financial market it is there today it may not be there tomorrow it is linked to the profits of the industry so it's too dicey I think to depend on CSR money so what are the new mechanisms which we can think of increasing R&D funding very briefly very pointed solutions from the panel anybody could start sure Chris so as I mentioned you know if we can look at the CSR funding itself and look at one percent of that going for research that's one solution second is you know there are significant philanthropists in the country today and you know world over if you look at many of the research is funded by philanthropists so we need to look at how we can increase philanthropy involvement in research which is I am talking to again my friends in the industry about this third you know I clearly see that the government needs to increase its funding also so as I said it's about 0.6 percent of GDP I feel that we have to do a lot of catching up and so that's why I said four percent should be spent on research and innovation at least for the near future in fact if you look at the actual numbers today in any IIT system I am aware of 85 percent of funding comes from a government source it's usually 10 to 15 percent which comes from the industries and that is the biggest R&D funding the total no the R&D funding what you can say and running up the institutes anyway comes from government and R&D funding only 15 percent maximum is what is coming from the industry that has to change because the industry money will also come the real problems the right problems and all of that I think that has to happen and unfortunately you know I have been of course I interact with many industries and all that and you know the travel budgets of many industries in India is higher than the money they spend on the academic institution they can go and look at the balance sheets of many of our multinationals the industry has been I mean there are exceptions I mean like I said Infosys kind of companies are an exception but a multinational company I have looked at it I have the data to show I don't want to name any industry the travel budgets are more than the money you spend on the academic institutions in the country and they are the people who recruit all our students and they have to somewhere support this education in some way government cannot do everything of course government has to spend more money and the percentage of GDP has to happen but time has come now to you know do something to the industry so that they come and work with the academia I think unless we do that there is actually you know I don't see any much of a future I also don't believe in this basic and applied and all of that research is research good research or bad research and if your goal is to make everything 10x cheaper 10x better every research becomes basic research so that today if you have a technology and if I want to make it 10x cheaper in the future you have to work on materials you have to work on new processes you have to work on so many different things it becomes eventually a basic research which will become applied at some point of time I think you know our goal in the academic institutions particularly IITs needs to be making things 10x cheaper 10x better and then the question is you know how do we now build that ecosystem so that we become more focused in what we do and eventually deliver and once we do that these nature papers will come the science papers will come and all of that will eventually happen I think that mindsets need to change industry needs to come forward and the government policies need to in a way promote that sort of association I think government has a major role to play of course in increasing the funding but also in policies and government in this country is too soft on everything I think government at some point of time needs to be a little bit tougher and I think you know that has to be the role of the government yeah so yes the funding funding for research has to primarily come from the government industry as Dinesh was mentioning you know the CSR funding is rather you know fluid so most of it has to come from government but you know I'll pick up on another point it's not just the size of the funding but the timing of the funding you know if an investigator doesn't get the money on time all the effort is wasted and this has been happening quite a bit that you know first of all when a government funding agency gives a grant they give a grant for three years this has to change this has to go to a five year grant cycle because in a three year grant what happens is that you're all a senior investigator is always writing grants can't focus on the work and even in the three year grant the first year money will arrive on time and the second year money will arrive towards the end of the third year and that creates a very very big problem for people who depend on this so the timing has to be right as well and as far as the size of the funding is concerned I'll just leave you with one very interesting statistic in life sciences if you compare let's say the Indian research ecosystem versus the US research ecosystem in US the biggest funding agency for life sciences is the national institutes of health it has a budget of about 32 billion dollars in India our biggest life sciences funder is department of biotechnology its budget is about 2200 crores put this in perspective what NIH spends in three days DBT spends in a year size does matter because there has to be a threshold and a tipping point and we haven't arrived there thank you I would just like to reemphasize that I think government funding is critical and I think what we found with research funding is that industry funding and philanthropist funding is of course vital to the progress of research but one of the issues is that sometimes this tends to be too closely tied with the direction of research and it tends to mandate what research should be on and I think the government has the ability to fund just purely for excellence and merit and not dictate the direction of the funding and I think there needs to be another funding which is purely excellence based and so I think the industry may have its ups and downs and what area it might like to fund in so if we need to have a baseline of consistent funding which isn't subject to the whims of particular areas then this has to come from the government thank you at this stage I think I'll throw open the discussion to all of you if you have any question to any of the members on the panel please ask keep your question short identify yourself so that we know your background thank you anybody sure I run the think tank of yes fine just back from the US so my question to Mr. Rao I want to see more state of the art labs in India you talked about IIT as you said funded by government so what can we do what are the incentives to industry to come in and invest so that state of the art labs can come up we need that to keep great researchers in town that's a good model at IIT Delhi we started this industry day and all that but I can give you one example of applied