Unscientific Temper
Ramachandra Guha | 4 May 2024 | The Telegraph
In the year 2009, I was having dinner with two distinguished academics, directors of top-ranked centres of scientific research. Both told me they had been receiving a stream of excellent applications for faculty jobs from researchers based abroad. This was unprecedented; they were far more familiar with Indian scientists leaving for jobs overseas. That was still happening, of course, but now there was also a substantial flow of scientific talent in the other direction, from the West back to India.
There were several reasons for this partial reversal of the brain drain. The global financial crisis had led to a funding squeeze in Western universities, which now had less money to hire new faculty. At the same time, India was spending more on research and scholarship. The Union government had recently established a chain of high-quality research centres known as Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research. Several new IITs had also come up in recent years. These had all attracted a stream of talented individuals to join their faculty…