Leadership in Science and Technology Leadership in Science and Technology
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EPW Special Articles
October 6, 2001 The Origins of the Atomic Energy Programme The next phase in the establishment of scientific institutions began with Homi Bhabha’s 1944 appeal to the Dorab Tata Trust for financial support to set up the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) [Venkataraman 1994, Sundaram et al 1998]. In a seminal sentence, Bhabha had foreseen that when the stage came for the successful application of nuclear energy for power production a couple of decades in the future, India would not have to look abroad for its experts [Bhabha 1943]. This was a crucial development. Bhabha not only visualised and realised TIFR as the crucible of basic research in nuclear science, he also made it the launch pad for the applied research and development phases of the atomic energy programme. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Bhabha was in the process of staffing the TIFR, he gave organisational expression to his tenet of building scientific institutions, and the role of leadership in that process. “Find the man and build the organisation around him.” Bhabha fully appreciated that this tenet would have to be applied differently in basic research institutions such as the TIFR, from that in applied research, development and engineering institutions like the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET). In the basic research institutions scientific creativity and ability was the sole criterion of choice. But in AEET, where the ultimate objective was designing, building, operating and maintaining nuclear reactors, heavy-water plants, and fuel fabrication plants, the choice of the first generation leadership needed to involve: (a) engineers in addition to scientists; (b) engineers and scientists who could configure and build up the various specialised skills and facilities the nulear industry needed; and (c) engineer and scientist ‘leaders’ who showed the potential for managing large teams of engineers and scientists in the various sectors of atomic energy. It was thus that Bhabha picked the following scientists and
engineers to lead the corresponding component of the atomic energy programme: He proceeded to give them freedom to build teams of engineers and scientists. Crucially, as an organisational principle, this was not to be around talented people but to be centred on the requirements of the mission, of developing a nuclear industry in all its various facets. This approach was clearly correct in the case of a mission that is, a task whose objectives were not only defined in advance and on a time-targeted basis, but whose objectives were societal in character, and hence ‘external’ to S and T. However, it was inconsistent with another of Bhabha’s (and later, of Sarabhai’s) credos for building S and T institutions. This emphasised that in India, the first step in building institutions was the training and development of people. In starting a new (S and T) institution (of any kind), Bhabha considered it important to build the organisation around people rather than a draw an organisation chart first and then to fill in the vacancies [Sarabhai 1970]. Bhabha’s sharply drawn contrast between the manner in which the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratory system was built up with that of the atomic programme, in general, an the AEET, in particular, over the 1950-65 period was misleading (Annexure I). This is clear from documents showing how Bhabha recruited both the first-generation and also some of the second-generation leaders of the atomic energy programme (Annexure II). The long-term implications of this approach adopted by both Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and CSIR were damaging to the universities, and thereby, to sources of potential leadership in S and T (Annexure III). The AEET Traning School The practice of draining the universities of scientific and engineering for the atomic energy programme was bad enough. Bhabha compounded this by setting up the Trombay Training School (TTS). This programme took MScs, BEs and BScs from the classical disciplines of mathematics, physics and chemistry, and civil, mechanical and electrical engineering from the universities. The object was to convert them into multidisciplinary specialists in nuclear science and engineering. The 150-200 ‘nuclear interns’ taken into the TTS each year up to the present were to be the creme de la creme of our scientific and engineering community. An issue little debated over the years is whether TTS and TIFR, as a specilised training institution and a basic research institution, respectively, outside the university and even the IIT system were necessary. The first IIT, at Kharagpur, was set up as early as 1952, two years before DAE and AEET were established. The criticism has been that the TTS created a cloistered community of young scientists and engineers. They lacked the wider exposure that students could have had if departments of nuclear physics and engineering had been set up, with DAE funding, in leading universities and IITs. Training at TTS narrowed their vision too much and did not enable them to acquire technical and managerial leadership skills. Moreover, universities were being denied any pool from which they could draw their future faculty. This issue was a sore point with DAE and AEET for many years. In fact, it was accentuated as the atomic energy programme moved into the industrial phase of designing, building, operating and maintaining industrial plants. Learning R and D Management and Industrial Management ‘On the Job’ According to Sarabhai, “He (Bhabha) said that it was a fallacy to believe that ‘we are reasonably advanced in administration but backward in S and T’. Bhabha was aware that different tasks and institutions required different types of leaders and administrative practices and that the transfer of the traditional administrative practices of government either to industrial enterprises or R and D institutions produced inefficiency and lack of morale. He recognised that the administration of scientific R and D is an even more subtle matter than the administration of industrial enterprises and that it could not be done on the basis of borrowed knowledge (from conventional government ministries and departments)” [Sarabhai 1970:2]. Sarabhai went on to say, “Bhabha introduced administrative practices in the TIFR and later in the DAE, which were alien to established university and government procedures. Scientists and engineers were paid according to their merit and maturity, rather than in terms of organisational position and status. Promotion did not imply handing over charge of one task and going over to another. Positions were created whenever competent people were available for identified tasks. As with personnel functions, Bhabha established procedures, for procurement as well as for civil construction, in which major decisions were taken by the scientists concerned” [Sarabhai 1970:3]. These quotations highlight