How India’s scientific babudom hampers the healthy growth of science

 

We have, on the basis of past interactions on multiple occasions with them, strongly critiqued the Indian academic bureaucracy, calling "bureaucracy-entrenched government scientific bodies" (or quasi-government institutions) some of Indian science's biggest enemies. As a post-colonial theorist, anthropologist, and founder of the Institute for the Study of the Globalisation of Science (ISGOS), we have argued that the administrative and systemic frameworks of Indian academia stifle independent thought, innovation, and objective progress. Our specific assertions and criticisms of Indian academic bureaucracy center around the following pillars:

 

Persistence of a Colonial Clerk Mentality: We have pointed out that India's education and academic systems were originally designed during the British era to produce compliant clerks for the East India Company. We have asserted, based on our interactions that the modern academic bureaucracy continues this legacy, prioritizing rigid administrative compliance over innovation, creativity, and structural intellectualism. Therefore, a generational change and transformation may be required in some cases, and future generations of bureaucrats in India’s scientific establishments must not fall into the same rut, but must instead pursue ideologically neutral pursuits.

 

Ideology-Driven Gatekeeping: We have criticized institutional gatekeepers for allowing academic circles to be dominated by political and ideological agendas rather than "ideology-free science". We have primarily positioned bureaucracy as a vehicle that perpetuates a "ding-dong battle" between factions like academic Marxists, Dravidian nationalists, and Hindutva groups, which ultimately leaves very few Indian thinkers capable of independent analysis. We have also argued that ideology drags down the quality of intellectual enterprise badly, and hampers and stymies the progress of science too. For example many Marxist historians have perpetrated colonial paradigms, have supported ideologies such as Dravidian nationalism, and this has led to a reactionary right in most cases. The presence of ideology-drenched “scholarship” means that objective thought is often not encouraged, and such scholarship leads to situations where individuals become less and less of scholars and more and more of campaigners of an often obsolete ideology The interests of science, society and the education system are scarcely borne in mind. Many bureaucrats therefore, think, function, act and behave as bureaucrats, and do not have a temperament conducive to be scientists, or take up the cause of Indian science to any degree. Again, a generational shift, and a generational transformation is required.  Even some government bodies for example, charge for publications to be uploaded on their site. What paltry sums of money are they after? Does this not stifle science?

 

Suppression of Openness and Careerism: We have also additionally argued that the highly bureaucratized structure fosters institutional careerism. This makes entrenched researchers highly resistant to data-driven corrections, cross-disciplinary sharing, and independent and non-subjective critiques. Additionally and most unfortunately, this also leads to a fossilization and ossification of intellectual thought, ensuring that science does not progress, and that intellectualism is limited and highly flawed.

 

Failure to Decolonize Knowledge: We have often highlighted a strange and rather bizarre paradox where many mainstream Western researchers often assist in decolonizing scientific frameworks, while India's own state-backed academic bureaucracy actively resists structural change and scientific globalization, preferring to preserve the status quo. We had written to a major Indian scientific institution on the need to decolonize and modernize social sciences, and they reacted in a most absurd and foolish and absurd kind of way, calling it “sloganeering”. In many cases, the cloaks that they don are a mere sham. Instances such as these should alone serve as a wake up call. Maybe, criticism can move things a bit.

 

In sum, and to recapitulate and reiterate, a major lamentable fact is that even Indian scientists, researchers and thinkers are very weak in foundational science, scientific method, and the philosophy of science; this is because the India education system emphasizes rote learning, and was initially designed to produce clerks for the British East India Company. We have also observed through our various interactions that the Indian scientific establishment is still stuck in very old ways, and is ill-prepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. They are extremely conservative and bureaucratic to boot, steeped and entrenched in ideology. This is what is known as scientific babudom or intellectual babudom- their mindset dates back to the pre-1991 pre-liberalization era. They appear in a way to be the last holdout of that era, even though counter ideologies such as Hindutva and Dravidian nationalism also persist as evidenced by the publications of the Frontline magazine. The right wing is dangerous too, and as such it mostly falls outside the scope and boundaries of legitimate and bonafide academic and scholarly debate. The author does not wish to reveal the names of the Indian government departments at this state, but truth be told, an overwhelmingly vast majority of them are ill-suited or unfit to be scientists only bureaucrats. Thus, everything needs to change from the grounds up. They may need a Pererstroika and a Glasnost – of course all assertions need to be backed up by raw and hard data as there may be different types of people involved, and different types of forces at play. This is necessary if the American research ecosystem is to be replicated elsewhere, India included. India is in no way ready for a giant or a gigantic leap in science yet, as we need a complete overhaul of research infrastructure. Ideology-driven proponents cannot generate, foster or create a culture of objectivity; they only willy nilly generate a culture of non-objectivity. In short, we do not have a culture of science as yet, and have still some more distance to tread.

 

That is why we had proposed several other approaches to promote science in India and other developing countries – read our multiple papers and publications such as “ Countering ideology in science: How ideology drenched science automatically perpetuates different kinds of vested interests and conflicts of interest”,” Fostering a “culture of science” in India and other developing countries: Towards intellectual revolutions in India and other developing countries”, “Combating extreme ideology and dogma in science: Towards scientific activism and proactive approaches in nurturing ideology-free science”, and “ Replicating the success of the American research ecosystem everywhere: Towards quantum advancements of science in the developing world” among a couple of others. We have also written extensively on twenty-first century intellectualism, and have shown that academic Marxism is utterly obsolete besides being of course one-sided, limited and flawed.   It is therefore already on its last legs, and cannot survive beyond a generation or two. To counter these bureaucratic limitations, we have advocated for an "Indian Enlightenment" besides renaissances and enlightenments in other developing countries. We have argued for more private investments in science, overhaul of educational systems, (we have written extensively on pedagogical reform, and had dedicated several papers and publications to this cause) and horizontal collaboration between developing countries in science. We have argued for pushing systemic overhauls through our movements, such as the Movement for Open, Transparent, High-quality, and Ideology-free Science (MOTHIS), and have called for multi-staged and decentralized peer reviews to bypass traditional institutional gatekeepers. In addition to traditional peer-reviews, multi-staged post-publication reviews would also be necessary.