Student opting for other career options than science: Prof. C.N.R. Rao

Bangalore: At a media interaction in the city on Saturday afternoon, Prof. C.N.R. Rao said that Bangalore provides its students with so many career avenues that science and research is losing out.

“Over the past 15 years in JNCASR, I have had students coming in to work under me from all over India, but there’s been only one student from Bangalore,” he said. The interest in pure sciences has ebbed over the last decade and a half, he lam­ented. Budget allocations for science and research amount to a paltry one percent of the GDP, he said. “I have been trying to get them to raise this amount, we hope they will increase allocations to about 2 per cent,” said Prof. Rao, who was elected last week as a member of the Chinese Aca­demy, the first Indian to receive that honour. This news was kept under wraps for about a week.

Prof. Rao said that West Bengal has distinguished itself in science and research as there is an increase in the number of students who join JNCASR from that state.

The Bharat Ratna awardee stressed that India must catch up with global standards of rese­arch and innovation, and added that Indian colleges must impr­ove the qualtity of education it imparts. There are about 7 lakh students studying science in India, compared to about 70,000 in the US. “Even so, US is far

ahe­ad of us,” he said.

“The education sys­tem in India req­uires more innovative tho­ught and ability,” he said, adding that India ranks 66th out of 174 countries in terms of innovation.

Nevertheless, he did leave us with a piece of good news that India ranks third in the world in the field of nanotechnology.