materials what I did at IIT Bombay now for example in applied materials which is an American in terms of the semiconductor industry and the manufacturing they set up a lab at IIT Bombay spent about 10 million dollars and that's an endowed lab and then they said this is a facility available from applied materials now we want to work with the faculty and students and on the technologies which are of relevance to applied materials now once the lab was set up then people came forward and started working now if you look at the applied materials R&D in India it all happens out of IIT Bombay because that facility was created by them now they are undertaking projects for their corporate which are all very high end which are very futuristic now there are like 40 people of applied materials from applied materials who are stationed at IIT Bombay now they have a 5000 square foot kind of an area it started as a square foot sort of a lab now it's 5000 square foot now there are more people more things happening they are filing patents they are working with students they are working with faculty that's ecosystem I think industries taking that long term view of establishing these facilities and working with the people I think now they see that they are very well integrated with applied research and they were other day telling me if they keep an equipment in their anti-glare facility even if they don't operate the equipment they actually pay much more you know for just keeping it in a clean room whereas at IIT Bombay you keep it in a clean room operated get so much out of it still the money is much less than what they spend in US I think that is what they are seeing as a benefit for them and now they are growing you know quite well in that kind of scenario so that is the model I think once industry takes that long term view of establishing facilities jointly with us lots of things will happen because in IIT's you have the best people the best students I think what we lack definitely because of you know funding at IIT Delhi if you ask me 50% deficit in budget today this year I mean now I can't expect government to keep on putting money I think that other 50% should have actually come from the industries and because that is not happening you know things are looking bad things are not able to grow at the why do you think the government shouldn't put in the rest of the money today you know the problem is government the scale up of IIT system if you look at the government somehow has decided that creation of more institutions is a way to scale up the IIT's and as a result you know the much of the money is going towards establishing new IIT's the while government should allocate more money for for IIT's but the money that we allocate in fact other day I was telling the government you know if you look at the China which everybody is aware of look at two universities this is all data available on the web Peking University and Shingwa University look at the budget of Peking University and Shingwa University the two universities it is equivalent to the entire budget of MHRD for higher education MHRD supports 120 universities what MHRD is spending on 120 institutions in India is equivalent to the money China spends on two universities in China obviously you know we are not competing with them and we are what we are and so government needs to spend more money but I think industry has to come forward and fulfill that role I think expecting government to keep on doing all the things I think is not going to going to work they have established these institutes even the new institutes are actually coming up very well over a period of time they will also be great institutions but I think you know that ecosystem is there now now if industry participates puts in money gives them the right problems engages with these institutions I think great things can happen great things can happen in India and if you also I just want to make one last point India has actually done very well wherever like what Mr. Gopalakrishnan said in the mission mode kind of a way look at ISRO or look at atomic energy wherever the government said that you do whatever you want to you finally have to fly a satellite and the country does it very well wherever the goals are not properly said you know as a country for whatever we tend to go all over and then when you look at the output nothing much happens in the atomic energy you know once they said you do whatever it is but you need to finally set up these plans you know they all happen I think you know that mission mode kind of a way of doing things what has worked for this country and now for for IITs initially they said you produce undergrad student right it was set up as undergraduate institutions we became the world's best undergraduate institutions today and then they said at some point of time start doing research and then we started growing our research output now all IITs have more PG students than UG students at IIT daily 65% of our students are post graduate students and only 35% are undergraduate students now they are saying you are doing research but now you need to convert do more translational research now we are trying to you know become better at that and that's also happening it will take some time I think you know these are all at the end of the day 50 years 60 year old institutions and we have you know the the colonial kind of a rule I think coming out of those mindsets and building these institutions is taking time but I think funding is our biggest challenge today and there is a question here you know all of you panellists and you identify I'm sorry I'm Nareesh Nareesh Shah I work for Gillette Paradise Ireland R and D Centre for HB in India you know you spoke about so first of all in terms of quality of research papers that you spoke about or we are not talking this session about innovation out coming out of India but there is enough data on that as well Indians outside of India are doing quite well so it's not about the ability of the you know Indian folks in India you spoke about whether it's lack of funding whether it's lack of you know ecosystem but there's something missing I don't know you know professor you spoke about whether culture of mediocrity is there in India among folks whether it's risk taking I think there is something more which I mean even professor you spoke about you know you're mentioning about lack of funding but even with whatever funds we have and whatever funds we get you know quality of papers quality of product companies world class companies we don't so there's something else that's missing about what is it that we can do to you know bring about higher quality of output from our countrymen in this country I'll make an attempt with my limited exposure to research in the last three years as I said you know first of all our team sizes are extremely small typically it's one professor with one or two students that's the team size and their goal is to produce a paper because they evaluated based on paper quality of excellence there is limited I completely agree that we need to establish a quality