Science Polic(e)y?

There have been quite a few announcements, from Government of India, about science committees and the importance of research initiatives to launch the country into the Global Knowledge Orbit is also stressed again and again by the Prime Minister and others.

T.Jayaraman, from Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, writes,

...Thus even prima facie, it seems that this round of proposals and announcements has a substantially ad hoc character leading one to doubt whether they indeed amount to a serious initiative to re-vitalise research in the basic sciences. But the manner in which these initiatives are fashioned and announced points to a deeper malaise in the formulation of science policy in this country. The policy and decision-making process in Indian science rests on a small and narrow base that has very little input from the vast majority of productive and working scientists in the country. Policy-making in India is the exclusive province of a few eminent scientists, the secretaries of major scientific departments, the directors of some major scientific institutions and a few other members of the scientific bureaucracy...

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