one more irony: this parth-breaking approach to the management of TIFR and AEET was both enunciated and implemented. However, an anomalous feature of the staffing programme of AEET was that the engineers selected were left without any formal exposure to R and D management and the management of technology development, to undertake the applied research and development aspects of the atomic energy programme. The same philosophy was extended to the pilot plant and full-scale industrial plant phases of the programme. They had to pick up project management skills and industrial project leadership skills ‘on the job’. The very considerable training in foreign nuclear energy laboratories, which the scientists and engineers in AEET were given, helped to accelerate contemporary specialised skill formation; but this was scientific and technical domain knowledge and skills. None of the project leaders, or even heads of divisions and groups in AEET, were put through formal management development, organisational development and leadership development programmes, either as part of such foreign training or in our own Indian Institute of Management. That this continued even after one of the founders of the management movement in the country, Vikram Sarabhai, became chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), is ironical and tragic. The fact that this approach continued up to the early 1970s by when we had built up several good management institutes and indeed continues right up to the present, is an important reason for several of the setbacks the atomic energy programme has had over the past 25 years. The Sarabhai Phase of the Atomic Energy and Space Programme Vikram Sarabhai was appointed as chairman, AEC, in September 1966 and chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1969. Sarabhai tried to bring about a new leadership style in the atomic energy and space programmes, one which emphasised management skills, team building and leadership development. Sarabhai’s credo regarding organisational structures and management and leadership styles is succinctly enunciated below: The creation of administrative practices appropriate to a given technology or set of tasks of high technology comes with familiarity and knowledge of the technology or tasks concerned in the research laboratories and other agencies concerned with developmental tasks. Therefore, it seems important that the chief executive, besides making and executing policy, maintains direct contact with his professional role. Only such a combination of roles will enable him to secure that continuous understanding necessary for the motivation and management of his research workers (emphasis added) [Sarabhai 1968a]. The implications of this proposition of Sarabhai were ironically borne out in his own experience in the two areas of his responsibilities, namely, atomic energy and space. In atomic energy, his legitimacy to lead the programme was questioned by the BARC community right from the time he became chairman of the AEC. The argument was exactly what he himself had made in the statement of his quote above, that he did not have the knowledge base and experience in nuclear science and engineering that Sethna or Ramanna had. Sarabhai was aware of this vulnerability of his. He attempted to deal with it by trying to adopt a collegiate style of leadership involving the four top scientists and engineers of BARC – Sethna, Ramanna, Brahm Prakash and A S Rao – in all policy-making and decision-making on major aspects of the atomic energy programme. However, it was clear even then, and is even more clear now in the perspective of hindsight, that he failed to win the confidence and support of those scientists and engineers of BARC, the core institution of the atomic energy programme. However, I must point out the view on this matter on which Ramanna has gone on record as follows: I had some doubts as to whether Vikram would able to get a grip on atomic energy developments here and abroad, and be able to give it special orientation. (But in only a few months) he was able to participate in the deliberations of all the decision-making bodies in an effective and constructive way [Joshi 1992]. In the space area, in contrast, Sarabhai himself was the ‘Bhabha’ of the programme right from the formation of the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) in 1963. His domain knowledge of all aspects of space science and technology could hardly be questioned. However, here too, ironically, he tended to not follow in practice the very leadership and management style he espoused and argued for so persuasively in his writings and lectures. The organisational structure of the programme was as pyramidal as was Bhabha’s in atomic energy. It could be argued with considerable validity that the space programme in the 1966-71 period was in about the same state of evolution as the atomic energy programme was in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s that is, with the chief executive having to identify and induct the first-generation S and T leadership and weld them in to a team. The view of Sarabhai in this regard is best captured by another quotation from his paper ‘Approaches to the Administration of Scientific Organisations’, Sarabhai had said: The wearing of several hats by the same persons and the mobility of personnel from one type of activity to another undoubtedly provide an impetus to growth [Sarabhai 1968b], and that therefore the leadership style and organisational structure had inevitable to be pyramidal. What is more, despite his management experience and the creation of numerous institutions in Ahmedabad, notably the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association (ATIRA), and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Sarabhai no less than Bhabha, did not try to build into the structure and practices of the ISRO an institutionalisation of leadership capabilities, which would ensure that the next generation leadership was identified and groomed well in time. When one looks back at it now, one cannot but be amazed at the inappropriateness and impracticality of Sarabhai’s actual leadership style when it was evident, even as early as 1967-68, that ISRO would become a major agency demanding a plateau-like rather than a pyramidal-type leadership style. Such amazement is accentuated by Sarabhai presenting to the AEC, then the cabinet and finally the country in 1970, a “10-year profile” on both atomic energy and space drawn up with hardly any inputs from DAE and only limited inputs from ISRO. This profile involved objectives that were ambitious to the point of infeasibility. In the space area, for example, the profile involved going from Rohini rockets to the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in 10 years!! We now know how it has actually taken 28 years – from 1972 to 2000 – assuming GSLV is, in fact, successfully launched the end of this year as committed by ISRO. The Space Commission and the Department of Space The formation of the Department of Space (DoS) and the Space Commission as a separately agency