Indian Science: Transforming India (Impact of Science in Independent India: An Anthology)

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From a newly independent country learning to govern itself to a nation with capability of developing and launching rockets, India has come a long way. Indian science and technology has had a major role in this feat. The cover page aims to capture this transformation. The photo used shows Indian national flag hoisted at Chandni Chowk in New Delhi on August 15, 1947.

Adita Joshi obtained her PhD Degree from Department of Zoology, University of Delhi. She did her postdoctoral research at Singapore General Hospital and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore. She has worked with CSIR-IGIB, New Delhi as a Project Scientist. Here, she also coordinated a CSIR-Mayo Clinic collaborative program on Integrated Science Education Outreach as part of which she received training at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA in the areas of science education and pedagogy.

Adita is currently the Founder Director of a non-profit organization - Sansriti Foundation that runs training programs and workshops for teachers and students. Adita is associated with Department of Biotechnology, KIIT University, Odisha as an adjunct faculty at Centre for Science Teaching and Learning.

Dinesh C. Sharma is an award winning journalist and author with over 30 years' experience of reporting on science and technology for national and international media, including the medical journal, The Lancet. Currently, he is the Managing Editor of India Science Wire (ISW), and a columnist with Mail Today (India Today Group). An alumnus of the Osmania University journalism department, he has taught a course in development journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University, has been a Visiting Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi. His latest book "The Outsourcer: the story of India's IT Revolution" (MIT Press, 2015) won him the Computer History Museum Book Prize for 2016. A science travelogue on his visit to the Arctic (Witness to the Meltdown) was released at the World Book Fair 2018.

Kavita Tiwari obtained her PhD in Biotechnology in March 2016 from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU), New Delhi, India. Soon after submitting her PhD thesis in 2015, she began to work as a Research Scientist at Daiichi Sankyo Life Sciences Research Centre in India (formerly Ranbaxy Research Labs), Gurgaon. While at Daiichi, her scientific interest was focussed on natural product based drug discovery research.

Kavita is currently at the School of Biochemistry at University of Bristol, Bristol, UK as a Newton International Fellow and is working on pathways to produce novel drugs using synthetic biology. Kavita enjoys writing just about anything that strikes her imagination.

Nissy Nevil is an optical physicist with interests in science policy. She graduated with a PhD in Physics from University of Antwerp, Belgium. Following her PhD, Nissy has taught science alongside exploring different career options that would allow her to apply her scientific skills to a broader domain. As part of this, she attended a workshop on Science and Technology (S&T) Policy organised by IISER Pune in March 2016. She has worked as S & T Policy intern with IISER Pune and later as a Management and Policy Consultant with IndiaBioscience based at NCBS, Bangalore.

While the pursuit of science as a profession started only recently, it has always been a part of human cultural evolution, particularly since agriculture started 12,000 years ago. From health to space travel, science has made a major impact on society. Even though our better quality of life is due to tremendous progress in science and technology over the years, this is not always reflected in the public perception of science. The blame for this perception is placed usually on us scientists. We don't communicate well to the society at large what science is, how it is practiced, how it impacts our day-to-day life, etc. In an attempt to address this lacuna, we present here a narration of stories of the impact that scientific research carried out in post-independent India has had on our society.

When it became independent, India was poorest of the poor countries with a literacy rate of just around 12% and average life expectancy of about 32 years. At the same time, it had a very large, culturally diverse population compared to many other countries born after World War II. Today, in just 70 years, India is one of the top five economies in the world. This is not a mean feat.

What made this remarkable transformation possible was the application of science and technology in building the nation, which resulted in self-sufficiency in food and better healthcare for more than 1 billion people. It also gave birth to a whole generation of self- confident Indians who took up adventurous career paths in India and abroad, paving the way for the country's contribution to academics, basic science, IT, pharma industry, space research and other sectors world-wide.

The stories presented in this book showcase some of the milestones in this journey of transformation. We have chosen those that are less known to the public and our narrative is in a story-telling style. There are no big heroes in these stories. The major players here are the ability of our society to pursue basic and applied scientific research even in difficult situations and the strengths of our science and mathematics education.

Each story narrates how science and mathematics research being carried out in educational and research institutes has provided the necessary scientific and technical capabilities required to develop, adopt, modify and improvise technology for public good.