Think-Tanks Time in India

There is no shortage for ideas in India. From the olden days Indians are known for their augmentation and idea skills. No wonder with the booming think-tanks around the world India is also capitalising on this new found fashion. It has both positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is provided by the genuine think-tanks and the negative side is contributed by the junk ones which exists for the popularity promotion of its founder or just to make money. The rot is so bad when we invited a prominent political personality and she immediately rebuffed me by saying that she don't speak in think-tanks which is of no practical use for the country. Due to some of the faulty think-tanks the name itself spoiled. But there is no stopping of think-tanks cropping up in every nook and corner of the country.

The Times of India writes (16 October 2009)

When it's time to put our thinking caps on, theorise , conceptualise and speculate, we're among the best. Punditry is more than just an ancient 422 and counting... Think tanks boom in India calling for Indians, with the country being home to 422 recognised think tanks.

According to a study by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, this tally puts India second only to the US, which is home to over 2,000 such institutions that research and analyse important public issues. Many of the US think tanks, sometimes referred to as 'idea factories' , are hugely influential in determining US government policy. But experts say that India barely invites comparison with the US here.

Most Indian think tanks focus on development concerns, says the report, but less than 15 per cent study security issues and foreign policy. Most top American and European think tanks significantly influence policy in these fields, and also serve as talent hubs. The American 'revolving door' model, where think tanks contribute to government appointments and vice versa, is notable. Condoleezza Rice is a recent example.

Strategic affairs guru K Subrahmanyam says that only as a nation begins to look outward will it devote more resources to such fields. He explains that most US think tanks were set up after World War II, when America ascended the world stage as a superpower.

Many problems plague Indian think tanks, according to the survey. Most appear to be lacking in funds and autonomy, with the government a principal funder.

Most are also too academic-oriented . B Raman, a think tank head, also questions the motivation of many Indian outfits, saying they are more interested in organising conferences than producing meaningful research.

Sanjaya Baru of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, agrees and points a finger at an Indian bureaucracy traditionally averse to external inputs on foreign policy and security . He contrasts this with economic policy-making , the only field where the government has made use of outside expertise - Manmohan Singh being a good example. But all other areas have remained closed to outside expertise and advice for the most part.

Baru says that virtually no information is made available by the Indian government . Subrahmanyam recalls a chat with UK think tank Chatham House's head in the '80s, where he pointed out that while western think tanks did not get funding from governments they got access to government information. In India, think tanks got some government funding but no information. "Nothing much has changed in the last two decades," he says. "Bureaucrats still retain power by withholding information."

Most Indian outfits are too poorly funded and stuffed with far too many retired government greybeards to serve as talent shops. Both major reasons Baru and Subrahmanyam tick for bright young scholars not joining think tanks here, unlike in the West. Which begs the question, can Indian think tanks serve as long-term incubators of fresh ideas and policy alternatives?

There may yet be hope. Data from think tank research is often used to support debates within governments. Kanti Bajpai of Oxford University lists this "rationalising function" as a key aspect of think tank influence - even in hidebound India, citing a well-known example involving Subrahmanyam.

An influential article by Subrahmanyam , then a think tank head, added greatly to momentum that led to India's military role in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. India's nuclear weapons policies are also highlighted as being principally shaped by scholars and experts. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Bajpai also underlines the latitude and detachment that a think tank environment offers for comprehensive long-term research. No civil servant, however smart or well intentioned, is likely to get such leeway in government service. Think tanks also often play devil's advocate and voice researched , contrarian opinions. This is a vital function in any liberal democracy.

Further, for being in the ideas business , Indian think tanks don't spread the word, says Bajpai. Liberally seeding relevant circles - the media, lawmakers , peers - with their research is the key to making some impact, he stresses.

But others grumble that funds to run such outfits are still hard to come by. India's rising economic profile gives hope, though. All experts are optimistic that this would soon lead to corporate houses liberally funding more research. If the government opened up to receiving inputs, this ideal scenario would be complete. But as think tanks know only so well, not all scenarios play out perfectly. India's think tanks clearly have a long way to go beyond just making up the numbers on global listings, however impressive.