in 1972 with Satish Dhavan as chairman of the commission and secretary of the department, was a watershed in the development of science and technology in the country. It is a tribute to Dhavan’s remarkable vision, foresight and clarity of thought that, right at the very first meeting of the Space Commission in May 1972, he proposed, and the commission approved, several of the major new institutions needing to be created to realise the objectives of the ‘10-year profile’ of Sarabhai – the Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC) at Thiruvananthapuram, renamed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), a new Space Applications Centre (SAC) created at Ahmedabad by expanding the already existing Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station (ESCES), and a satellite launch vehicle range at Sriharikota in Tamil Nadu of the acronym SHAR. Then by the end of 1972 or early 1973, Dhavan brought in Brahm Prakash from BARC to head VSSC and be the member (R and D) of the Space Commission, Yash Pal from TIFR to head SAC, U R Rao from PRL to be director, Indian Satellite Systems Project (ISSP), located at VSSC and later moved to Bangalore. ISSP later became the Indian Satellite Centre (ISAC). Over the next 11 years, Dhavan not only built an excellent agency in a demanding area of high science and high technology, but he consciously spotted and shaped leaders in almost every facet of the programme. Assigning clear goals to the various R and D centres and to the various mission-oriented programmes inside each centre, combined with strong support and close monitoring of the centres and their programmes through structures such as the Systems Planning and Analysis Group (SPAG) at ISRO headquarters in Bangalore, he was able to build a strong second line of leadership for all components of the space programme. What is more, that second line has under the leadership first of U R Rao and now of K Kasturirangan built the third line of leadership. Thus, ISRO has demonstrated that it can not only replicate itself, but also reinvent and reengineer itself. The results are there for all to see. But Dhavan’s leadership style was enshrined in trust, motivation and above all strong support to his colleagues when the ‘chips were down’. A particularly significant instance is how he ‘appointed’ A P J Abdul Kalam as project manager of the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) programme. In mid-1973, Dhavan called Kalam to his office one day and said, “We are looking for a project manager to head SLV-3. You want the job?” A surprised Kalam could only mumble a yes to the task that every space scientists had coveted. Dhavan replied, “Good, it’s done then. Get cracking from today and remember, now I am working for you on this project” (emphasis added). Dhavan’s face then turned gentle and he gave Kalam a piece of advice the latter never forgot. Dhavan told him: “Before your dreams come true you have to dream them. Some people stride towards whatever it is they want in life; others shuffle their feet and never get started because they do not know what they want – and do not know how to find it either” [Chengappa 2000]. Kalam learnt another skill from Dhavan. If a mission had to succeed, the review process had to be rigorous. An aeronautical engineer, Dhavan used a technique similar to that used when an aircraft is designed and built. Before it is flown, a thorough review is conducted to see if everything works. So, every time a new technology was evolved at VSSC it was the subject of the most intensive review by peers. Kalam used the technique later in the Defence R and D Laboratory (DRDL), where the term ‘secret’ had been liberally used to mask failures. The first SLV-3 flight in 1979 tumbled into the Bay of Bengal because the fuel from one of its control thrusters had leaked. Both Madhavan Nair and Srinivasan remember how Kalam accepted the full blame for it and even wanted to resign. After the launch, in sheer exhaustion Kalam slept in a room next to the launch control centre. When he woke up he found Brahm Prakash waiting patiently for him to get up. Prakash just patted him on the shoulder and said, “Come, let us have lunch”. He then tore up the resignation letter and told Kalam softly: “Carry on, but understand what went wrong”. To the press, Dhavan shouldered the entire blame for the failure. Atomic Energy and Space: ‘Self-Fulfilling Prophecies’ Before concluding this treatment of leadership in atomic energy and space, I would like to draw attention to a distinctive feature of both DAE and ISRO. This is the fact that both agencies have themselves set their own programme objectives. When Sarabhai projected in his 10-year profile on atomic energy and space that the country would set up 2,700 MW of nuclear power during 1970-80 or launch GSLV over the same period, the cabinet approved it as such. No assessment was made of the desirability or feasibility of such a target. When in 1987, the then chairman of AEC, M R Srinivasan, proposed a target of 10,000 MW of nuclear power generation by the year 2000, the same thing happened again despite analyses from outside (and perhaps even inside) the atomic energy programme expressing acute scepticism, to say the least. The same has tended to happen in the space programme. The government and the country have come to accept that since even near-comparable S and T competence to DAE and ISRO in their areas of work has not come up in universities, IITs, or independent think tanks outside the two agencies (some would say, with some justification, that neither agency allowed such competence to come up), the only repositary of S and T competence on atomic energy and space was inside the operational agencies themselves. So, the country had little option except to go by the programmes proposed by these agencies. This has led to the programmes being open to the charge of being ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’. Defence Research and Development Organisation I now turn to DRDO. It was set up originally in 1958 as the Defence Science Organisation (DSO), with D S Kothari as its director general. He was also scientific adviser to the defence minister. The DRDO, as it came to be called by the end of the 1960s, started building up a chain of laboratories in all areas of S and T relevant to developing technologies, products and technical services needed by the armed forces. However, the progress of DSO from 1958 to 1970 was desultory, if not marginal. Things began to happen only with the appointment as scientific adviser to ‘raksha mantri’ (SA to RM) and DG, DRDO in 1971, of B D Nag Chaudhuri, who was the member (science) in the Planning Commission and also chairman of the then apex S and T advisory body to the government called the Committee on Science and Technology (COST). For the first time, the SA to RM was given the rank of ex officio secretary to the government in the department of defence production. Over the next decade, the laboratories of the erstwhile DSO were rapidly expanded with increasing levels of funding. This trend continued on an