The country?s second largest software firm, Infosys Technologies had set up Infosys Science Foundation last year with an aim to promote and recognise outstanding research. In its first year, the company had put together five eminent personalities as the jury ?Amartya Sen for social sciences and economics, Shrinivas Kulkarni for physical sciences, Srinivas Varadhan for mathematical sciences, Subra Suresh for engineering sciences and Inder Verma for life sciences, for awarding outstanding work in their disciplines.

FE caught up with Srinivas Varadhan, who was awarded the Padma Bhusan in 2008 and Vijay Raghvan, one of the recipients of the award in the life sciences category who shared their thoughts about the state of affairs of research in the country. Excerpts:

How would you rank India in the field of research work?

Varadhan: I think there are a handful of institutions where excellent work is being done.

But for a country as large as India there should be lot more places of research.

Raghvan: Thirty years ago we had very few excellent individuals doing good work in an extremely limited institutional environment. In the last 15 years that has changed. But, like Varadhan said, apart from having excellent individuals and resources we need a good institutional culture. The institution should also feel a part of the excellence rather than being a parking place for researchers who want to come and work in India.

What is essential for a good institutional environment for research in the country?

Varadhan: Somehow we feel that teaching and researching is not very different. There are so many universities, there are institutions expanding such as IITs, and you need excellent faculty to teach and ideally the person who is teaching there would be also engaged in research. And that?s how you get the next generation to get interested in research. So I think a lot of people can be absorbed.

What is stopping them?

Vardhan: I don?t know if there is a policy at the state level in this regard. Also, resources are needed to build labs and I don?t know how non-political the process is. All I know is that they don?t have quality graduates passing out.

Raghvan: Another aspect is that as a community we need to engage with the society, with the government. For many years now, the scientific community has been slow in addressing these issues. They miraculously expect some management system to take care of everything. We have to run our institutions and take some responsibility. There is much to blame the government, but I think both have to make an effort.

But isn?t there more opportunities with so many new institutions coming up?

Raghvan: There is a serious problem now. In order to do something good, the government has created such a large pool of new institutions. But they need a huge number of good faculty too. Unless you have good people, you will have someone, whether the person is good or bad.

Varadhan: I don?t know how they are going to solve it. They have authorisation to double the faculty but there are not many people. One of the major challenges is the fact that there is no shortage of funds but there is a clear lack of institutional attention which deters people from joining in. This is a fantastic narrow window that there is increasing government infrastructure, which is being increasingly utilised but there are key issues one has to grapple with like how to bring quality into it. The timing is right as the west is having its own difficulties.

What do you have to say about corporate involvement in research?

Varadhan: Apart from what Infosys and some others are doing, I don?t see a lot of corporate houses coming forward. However, there is great value in the research if organisations can work out a good model for it.