Redefine role of scientific adviser’s office

The term of Dr K Vijayaraghavan as the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India ended earlier this month. The government took some time in appointing a successor — Ajay Kumar Sood, an eminent scientist from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The delay at the top of the supposedly important office of the PSA was intriguing, given the fact that Vijayaraghavan also doubled up as Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council formed in August 2018.

India has a large number of scientific departments and agencies as well as other wings of the government that have a stake in research and development (R&D). It would appear that some sort of overarching agency is needed to guide and drive the work of all scientific agencies in a coordinated manner.

The first PSA, appointed in 1999, was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam who went on to become the President of India. He was succeeded by a former secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, Dr R Chidambaram. Chidambaram remained in office for an extended period of 16 years and was succeeded by Vijayaraghavan.

The need for a mechanism to advise the government on scientific matters was felt early in the 1950s as a newly independent India embarked upon a major project to organise scientific research and education. New scientific departments were being established, national laboratories were coming up and higher education and research were taking shape. And all this was happening amidst a resource crunch and competing interests of scientists. For the coordination of all these developments, scientific advisory committees were formed from time to time.

They took some momentous decisions and resolved tricky issues, like the allocation of funds for various programmes. One such move was the detachment of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and developing it as a scientific department. The birth of the Indian National Committee on Space Research — which later took the shape of ISRO — resulted from the work of the scientific advisory panel to the Cabinet. In recent years, the scientific advisory committee to the PM headed by Prof CNR Rao recommended the formation of new science universities — the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research.

The term of such scientific advisory committees to the PM or the Cabinet, however, was supposed to be co-terminus with the tenure of the Cabinet.

Another power centre concerning science policy was the post of Member (Science) in the erstwhile Planning Commission. In the 1990s, science bureaucrats lobbied that it should not be so, and there should be a permanent office of a scientific adviser. The office of PSA was born out of this thinking.

The office of PSA, has, however, remained a work in progress since it came into being in 1999. Successive governments could not make up their mind on the possible role and place of a scientific adviser in the government system as well as hierarchy. Kalam was given the rank of a Cabinet minister while Chidambaram was in the Minister of State rank. He was allowed to continue for an indefinite period with no oversight of the work done. It was virtually reduced to a parking lot of retired scientists, particularly those from the atomic energy stream. Vijayaraghavan, who had just retired as secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, was made PSA in April 2018, but in the rank of a secretary only.

In effect, the office of PSA has been reduced to that of any other scientific department and the PSA has had to function like any other secretary. In August 2018, the PSA was also made chairman of the PM’s advisory council.

While appointing Vijayaraghavan as chairman of the advisory council, the government further degraded the office of PSA because the order clearly said that the council will be ‘serviced by the office of PSA’. The office of PSA was, thus, reduced to an administrative organ of the advisory council.

However, the PSA office kept claiming that the PM’s council ‘facilitates the PSA’s office to assess the status in specific science and technology domains, comprehend challenges, formulate interventions, develop a futuristic roadmap and advise the Prime Minister accordingly.’ This left many wondering who was supposed to be the PM’s adviser — the PM’s council or the PSA office? Due to a lack of clarity on both its role and status, the office of PSA has been more used, rather misused, for publicising the government’s achievements than providing some advice. For instance, it is supposed to coordinate with the ‘Invest India’ project teams to monitor the progress of some missions. It has been asked to organise events and exhibitions for the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ celebrations. The PSA office took up some sort of exercise to promote science communication in Indian languages, though at least three full-fledged government agencies exist for this very task. In any case, a scientific adviser or his office is not supposed to be an implementation agency or an event organiser for the government.

At the policy level, the only recent achievement is the formulation of a new National Science Technology and Innovation Policy. And this has been piloted by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and not the office of the PSA or the advisory council headed by him. The office of PSA has not been able to tackle even simple cross-cutting problems like delays in the release of funds to research fellows by the funding agencies.

The challenges India faces today in R&D, science education, technology development and the future trajectory in areas like climate change, energy and health security are too complex. While the government has appointed a new PSA (on ‘usual terms and conditions’ as the order says), the office of PSA will be meaningless if it is going to be ‘business as usual’. Its role should either be redefined to make it meaningful or the office should be abolished.