even larger scale over 1982-92, when V S Arunachalam was SA to RM. A number of new defence-related products were developed by DRDO and successfully commercialised by the ordnance factories and the public sector enterprises (PSEs) of the department of defence production and also by civilian industry, both public and private. Leaders for these programmes were identified and inducted from both within and outside DRDO. But the criterion for choosing such leaders was again basically scientific and technical competence in the area of R and D concerned, with their managerial competence to effectively run major hi-tech laboratories left to ‘loose judgments’ by the SA to RM. It has been part of the general parlance in our S and T system to regard DRDO along with DAE and ISRO as a ‘mission-oriented agencies’. This nomenclature has been used on the grounds that most of their S and T activities are sharply focused on developing technology for, and facilitating the commercialisation of, specific nuclear reactors, satellites, satellite launch vehicles, tanks, aircraft and missiles. However, there is at least one major difference between DoE and ISRO on the one hand and DRDO on the other. This is the fact that as already indicated, in DAE and DoS/ISRO the ‘user’ of the technologies and systems developed by the laboratories of the agencies is internal to the agency. However, in the case of DRDO, the ultimate user of the product involved is one of the three defence services, and the producer is an ordnance factory or public sector company associated with the department of defence production, both of which are ‘external’ to DRDO. But as all three actors are part of the same overall ministry, namely, the ministry of defence, the ‘externality’ is not considerable. Nevertheless, such a reality calls for organisational structures, management practices and leadership attributes different from those of DAE and ISRO. To cite only one example; it calls for considerable ‘marketing’ by DRDO of the technologies and systems it develops to the defence services and to a somewhat lesser extent to the defence production units as well. Most often, such ‘marketing’ as to be done in competition with equivalent systems, equipment and technologies being offered by foreign companies. In such competition, the ‘provenness’ of the foreign product, its performance specifications and its ‘off-the shelf’ character are attributes that the DRDO chief and his senior scientific and engineering colleagues have to deal with, indeed often combat if the DRDO-developed product is to be accepted by the defence service concerned. This calls for leadership qualities by different from those in DAE or ISRO. To build up such kinds of leadership qualities in scientists and engineers, these personnel do take management courses in in-house DRDO institutions such as the Institute of Technology Management, Mussorie. But there is still a need to selectively send top- and middle-level R and D managers to specially tailor-made courses on leadership development and team-building at institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Management and the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad (ASCI). The Research Councils I now move to the research councils – CSIR, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Due to limitations of space, I shall deal only with CSIR. CSIR is perhaps the most loosely structured of our S and T agencies, with each laboratory operating largely on its own, interacting with its own client groups, namely, industry at home and abroad, and the CSIR headquarters maintaining only strategic policy, budgetary and personnel control. What is more, unlike DAE, ISRO or DRDO, all the clients/customers of CSIR (and the other two research councils) are outside the agency. Another important difference is that CSIR, somewhat like DRDO but only much more so, has to generate civilian commercial product and process technologies that have to compete with foreign technologies for them to be accepted by industry for commercialisation. Such competition has become even more acute for CSIR since the new economic policy of 1991. A third important difference is the crucial role of patents and other forms of intellectual property in CSIR being able to maintain its competitive edge vis-a-vis foreign technologies, not only in the domestic market, but internationally as well, a feature which has practically no role to play in DAE, ISRO or DRDO. Even this brief account of some of the distinctive characteristics of CSIR would make clear that the kind of leadership it has to foster and maintain is very different from that of DAE, ISRO or DRDO. The scientists and engineers and directors of CSIR laboratories have not only to be fully contemporary on their knowledge of the domain of S and T in which their laboratory operates, such as electronics or chemicals, but also need to have distinctive leadership capabilities in regard to marketing and project management, both to acquire R and D projects from industry, and license the technologies they have developed to industry. This calls for tech-commercial marketing skills of a high order. The fact that unlike DAE, ISRO or DRDO, the CSIR laboratories have been required by government since 1991 to generate one-third of their revenue budgets from external sources makes successful marketing a matter of life and death for them. Perhaps it is for these reasons (particularly, not having a ‘captive market’ for their technologies like DAE, ISRO or DRDO) that CSIR was the first to take the initiative to get the ASCI to run R and D management programmes for its senior scientists. But even these programmes have not, up till now, really dealt with let alone focused in-depth on leadership skills of the kind suited to the mission of CSIR. What is more, because the CSIR laboratories came up in the 1950s and 1960s (no new laboratory of CSIR has been set up since 1970), the scientists are on the elderly side with the average age being around 48-49 years. This makes their being able to adjust to and acquire modern leadership skills in organisational behaviour, team building and marketing and image projection that much more difficult. That despite these handicaps, CSIR has acquired Rs 350 crore worth of sponsored research projects, filed 300 patents at home and 100 abroad during 1998-99 and licensed some 26 major technologies to foreign industry majors such as DuPont, Polaroid, GE and American Cyanamid over the past three years, is a tribute to the vision and drive of Ramesh Mashelkar, DG, CSIR and many directors of CSIR labs. This is set out very well in the document ‘CSIR 2001: Vision and Strategy’ brought out by Mashelkar and his director colleagues as far back as January 1996 [CSIR 1996]. This performance also disproves Sarabhai’s contention in the same document referred to earlier that: In these organisations (the CSIR labs) the work of applying the results of research to practical ends has to be done through other units, not organically related to the laboratories or the men that work in them. As a result, there is a lack of that