The newly formed ‘Anusandhan National Research Foundation’ – the first meeting of which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday (September 11) – aims “to promote research and development and foster a culture of research and innovation throughout India’s universities, colleges, research institutions and R&D laboratories”
While the government envisages spending Rs 50,000 crore in the next five years on trying to better the quality of science taking place in the country, fears have arisen about the susceptibility of the new ‘ecosystem’ to political considerations. Late last month, a group of eminent scientists wrote an anguished letter to India’s principal scientific adviser, Ajay Kumar Sood, expressing doubts over the procedures adopted in selecting the recipients of the ‘Vigyan Yuva Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Award 2024’.
The award is given “to recognise and encourage young scientists who made an exceptional contribution in any field of science and technology”.
“Our queries are prompted by disquieting media reports which suggest that unfair non-scientific considerations may have influenced the final list of this year’s awardees overriding the recommendations of the Experts Committee,” said the letter written by 26 scientists who have previously received the SSB award, in a reference to an article by The Telegraph.
The signatories include Siva Athreya, Indranil Biswas, Vivek Borkar, Atish Dabholkar, Sumit Das, Abhishek Dhar, Deepak Dhar, Anish Ghosh, Rajesh Gopakumar, Amitabh Joshi, Nissim Kanekar, Mahan Mj, Satyajit Mayor, Shiraz Minwalla, Sunil Mukhi, Jaikumar Radhakrishnan, MS Raghunathan, Sujatha Ramdorai, Madan Rao, Deb Shankar Ray, Srikanth Sastry, Ashoke Sen, Krishnendu Sengupta, Shubha Tole, Sandip Trivedi and Vidita Vaidya.
One of the letter’s signatories told The Wire, “If true, it points to an attempt towards ideological control, compromising the scientific objectivity and integrity of this prestigious award. For this reason, I believe that it is a matter of great public concern.”
They also said this was one of the rare occasions when they feared that such an act of omission was committed in the selection of the awardees.
The signatory preferred anonymity because of his/her academic affiliation.
The SSB award, whose recipients have signed the letter and which is often considered akin to the Nobel prize for scientists in India, is awarded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). It comes under Union Science and Technology Ministry.
The prize is “bestowed on a person who, in the opinion of the Council of Science and Research, has made conspicuously important and outstanding contributions to human knowledge and progress – fundamental and applied – in the particular field of endeavour, which is his/her specialisation.”
These fields include the biological sciences; chemical sciences; earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary sciences; engineering sciences, mathematical sciences; medical sciences and physical sciences.
The letter, which was written on August 30, has not been replied to.
The scientists said in their letter, “We assume that the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar Committee [RVPC] made a recommendation for this year’s awardees. We are writing to ask whether the recommendations of the RVPC were accepted in entirety, or were revised by further committees or authorities.”
The principal scientific adviser is the chairperson of the RVPC. The committee also includes presidents of scientific academies, secretaries to the government and some distinguished scientists.
The scientists also sought to understand from Sood who or which authority made the revisions, if any.
In case a revision had been made, “we request that details of the nature of these committees and the criteria employed in arriving at their decisions be made public, as we could not find any mention of this on the government website,” the signatory scientists said.
Insofar as the prize’s rules are concerned, rule 10.5, which deals with the selection of recipients, says “no award shall be conferred except on the recommendation of the RVPC.”
Rule 10.7 states that the names of the persons recommended by the RVPC be submitted to the minister for science and technology for approval.
Curiously, these rules do not appear to have been made public before the awards. The Wire was able to locate a copy of the PDF with these rules on the website of the Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI) that was cached on Aug 10 2024 (on the Wayback machine), which is three days after the awards were released and by which time it was already known to the government that the deletions had accidentally leaked out.
These rules have appeared on the official website only today.
The Telegraph story that the letter’s signatories referred to said, quoting anonymous sources, that at least two names did not appear in the final list, overriding the RVPC’s recommendations.
The report also said that the two scientists had criticised the Narendra Modi government.
A scientist whose name was apparently deleted was among the signatories of a statement that flayed the Union government’s decision to ban the BBC’s documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the newspaper said.
One of the signatories of the letter sent to the principal scientific adviser has also confirmed to The Wire the deletion of the name(s), although they could not quantify the number of names.
A scientist whose name was apparently deleted from the list is quite open regarding his criticism of the current dispensation and being vocal about many social issues, The Wire has also learnt.
They said to The Wire, “The broader discussion has to be focused [also] on the systemic issues [rather than the names of individuals being omitted from the list of awardees].”
The awardees this year were notified on August 6. However, the list was made public only on August 7 evening.
In the intervening period, on August 7 morning, a senior scientist who was a member of the selection committee unknowingly conveyed a congratulatory message to a scientist who had been dropped through a mutual acquaintance.
The member of the selection committee reportedly later told the scientist who had been dropped that he had no idea that the file,
containing the names of the recipients, would be modified at the “ministerial level”.
“It [the change of names] would amount to indirect political censorship to silence dissent. Such interference, if left unchallenged, can be seriously damaging not only to science but also to the freedom of expression in India,” one of the signatories of the letter sent to Sood and who is quoted above, said to The Wire.
Some of the 26 SSB awardees who signed the August 30 letter have also been members of committees formed over the years to select SSB awardees in the past. The awardees include scientists across various disciplines including physics, mathematics and biology.
“In our experience, their recommendations have always found full reflection in the final [SSB] list. In order to uphold the integrity of the Bhatnagar award, we seek assurance that the procedures and criteria for determining [the SSB] awards are fully fair, transparent and free of extraneous considerations,” the letter said.
“There seems good reason to believe that at least one of those recommended by the RVPC did not receive the Bhatnagar award,” another signatory to the letter told The Wire. The scientist, also a past SSB awardee, didn’t wish to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media by the institution they work with, in any capacity.
“The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award derives its prestige from its 65-year-long history of recognising scientific excellence without regard to extraneous non-scientific considerations. If this has changed, we need to know it,” the scientist added.
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