Conflicting Sciences

Knowledge sharing and giving is not free from troubles. Now and then teaching places enter into controversies about the relevance of they do and do not do. Like in the past the current issue is about the relevance of pure and applied sciences.
Stephen writes in the Times of India, 11.3.2009,

The snobbish idea that pure science is in some way superior to applied science dates to antiquity, when Plutarch says of Archimedes: "Regarding the business of mechanics and every utilitarian art as ignoble and vulgar, he gave his zealous devotion only to those subjects whose elegance and subtlety are untrammelled by the necessities of life." The reality appears to have been quite different, as Archimedes was not just the greatest mathematician of the ancient world, but also a clever inventor who drew inspiration from numerous practical problems. Archimedes was one of the first to think deeply about fluid physics, and while many people know the famous story about his discovery of the principle of buoyancy (he saw the water level rise as he stepped into the bath, then ran naked through the streets yelling "eureka") few know exactly what he was looking for ("eureka" means "I found it" in ancient Greek). In fact, this discovery is intimately linked with a practical problem he had been asked to solve: King Hiero wanted to know if he had been cheated by an unscrupulous jeweller who may have given him a crown that was not solid gold. Archimedes solved this problem by measuring the density of the crown via its buoyancy. His practical contributions to fluid physics also include the invention of a screw pump that became widely adopted for irrigation. There are numerous other examples of great mathematicians and scientists who wandered between pure and applied problems over the course of their careers. Carl Friedrich Gauss moved from number theory to land surveying and geodesy. Lord Kelvin worked on problems as abstract as the nature of entropy while helping discover the second law of thermodynamics, and also played a key role in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable. In the 20th century, Nobel laureate Pierre Gilles de Gennes took inspiration from messy problems in industrial chemistry to develop beautiful theories of fundamental physics. Another contemporary Nobel laureate, Charles Townes, noted that not only was his own work inspired by applied physics but also that numerous discoveries in astronomy, including the entire field of radioastronomy, were serendipitous accidents made by people developing applied technologies. These transcendent figures in the history of science flourished by moving back and forth between pure and applied problems. In today's more specialised world, there are numerous artificial divisions between pure and applied work. The stereotyped view is that the applied scientists control the lion's share of funding, while the basic scientists control the most prestigious journals and prizes. The reality is more complicated and lies somewhere in between. What remains true is that practical problems can be equally compelling as fundamental ones, and often lead in turn to the discovery of new fundamental science. In particular, there is an intimate connection between the invention of new technology and its application to scientific discovery. My own research has certainly benefited from this interplay. I was trained to do pure physics at a certain point but became interested in developing new measurement technology. I began developing microfluidic chips, which is the technical name for what i like to call small plumbing and eventually figured out with my collaborators how to make small chips that had thousands of miniature valves on them. I realised that we had invented the biological equivalent of the integrated circuit. Instead of a silicon chip with wires and transistors, we built rubber chips with channels and valves. This seemed like a universal tool with which we could automate and expand biology, just as the integrated circuit automated and expanded computation and mathematics. After a serendipitous meeting with the structural biologist James Berger, one decided to focus on protein crystallisation as an application it seemed like a logical choice and there would be substantial engineering economies of scale that one could achieve. What we eventually stumbled on was in fact a rich playground of very basic problems surrounding the physics of crystallisation, some of which continues to occupy me to this day.
Another adventure in small plumbing started with our attempt to use it to create highly multiplexed assays a fairly low-key engineering project. This ultimately led to the development of a sophisticated commercial DNA analysis machine of phenomenal precision and complexity (28 metres of plumbing compressed into a few square centimetres!). These DNA analysis chips are now used by biologists in applications ranging from Alaskan salmon fishery management to quality control of seeds for agricultural suppliers. They have also found applications in stem cell biology and cancer as a way to measure gene expression in individual cells. All of these are completely unexpected applications of the technology. So perhaps these stories give a sense of the continuous interplay that can happen between pure and applied research. Basic problems inspiring the development of new technologies, whose application in turn opens the door to new basic science. It sometimes happens in a single lab, but the baton is also passed from one lab to another and then back again. The artificial divisions we academics have created between pure and applied disciplines act as friction for this process, and it would behove us to reach across the divide
The academia needs to focus its attention in pushing the frontiers of knowledge towards human progress. The more controversies they create by raking in issues like pure and applied sciences they are wasting the valuable time of their own. It is high time they get into the business rather than simply debating about the value of this and that sciences.