One of the major issues we have is the lack of a magazine that publishes science, technology news, analysis, achievements etc happening inside India as an easy read for the common person. There’s a lot happening in Indi, despite the brain drain. A magazine like PopularScience (
https://www.popsci.com/) is needed to make people interested in science and science careers.
Science largely means R&D moneys. The leading countries invest anywhere between 2.5%-5% of their GDP in R&D. We invest less than 1% of GDP.
Science is also more appreciated in higher HDI societies. People whose basic needs are taken care of and have decent living prospects won’t object to government spending a higher portion of budget on R&D. We are not there yet. Let’s look at employment as a data point for this. In advanced nations, 10% or less people are involved in agriculture labor (generally lower paying jobs). In India, 50-60% are in agriculture. Labor participation rate is just 41% for men and a dismal 25% for women.
we need to upskill both our men and women to move them away from rural activities and agriculture to urban/semi-urban/industrial areas to work in industrial/service jobs. government’s skill India program is precisely meant for this.
the biggest reason why we are behind in skills is:
- colonial powers deliberately kept us, Chinese, Africa etc. away from the industrial revolution. They just sucked all our raw materials but did not make anything in India. Did nothing to promote scientific fervor in colonies to a large population. losing our independence set us back greatly.
- our kings and nawabs did not build a single university or college to promote disciplined scientific learning to their subjects. The few kings like maharaja of Mysore who setup such universities did so much later, after becoming vassals. Then Christians (to educate ‘conquered’ people) setup several science colleges in south India, though. The guindy engineering college in Madras is the oldest in Asia - reasons why the south shows more scientific fervor. And South Indians pursue more scientific careers. Note in the UK, Oxford and Cambridge universities were created much before the Brits set out to colonize. As a result, modern instruments like Patents Act was established in the UK in 1600s. We were behind even before the East India company set foot in.
- Congress , which though setup universities and colleges, did it an elitist way limiting them to a chosen few and failed to do practical things like upskill citizens in big big numbers and take science all the way to the home of an adivasi even. Congress‘ elitist lefties like Nehru just did not dream big, bootlicked the west, did not invest in country wide infrastructure, did not urbanize saying India lives in its villages, did not introduce private enterprise on a mass scale, nationalized everything, criminalized politics and introduced massive corruption that has prevented us from participating in proper representative democracy. They ultimately bankrupted us in 1991 due to their terrible policies. Congress disastrous policies were the single reason for massive scientific brain drain. Who does R&D in a bankrupt nation? If it were not for courageous people in ISRO and DRDO and CSIR we wouldn’t have had any innovation at all, and would be at the level of Congo.
it is very important for people who blame us for a lack of innovation to also acknowledge that under colonial and then Congress rule, we suffered hugely with the worst HDI in the world in 1947. The deliberate stealing of resources and disallowing factories in India so the Brits can turn around and sell their finished goods is the reason why Mahatma Gandhi asked everyone to go vocal for local (I.e boycott cotton made clothes, wear khadi). We have slowly climbed out of the dark hole the Brits pushed us in,despite a corrupt, weak congress keeping us backward. We became a nuclear and space power despite western sanctions (remember how the west did everything to deny us cryogenic technologies).
we need to get our per capita income to $5000+ so people’s basic needs are met, and then open the big tap on R&D spend. Until we get to a $5 trillion+ economy levels, we simply cannot afford massive R&D. We will get there, we will spend on R&D, we will reverse the brain drain and show the world all that we can achieve. Top Indian scientists overseas will return only when there equally exciting opportunities in India being funded generously. Keep voting in strong governments who put India first. And we will be a leading R&D power.