The slow trickle of scientists returning to India to make a change
Devising schemes to attract NRI scientists and researchers to return and work in India appears to be a favourite pastime of successive governments. The past three decades have seen several such initiatives.
Collaborative Projects with Scientist and Technologists of Indian Origin Abroad (CPSTIO), Assured Opportunity for Research Career (AORC), Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship, Energy Biosciences Overseas Fellowship are just a few examples from recent years. Indian Institutes of Technology have been trying hard to attract foreign faculty to join. The present government too has joined this game, coming up with a better sounding acronym — Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN).
While all such initiatives may achieve some degree of success, self-motivated individual scientists have been returning and quietly doing their bit. Dr Anil Rajvanshi, a product of IIT-Kanpur, is one such person. He came back from America in 1981 after doing PhD and spending a few years teaching renewable energy at University of Florida. When he returned, very few IITians did so and those who returned chose to settle down in the metros. Rajvanshi opted to work in rural India and try to put into practice his knowledge of renewable energy in real life settings. He joined a little known organisation called Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in a place called Phaltan near Pune.
Backward areas in rural Maharashtra provided a fertile ground to Rajvanshi to test out his innovative ideas in renewable energy. Over the past three decades, he has been able to demonstrate how high science and technology could be applied to develop technologies for rural people.
He has penned this story in his latest book, aptly titled Romance of Innovation. He says, “I returned to India because of my naive belief that I would help change India. India did not change, but it changed me. Staying in rural India made me aware of its problems and challenges, and which technologies and strategies to develop to help them. The book is an account of this experiment.”
Rajvanshi has recounted in the book stories of developing technologies for household energy needs (cooking and lighting), gasification, electric cycle rickshaws and water-related problems among others. At the end of each chapter, he has listed areas where further research inputs are required. This is to inspire young scientists to take up further development. He says he has been getting good feedback from India and abroad. The word is spreading fast as the book can be downloaded free.
“I wanted to share my experience of how one can do meaningful and satisfying research and development work in a small rural town with hardly any facility. That’s why I call it the ‘romance of innovation’. You need to feel passionate about what you are doing,” he says. Government schemes to attract talent from abroad will always be limited in their success because the incentives being offered can never match salaries and facilities people are used to in America and Europe. But those passionate about solving real life problems and those in love with innovation would certainly come back irrespective of government incentives.