Indians & PhDs

BANGALORE: India may have a long way to go before becoming a global powerhouse in science but there’s some reason to celebrate. India has pipped the UK, a biotech power, and left far behind electronics giants South Korea and Taiwan in the number of science doctorates it generated from 1983 to 2003. This was revealed by a recent study by an expert group of scientists set up under the Union science & technology ministry to look into India’s science status vis-a-vis developed countries in the West and south-east Asia. Between 1983 and 2003, India’s science PhDs went up from 3,886 to 6,318, while it went up from 2,430 to 3,780 in the UK. South Korea, which began with 281 PhDs, surged to 3225, while Taiwan began with 8 and closed at 202. While it's good that India is ahead of three developed, industrialized countries, there's a niggling query about the growth rate. Should India have generated more PhDs by 2003 than those recorded? Researchers say that while the number of persons registering for a science PhD is definitely increasing, it's not at a rate proportionate to the population growth rate. If it's any consolation, UK too has a slow growth rate in number of science PhDs — just over 1,000 in 20 years. The most significant increase in interest in science comes from South Korea, while Taiwan is negligible in terms of number as well as rate of increase. While there's justifiable pride that India is ahead of at least one developed western country, the sobering thought is that India is way behind the US. In 1983, the US had 19,274 PhDs in science and in 2003 it went up to 26,891. Not only is there a jump of 7,000 PhDs in 20 years, the US has four times the number of PhDs in India, both in 1983 and 2003, despite having a population of about 280 million compared to India's 1 billion. And the largest science and aerospace company in the US, General Electric generates a turnover of over $100 billion. US-based NRI researcher Garud N puts India in perspective: "We are living up to the label of having the third-largest scientific manpower at least nominally — by having an increase in the number of science PhDs. But we need more - thousands more. And we need good results from them. We need to see the day Indian companies almost monopolise solutions of science."