interplay between the various elements in the chain of production (he really meant the innovation chain) so vital for economic progress [Sarabhai 1968b]. Nevertheless, CSIR faces major challenges on the leadership front over the coming decade [Mashelkar 1999]. Leadership Challenges in other S and T Organisations Apart from DAE, DoS, DRDO, CSIR and ICAR, we have built up since independence an impressive range of other S and T institutions. They could be classified into the following categories: (1) The ‘umbrella’ S and T department Department of Science and Technology (DST) to fund R and D in IITs, universities and other academic institutions, to promote the development and commercialisation of new technologies through the special mechanism of the Technology Development Board, to promote new areas of S and T, to be the administrative ministry for several historical basic research institutes such as Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), the Bose Institute, the Birbal Sahni Institute and the Raman Research Institute, to be the nodal agency for international S and T cooperation programmes (other than in areas covered by atomic energy, space, defence and electronics) and to deal with organisational and management issues commonly affecting S and T institutions (again other than atomic energy, space and defence). (2) S and T-based government departments set up to develop specific sectors of the economy, for example, the Department of Electronics (DoE), now part of the ministry of information technology (MIT), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Department of Ocean Development. (3) Specialised R and D institutions working in specific high-technology commercial sectors, for example, the Centre for the Development of Telematics (C-DOT), associated with the department of telecommunications and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), working on supercomputers, created by the erstwhile Department of Electronics and now a part of MIT. (4) R and D institutions associated with economic ministries of the government such as the Research Designs and Standards Organisation of the railways, the Central Power Research Institute of the department of power, and the Central Manufacturing Technology Institute (CMTI) of the department of heavy industry. (5) The resource survey and assessment organisations, such as the Survey of India (SoI), the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), the Botantical Survey of India (BSI) and the Geological Survey of India (GSI). (6) The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). (7) The IITs and the universities. Each of these institutions have missions of different kinds, have evolved historically in different ways and have different ‘cultures’ in the sense Sarabhai would use the term, namely, management practices including most importantly personnel and purchase practices, organisational structures, as also different types of outputs and client or user entities. It is only to be expected, therefore, that their leadership styles would cover a wide spectrum. Many of them, particularly the resource survey organisations, such as the GSI, the BSI and the ZSI, the IMD and the ‘isolated’ R and D institutes associted with the economic ministries, desperately need modernisation of their organisational and management structures and leadership styles. This modernisation would need to cover their personnel, procurement and financial practices combined with massive HRD programmes, to enable the conscious development of modern, participatory and democratic management philosophies and practices and leadership styles. Lack of space prevents undertaking for each of these categories of S and T institutions the kind of analysis and treatment attempted in the case of atomic energy, space, defence R and D and CSIR. However, I would like to touch briefly on three of them – C-DOT, C-DAC and IMD. C-DOT and C-DAC These important new institutions created in the 1980s were nucleated around highly technically talented scientists and engineers. They were also given levels of autonomy in all areas of decision-making and operation, coming close to, if not equal to, those of DAE and ISRO. However, Sam Pitroda’s desire to be de facto technology adviser to the prime minister and his taking on the societal missions – I do not call them technology missions – led to the tragic neglect of C-DOT and a consequent weakening – perhaps for ever – of a fine R and D organisation. This tragedy notwithstanding, the 20-odd companies to whom C-DOT has licensed its digital telecom switching have manufactured and sold to the DoT over the decade of the 1990s some 33,000 such telecom exchanges constituting around 13.5 million lines, out of the total 21 million telephone lines operationalised by DoT as of March 2000. These 13.5 million lines involve exchanges ranging from 128 line rural automatic exchanges to 40,000 line systems for the metropolises. The total production value of C-DOT licensee production as of January 2000 was Rs 3,815 crore. What is more, in 1999-2000 alone C-DOT licensee companies shipped four million lines of digital exchanges worth Rs 1,600 crore [C-DOT 2000]. This superb performance is attribute to the leadership capabilities of the second and third executive directors, Bishnu Pradhan and K N Gupta. It is interesting that though the former came from Tata Electric Companies and the latter is an ‘in-house’ DoT engineer-manager, they managed to take C-DOT to these great heights. As for C-DAC, it has major achievements to its credit in the area of supercomputers since it was set up in 1989 to overcome the embargo imposed by the US government on the sale of supercomputers to the Indian Institute of Science and other scientific institutions. C-DAC successfully developed the PARAM 8,000, 9,000 and 10,000 series of supercomputers and also sold some 20 of these to universities abroad in addition to several at home. However, unfortunately C-DAC was not given the support it deserved in terms of marketing its main domestic clients and which was the whole rationale for setting it up. This led to a disillusioned Vijay Bhatkar, its first executive director, leaving it about a couple of years ago. What is more, the transition to a new leadership has become a long and protracted one taking, as expected, a heavy toll on the motivation and morale of its excellent staff of some 500 software and hardware specialists. The Indian Meteorological Department It took the drought of 1973-74 to bring home to the political leadership the need for providing a more important position to this crucial agency as also a considerable degree of enhancement in its personnel procurement, administrative and financial powers. While speaking at the silver jubilee function of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, prime minister Indira Gandhi had said: Unless significant organisational and managerial change is brought about in our scientific and technological institutions, the nation cannot expect the scientist to give of his best in programme implementation. Some changes have already