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What will it take for Indian science , technology and innovation to make global impact ?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Mashelkar, Raghunath Anant |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | When the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) celebrated its platinum jubilee, I had proposed a five-point agenda for raising the bar on making Indian science, technology and innovation (STI) original, innovative and creative. One of the challenges that I referred to was: ‘...It is time now that Indian science begins to make a “big difference” to the world of science. They say only two people are remembered in science, those who say the first word and those who say the last word. How many times have we said the first or the last word? We have invariably looked through windows that others have opened up. When are we going to open up new windows ourselves through which others will start looking?’ Indian scientists did open ‘new windows’ in the past. Jayant Narlikar listed what (of course, in his opinion), were the top 10 achievements of Indian STI in the 20th century. In the pre-1950 era, the first on his list was Srinivasa Ramanujam, who opened so many new doors, some even well after his untimely death in 1920. The second was Meghnad Saha’s ionization equation (c. 1920), which opened the door to stellar astrophysics. The third was S. N. Bose’s work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour of photons and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory. The fourth was C. V. Raman’s discovery that molecules scatter light (c. 1928), the Raman Effect, which opened the doors for a new way to study the internal structure of molecules. The fifth was G. N. Ramachandran’s pioneering work in structural molecular biology (c. mid-1960s), which created the Ramachandran Map, which, even today, is at the very heart of elucidation of all protein structures; leave alone his breakthrough on collagen triple helix. Post-1950, Narlikar listed another five. The first was the development of nuclear power and capability (founded in 1950s). The second was the Green Revolution in agriculture (the 1960s and 1970s). The third was the Indian space programme and satellite fabrication with satellite vehicle launching capability (from late 1970s). The fourth was the work in high temperature superconductivity (since the late 1980s). The fifth was the transformation of the chain of 40 laboratories of CSIR towards an industry-oriented, performance-driven and accountable organization (in late 1990s). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/109/06/1021.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
