BANGALORE: If the standards in Central institutions are poor, they are worse in the State Government-run institutions.

According to R.A. Mashelkar, Director-General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, lack of funding and large number of vacancies in the institutions had contributed to science losing its priority. Even a premier institute such as the Indian Institute of Technology had vacancy of 25 per cent, he said.

Mr. Mashelkar suggested that the State governments needed to allocate money to universities continuously, instead of intermittently, to improve the situation.

"There should be a constant influx of money instead of allocation of grants as one-off situation," he told presspersons on Friday.

A member of the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Mr. Mashelkar said the Centre and the State governments should develop incentive mechanisms that would ensure faculty retention as well as encourage participation in science projects.

"We need to make careers in science more attractive by creating an atmosphere conducive for research."

He said public-private partnership, supported by active Government policy, in universities was one way to revitalise science. Citing the example of University Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, which is involved in private-public participation, he said the newly appointed director of the institute has a "six- figure" salary. "We know that the Government cannot afford to pay such high salaries and so we get the corporates to add to the salary to make it exciting," Mr. Mashelkar said.

He said he had spoken with N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Governing Council of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to adopt a similar model at the institute.

Competitiveness

Mr. Mashelkar said India was losing its competitiveness in science because of lack of scientific infrastructure.

He said that he pointed this out to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the last meeting of the Science Advisory Council on July 8.

Mr. Mashelkar said India needed to focus on science and development in a manner similar to China. He said the Chinese Government was spending $ 125 million each for 10 universities and $ 225 million each for University of Beijing and Tsinghua University. By comparison, India was spending less than $ 10,000 for each of its top universities.

He said Korea had 50 times more researchers per million people than India. The U.S. and Japan had 30 times more researchers per million people than India. At present, India produces 157 scientists per million people.

Mr. Mashelkar said the Scientific Advisory Committee has recommended to the Government that 2 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should be spent on science. At present, 0.8 per cent of the GDP is spent on science.

"Unless we get to 2 per cent, there is not much that we can do," he said.

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