of excellence across our institutes and hold them to a much higher threshold but team sizes also have to be bigger. Collaboration we collaborate better with institutions abroad than institutions in India and that's because you know there is an opportunity to go and do some work there but Indian institutions across Indian institutions the collaboration is limited at this point so you know plus when the funding comes from the government and the direction keeps changing so you know there is now a drive to look at more applied research suddenly everybody shifts their focus yes fundamental research is actually facing a threat in India because of lack of funding and I have specific examples you know Chennai Mathematical Institute is a good example of an institution which may die because there is no funding and there are very good mathematicians there and the question asked is what is mathematics used for right so they are not getting any funding so there are examples of such things and we need to address these things very quickly because see we never know when and where this will be useful and how it will be useful you have to let the researchers decide what they want to work in and let them work on it till they find something or they don't find something when I talked about mission mode projects I only said as a country we need a few mission mode projects and I agree when we have mission mode projects we seem to do very well so let's have few mission mode projects and those are also open and dead now can we find a cure for Alzheimer's aging is a big issue right the entire world is going to face a challenge of aging so can we find a cure for Alzheimer's that's the kind of mission mode projects I am talking about actually it's really not you know can we create a better computer tomorrow so that's what actually we need to do you know the quality part of it I just if there are no more questions then I would request Shahid Dr. Rao to interject any questions there is one Hi I am Sandhya from Adeco Group and we are an HR solutions company one of the most common problems that we face and this is something in correlation with building a very healthy ecosystem is that there is in-campus recruitment for jobs for research and for research oriented jobs in the top tier institutions we have a huge amount of students studying applied science, research, engineering in mid tier universities as well it's become a common trend for people with very good degrees to move into something else because they are not finding the right jobs how do we create this collaborative ecosystem where the top university is within India mid tier universities in India work together to create something healthy and pull resources rather than as you mentioned looking towards the west or moving to some do you think funding is the core issue because I think it may be something more thank you there is one more question it's a great political scientist from Germany and Saudi experts the issue that India for a long time has begun for producing more academic output that it can actually employ which is an issue of a long time 20, 30 years or so and it's actually growing at the same time there are other models let's say in the US or other countries where universities and institutes are using their resources to create facilities for employment of students in terms of self-employment in terms of job creation in terms of start up centers to what extent does India go for this opportunity which requires structural change administrative change where you have to change the mindset that actually you have to create the jobs yourself I think that's one issue which we have not been able to touch upon during the discussion about the governance of our institutes is there a question there I can't see I'm from state bank of India and I'm an economist so my question is that if you have to cultivate a mindset towards a scientific pursuit then is it not important in India that we should create a textbook for history of science and technology I find it very odd that NCRT runs a textbook but it never runs a course on history of science and technology why I said it because I was supposed to draft a speech for SBHM and it was on a scientific topic I had very deep pains to find out a book which talked about history of Indian science and technology there was no book that not a single scientist of course I can read books by I have blocked Abdul Kalam or say biography of Vikram Sara Bhai and I think so when it comes to scientific education my own take is that not only the past is uncertain even future is uncertain the time spectrum and the outlook itself has become narrow to vary I'm not saying the scientists are bad or the institutions are bad but the fact is that the key to ignite the mind which is like the textbook of history of science and technology itself is missing that is what is my take so what I will do is since we have very briefly introducing myself I am a salesman I work in TCS two questions one is the question of the government spending on creating more IITs rather than spending at an IIT so the question of scaling out versus scaling up I just wanted to get some inputs from the members on what their thoughts are what will create excellence is it scale out or is it scale up that is the first question the second is the funding of the government doesn't necessarily come from the Ministry of Science and Technology or whatever see if you look at several of the cases for example there was this case in US where US skin was used to treat burns that entire funding was done by the army US army the company checkpoint if you are aware of security business globally came out of Israeli army funded entirely by Israeli army so the funding from the government which is a very nebulous entity is not just Ministry of Science and Technology so it has to spread and if it spreads I think we will have what Krishna is looking at upping the spread from the from the government so since there is not much time to answer all the questions individually what I would do is request the panelists to say in couple of sentences their parting thoughts and keep some of the issues which have been raised by the floor so that we could address them differently in each one of our statements and not go over and repeat them maybe we could start with Shahid your parting thoughts and keep some of the questions issues which have been raised which you feel you could answer there was an interesting question why Indians outside India do well and Indians in India don't do as well I believe a general answer is ecosystem ecosystem involves many things it involves colleagues it involves students postdocs and postdocs is something which is almost entirely missing from our research ecosystem core facilities collaborations size now let me dwell on size for just half a minute an institute in India is about the size of a department in a major university in the US an institute is a standalone entity if you have to collaborate with somebody who does something very different you have to go to a different institute or a different university you