been made. Scientists and engineers have been inducted into top executive positions in several scientific agencies and government departments. Much more remains to be done, specially in regard to agencies like the meteorological department, whose work is crucial to our very existence [Gandhi 1973]. However, all that the Ramanna Committee, set up in 1976 to overhaul the organisational and management structure of IMD, did was to recommend the formation of a Council for Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (C-MAS) as the apex policy-making and decision-making body with “the powers of government, administration and financial” – superficially like in the case of the atomic energy, space and electronics commissions. However, despite accepting this recommendation and despite recognising that IMD serviced a wide range of critical customers – from farmers to the defence services, to ONGC (offshore); and civil aviation – IMD continued to be a ‘subordinate office’ of the ministry with which it has been associated since the 1950s, namely, the ministry of tourism and civil aviation. What is more disturbing is that this character continued even after IMD was transferred to the department of science and technology in 1987, where it remains even today. The fact that a subordinate office of a government ministry/department cannot have “the powers of government, administrative and financial” seems to have been overlooked even to this day. Recalling Sarabhai’s enunciation of how people, organisational structures, administrative practices and procedures collectively determine the ‘culture’ of an organisation, it is sad that IMD continues to be to this day a ‘subordinate office’ of DST. It should have been made a full-fledged independent S and T department long ago with the same exemptions from UPSE, DGS and D, CPWE and controller of printing and stationery as the major S and T agencies have. The toll this has taken and continues to take on the character and stature of the agency and of its leadership development is considerable. As if this was not enough the Cray XMP14 supercomputer purchased from the US with great difficulty in 1986 for undertaking better medium-range weather forecasting was put into the hands of a new organisation in DST called the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), rather than be set up as a centre of IMD. The Botanical Survey of India and the Zoological Survey of India To take another example: the BSI and the ZSI were originally attached offices of DST. They were then transferred to the department of environment and forests (DoEN) when the latter was formed in November 1980. However, nothing was done to modernise their organisational and management structures and give them the scientific leadership and the operational autonomy they so desperately needed. As a result, they coast along as poor cousins of the major S and T agencies. It is only when the issue of biodiversity and its conservation and sustainable use comes up along the road to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, we sign the Biodiversity Convention at Rio and then start working on our national legislation on biodiversity, that we feel the pinch of the organisational and managerial weaknesses, and inadequate scientific and managerial leadership of BSI and ZSI. This is because they are the primary data collecting, collating and analysing agencies for our floral and faunal wealth. These instances indicate: (a) The lack of will not only of the political and administrative leaderships, but also of the scientists and engineeers heading the major S and T agencies to address the modernisation and leadership building of what I have unfortunately had to call ‘second-level S and T agencies’, like IMD and the resource survey organisations. (b) The failure of successive national apex organisations set up to advise the government on S and T and R and D policy-making – the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAAC) during 1980-84, the SAC to PM during 1986-89, the STACC of 1996-99 and the SAC-C of today to highlight these problems of the ‘second level’ agencies and get governmental support to set up task forces to formulate and facilitate the implementation of action plans for the organisational, managerial and operational modernisation of these agencies (of course, in close consultation with the concerned agency head), along with the induction of dynamic new leaderships where needed and the provision of increased levels of funding. To Sum Up The crux of culture creation is the style of leadership to use Sarabhai’s own words: There is no leader and there is no led. A leader, if one chooses to identify one, has to be cultivator rather than a manufacturer. He has also to provide the soil in which the seed can grow. One wants permissive individuals who do not have a compelling need to reassure themselves that they are leaders through issuing instructions to other; rather they set an example through their own creativity, and dedication to what one may call the ‘scientific method’. These are the leaders we need in science and technology [Ganesh and Joshi 1985]. The lessons that emerge from the various instances of S and T agencies of a whole range of kinds dealt with in this paper may be described as follows: To develop institutions it is important to place an individual at the centre of institution-building efforts. The task of a transforming and transactional leadership is to present a vision that will inspire many and provide meaningful exchange relationships. Leadership actions have to nurture trust, and constantly create interacting and overlapping clusters both within and outside the organisation. Failure to do so is likely to lead to the breakdown of the institutional aspects of the organisations, resulting in its decline and decay. It is important for an institution builder to identify and play multiple (formal and psycho-social) roles within and without the institution. Decline in the performance of institutions could be traced to inadequate roles (both formal and psycho-social) to translate externally oriented interfaces, and internally oriented leadership strategies for institution building. While the criticality of organisational culture to the development of institutions has always been mentioned in the literature, the importance of building in trust and caring has not been adequately emphasised. It is interesting to note that Bennis and Namus also come to similar conclusions based on their study of 90 top leaders in the US [Ganesh and Joshi 1985: 411]. More specifically, the imperatives are: (1) The days of ‘picking up’ such qualities and abilities ‘on the job’ have gone. They have to be acquired through the participation of our scientists and technologists in formal leadership development programmes (LDPs) at all levels – not only the chief executives. Such programmes have to be designed and undertaken jointly by the S and T institution concerned with an IIM or other management school. This would be the managerial analogue of what our S and T institutions are already doing to varying