cannot ever find a complimentary person in the same institute that doesn't happen in a US university you go to a Stanford or you go to a Berkeley or you go to any medium-sized university in the US you will almost always find somebody to collaborate within campus so that's a big difference hindsight is 2020 of course but institutes when they were set up in India as separate entities I think it was a mistake institutes should have been embedded in universities and that hasn't happened and maybe if we are going to set up new institutes for this or that they should always be embedded within a larger academic environment that hasn't happened but I hope it happens because it will open up many more opportunities not just for improving our universities but also giving institutes the kind of talent and ecosystem that is ideal for them 60 seconds so one of the things I'd like to emphasize is that yes why are Indians doing better outside than here one of the issues is that the best students don't pursue fundamental research here the idea is go do medicine or engineering which will give you a career which I understand the motivation for that but I think increasing the desirability of pursuing a career in fundamental research and this is also tied to the fact that what do you do after a degree such as that and elsewhere one can do jobs in industry so there's a pathway to go from a career in fundamental research not just to academia but also to industry and so I think in order to cultivate excellent students and a culture of excellence a culture of innovation in learning right from early on I think this has to involve getting the best students and the best teaching and the best research environment and this involves both injection of funding injection of excellent researchers and teachers embedding in universities I think is critical and ties with university with industry and employers so that there is a pathway for excellent students in this route to have a career not just in academia but at the rest of industry as well crucial for the research ecosystem thanks we did talk about funding we talked about entrepreneurship startup ecosystem we need more of those IT Madras research park is a good example of something that seems to be working on history of science and technology I agree and that's the reason why again I'm from the IT industry so I created an app called the Tihasa some self promotion here about the history of IT industry and it's actually if you want to build something look at the IT industry it's the second largest ecosystem for IT professionals in the world almost every single company that you can think of is running their IT out of India today and four million professionals doing all kinds of work in India including high-end work research work etc and why did it happen because the seats were sown in 1955 interestingly by Homi Baba and people like that Vikram Sarabhai and I've actually documented the history of Indian IT and I think it's necessary to look at some of those things we had excellence and also but somewhere we lost our path and we need to go back and to me I think we have to also think about where we are in the development of the country where we are as actually as per capita income and things like that and something to do with that is also the reason for where we are actually per capita income is $1,800 $2,000 so if I were a father I would send my child to engineering or medicine because that's what is very important for me at this point of time I think I just wanted to address this quality thing everybody somehow thinks that the quality of research is bad because of whatever reason it is just go to QS, if you look at the QS ranking which is one of the respected international ranking there is an app you can download and there you can actually look at how our institutions figure in terms of multiple parameters they rank the institutions with overall ranking there is something look at the research output all main IITs will figure in the top 50 compared to the world universities now you can say the quality is bad how does one judge the quality looking at the number of citations to your paper and if you look at the citations the main IITs again rank in the top 50 IIT Delhi is ranked 32 in terms of citation index now how do you judge quality how many people are citing your paper and that is where Indian institutions are actually doing very well IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi actually figure in the top 50 when it comes to even the quality of research so therefore it's a myth that our research is bad kind of a thing with whatever money that we are getting we are actually doing a decent job what is missing right now in Indian system now because we are not connected to the society close enough we have all the autonomy to decide our problems and work on a solution nobody gives us a problem nobody asks whether the solution will work or not so we decide our problems publish a paper do very well people cite but nothing happens beyond that I think that is where the society connect needs to become better for our academic institution there are Indians in US working on American problems there are Indians in India working on American problems we are sitting on a panel for selection of somebody the guy is modeling environment in London why? because now I want to publish a paper in a particular journal if I model the environment in Delhi I cannot publish a paper in that journal only if I model the London climate I can publish in that paper because the person is so focused in publishing a paper in that particular journal and an Indian problem will not get him a paper in that journal so therefore I think that society connect needs to get better we need to start working on the real problems our goal in academic institutions needs to be like I said 10x better, 10x cheaper then every problem will become world class problem and after that everything will actually work well I think the mindsets need to change we are so focused on publishing in those journals right now that is completely destabilizing the ecosystem right now in the country I think once industries come forward and give the right problems once we look at the big picture many things will actually get better and just to answer the question IITs are still very small we need more IITs we also need to scale up our existing IITs I think both the things need to be done and government is starting more IITs also pushing us to scale up our existing IITs but at the end of the day somebody has to fund them which is currently the issue and hopefully the GDP the funds are becoming available things will change I am hopeful transformation has begun now and another 10 years from now we will see lot of good things happening in these institutions thank you thanks Dr. Rao on that optimistic note I think we come to an end of this session and thanks everybody for your kind attention and your participation together such a wonderful panel and I hope there will be more and more of science in the future sessions of WF India on that note I thank all of you thank you