degrees through participation of their scientists in technical and scientific seminars, conferences and workshops both at home and abroad. Performance in such LDPs should be part of the formal promotion or career advancement policy of the S and T institution concerned. (2) The conscious building-up of leadership qualities and abilities that are minimally hierarchical, which provide for democratic participation without age-orientedness and the ‘seniority syndrome’ affecting creativity, productivity and motivation, and hence performance is not only important, but urgent in all our S and T institutions, particularly the ‘second-level agencies’ and the universities. (3) There is a need to recognise that the nature of the leadership qualities and abilities required to be imparted to, and acquired by scientists and engineers are different for different types of S and T institutions, from the university to the IIT to the research councils to the ‘second-level agencies’ the major mission-oriented agencies like DAE or DoS. LDPs referred to above have therefore to be tailor-made for the type of agency involved. Thus, there will be some universal leadership qualities and some which are organisation-specific. (4) At the same time, as Sarabhai has highlighted, the chief executive of the S and T agency, besides making and executing policy, must maintain direct with contact his professional role. Only such a combination of roles will enable him to secure that continuous understanding of the field involved, necessary for the motivation and management of his research workers. (5) Organisational structures and management techniques and procedures need major changes. They must be continuously reviewed to create and sustain a cluster of attitudes conveying care, trust and nurturance on the part of the leaders of the S and T organisation at all levels. (6) There is need to bring the younger members of the scientific community into the decision-making process to stimulate their imagination and energy and to reduce if not eliminate any frustrations they may have due to the “I know all” attitude of the leaders. (7) The organisational and management structures, and forms of communication and information flow, must be such as to not only provide ‘space’ for non-conformist individuals and ideas, but to encourage the generation and application of such ideas. Annexture-I All these laboratories were brought into existence in the same way. A planning officer was appointed for planning the work and building of each laboratory. The plan was usually drawn up on the basis of the work of similar laboratories abroad, divided into divisions and sections, and an estimate of the staff required made on this basis. An attempt to fill the posts was then made on the basis of advertisement, and invitation also in the case of the senior-most appointments. While this method of setting up a laboratory might give reasonably satisfactory results in a developed country in which science is already an important activity and a large number of scientists already work in universities and in other public and private laboratories and research institutes, it has serious disadvantages in a country in which organised science is still in its infancy and the number of available outstanding scientists limited. It either results in an outstanding scientist being taken away from a university or another research institute, or it results in a mediocre one, satisfying the so-called minimum qualifications, being appointed to posts requiring originally, initiative and leadership. As we all know, the so-called minimum qualifications laid down for a post have little meaning in a research institute, and usually result in the floor becoming the ceiling. A result of following this method has been that a number of good scientists have been drawn away from the universities into the national laboratories, leaving the universities weaker thereby. Thus, for example, the late K S Krishnan, who was then professor of physics at the Allahabad University, was taken as the first director of the National Physical Laboratory, and more recently, his successor has been obtained by taking a professor from the Banaras University. Similarly, the first two directors of the National Chemical Laboratory were eminent scientists who were brought to India from abroad, while for the third the head of the department of chemical technology of Bombay University was taken, and the appointment of his successor will deprive the same university department of yet another senior worker. These are not isolated instances, since the attempt to fill senior posts by mature scientists from outside must inevitably lead to their being taken away from the only institutions that have scientists in some measure, however, inadequate, in an underdeveloped country, namely, the universities. It cannot be disputed that the cost of building the national laboratories on the lines followed by the CSIR has been the weakening of the universities by the drawing away of some of their good people, their most valuable asset. Source: Extract from Homi J Bhabha: ‘Science and the Problems of Development’, presidential lecture delivered at the meeting of the General Council of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), Mumbai, January 7, 1966, p 5. (This was the first time the president of ICSU – who is elected – was from a developing country and the annual general council meeting was held in a developing country.) Annexure-II To quote Bhabha: (ICSU, 1966, presidential address, Mumbai) A result of following this method has been that a number of good scientists have been drawn away from the universities into the national laboratories leaving the universities weaker thereby. It cannot be disputed that the cost of building the national laboratories on the lines followed by the CSIR has seen a weakening of the universities by the drawing away of some of their good people which is their (the university’s) most valuable asset. But what was the actual reality in DAE/TIFR/BARC on the one hand and the CSIR laboratories on the other? Let us look at the career profiles of the pioneers of the atomic energy programme. H N Sethna: He joined the then AEC in 1949 straight after getting his MS in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, and a year’s stint with ICI, UK. Could he not have joined a university, say, his own alma mater UDCT, Mumbai, if there had been no AEC and, therefore, does not his joining AEC constitute a loss to the university system? R Ramanna: He joined Bhabha in TIFR immediately on his return in 1949 with a doctorate from King’s College, London. Had there been no TIFR, and later AEET, would he not have joined a university? A S Rao: He joined Bhabha in May 1948 in TIFR after having been a lecturer in pysics at BHU (from where he took both his BSc and MSc degrees), and then spending three years of study at Stanford University, US. Did TIFR and AEET not get him from the university system? D Y Phadke: When Bhabha “invited” Phadke to join TIFR in 1949, Phadke was a reader in electronic engineering at St Xavier’s college, Mumbai, having joined that college as an instructor in electronic engineering as early as 1937. Was this action by Bhabha any different from S S Bhatnagar inviting S Venkataraman from the UDCT, Mumbai to become the first Indian director of the National Chemical Laboratory of CSIR? Brahm Prakash: When he returned home in 1949 after taking an ScD from MIT in the US in metallurgy, Bhabha took him into TIFR directly on the recommendation of Bhatnagar. However, his was the only case of the ‘pioneers’ of the atomic energy programme who then spent from early 1951 to April 1957 on an interim assignment from TIFR/AEET as head of the department of metallurgy at IISc, Bangalore. But his returning to AEET from IISc in 1957, surely constituted a ‘drain’ of an outstanding scientist and teacher from a university to the atomic energy programme! Jagdish Shankar: He got his PhD in physical chemistry from Mumbai University in 1939, then taught chemistry at the same university for some years and then went to the US to obtain an MS degree in chemical engineering from Columbia University. On his return home, he did not go back to Mumbai University but, started chemistry research in AEET (Kenilworth) as chief chemist in 1949. Was this not a loss to the university system? A R Gopala Iyengar: He took his master’s degree in botany from Mysore University, and taught at the same university for four years, then did his PhD in Canada over 1938-42. He spent the war years in teaching and research at a Canadian university. After the war, he continued research in the US. He returned home in 1947 and directly went to accept the position of chief research cytologist at the Tata Memorial Hospital. A year later, in 1948, he was the first research scientist to be appointed by Bhabha soon after the formation of the AEC. Was Bhabha not ‘drawing him away’ from the university system? P K Iyengar: He joined TIFR as a research assistant in 1952 soon after getting his MSc in physics from the University of Thiruvananthapuram. After working at TIFR for three years, he was transferred to AEET. R Chidambaram: He joined AEET in 1962 immediately after getting his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science. Would he not have been an asset to the university system, IISc, or any other university if he had not joined AEET? Vikram Sarabhai: Having worked at IISc from 1940-45 he went to Cambridge to do his PhD and on his return in 1947 set up the PRL as an independent research institute rather than joining or setting up a PRL-like programme in the physics department of any university. Source: ‘Profiles of Pioneers’ in C V Sundaram, L V Krishnan and T S Iyengar (eds), Atomic Energy in India: 50 Years, published by department of atomic energy, government of India, Mumbai, August 1998. Annexure-III Looking back, I find that my 200 months at TIFR were on the whole enjoyable and satisfying, in terms of my research, teaching, writing and science popularisation. Nevertheless, over the years, especially in the mid-1980s, I had begun to be alarmed at the widening gap between the research institutes like TIFR and universities. Universities which had served as cradles for academic activity in the pre-independence era had begun to lose their quality and momentum after 1947. The trend was already apparent at BHU when I was an undergraduate there. Rather than take note of the growing malaise, and taking corrective action, the powers that be seem to have decided that the disease was incurable and that the salvation for Indian science lay outside the university – in the research institutes. If the research institutes were created with a mandate to add to and improve the research and teaching facilities in universities, their effect would have been beneficial. Instead, they grew up as ivory towers to which only a selected few would gain entry. This ‘holier than thou’ attitude has helped neither the institutes nor the universities. While the universities are deprived of adequate facilities, the institutes complain of not getting good students, not realising that this species has to be bred and nurtured in the universities. Working at TIFR, I was increasingly feeling my isolation from the universities. In TIFR, awareness of the problem prompted in 1985, an experiment of outstation teaching at the physics department of the University of Pune. Several of us participated in selecting motivated students (who were awarded UGC scholarships) for doing an MSc degree and in teaching them courses at Pune. I wish the experiment had continued and become a standing feature to be emulated at other places. There are reasons why this did not happen and these ought to be studied by experts in the sociology of science in India. Source: Jayant Narlikar: ‘Evolution of an Astrophysicist’, Silver Jubilee Issue of the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India, Bangalore, Vol 25, No 1, March 1997. References Bhabha, H J (1943): Letter to JRD Tata, Chairman, Dorab Tata Trust, Mumbai, August 19. C-DOT (2000): Department of Telecommunication Operations, Ministry of Communications, Government of India, New Delhi, April. Chengappa, Raj (2000): Weapons of Peace, Harper Collins Publishers India, New Delhi, p 239-143. CSIR (1996): CSIR 2001: Vision and Strategy, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi, January. Gandhi, Indira (1973): Principal address at silver jubilee function of Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, October 30. Ganesh, S R and Padmanabh Joshi (1985): ‘Institution Building: Lessons from Vikram Sarabhai’s Leadership’ Vikalpa, Journal of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Vol 10, No 4, October-December, p 406. Joshi Padmanabh (ed) (1992): Vikram Sarabhai; The Man and the Vision, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, p 131. Mashelkar, R A (1999): The New Millennium: Challenges for Indian S and T, national lecture, Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi, July 23. Sarabhai, Vikram (1968a): ‘Approaches to the Administration of Scientific Organisations’, Report of the study team on scientific departments, Administrative Reforms Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, June. – (1968b): ‘Approaches to the Administration of Scientific Departments’, Report of the study team on scientific departments, Administrative Reforms Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, June. – (1970): ‘The Matrix of Development: Nuclear Medicine in the 70s’, Bhabha memorial lecture of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, New Delhi, October 21. Sundaram, C V, L V Krishnan and I S Iyengar (1998): Atomic Energy in India: 50 Years, Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, Mumbai, August. Venkataraman, G (1988): Journey into Light: Life and Science of C V Raman, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, in cooperation with the Indian National Science Academy, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. – (1994): ‘Bhabha and his Magnificent Obsession’, Vignetles in Physics, University Press, Hyderabad.
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