Disappointing document

The first India Science Report makes questionable conclusions on the state of science education thanks to weak data and faulty premises.

R. RAMACHANDRAN in New Delhi

A COMPREHENSIVE evaluation of the country's scientific and technological activity in all its dimension is as important as its conduct itself. Such an exercise is necessary to assess the impact of science and technology (S&T) in the nation's economy and growth, to know where the country is headed technologically and to plan accordingly for the future. Most developed nations monitor the health of their S&T enterprises through national science reports. Developing countries such as China and Brazil, which have a well-developed S&T base, also bring out such reports periodically. In India, however, barring limited databases of government agencies and studies for specific purposes, there has been no effort to provide an overall quantitative perspective despite the diverse and apparently significant S&T-related developments.

The India Science Report (ISR), released in September, is the maiden attempt towards filling this gap. It will, as the agencies behind the project hope, also serve as a launch-pad for such reports which could be released with some regularity, say, on an annual or bi-annual basis. The ISR is the result of an initiative of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), mooted in 2002 by its president M.S. Valiathan, and the task of preparing it was entrusted to the National Centre for Applied Economic Research (NCAER). The initiative marks an important step in arriving at appropriate methodologies and indicators for a quantitative measurement of the different aspects of the Indian S&T system that should be consolidated. "The ISR," the authors of the report say, "is an ambitious project that is not an event but a process, of which the first report is only a beginning."

Why the NCAER, which has no previous experience or recognised expertise in carrying out S&T-related studies? Even with regard to socio-economic surveys, the NCAER does not enjoy an unequivocal reputation among social scientists and economists. The mismatch between the Centre's most well-known survey on consumer expenditure and that of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has often been a subject of controversy and debate. Apparently it was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was as the leader of the Opposition at that time, who suggested to Valiathan at a dinner meeting that the INSA should approach the NCAER for the exercise.

Considering that the ISR is based on a large-scale sample survey of over 0.3 million individuals, either the NSSO or the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) could have yielded better results. With years of experience in conducting such surveys, either of them could have provided the requisite expertise for the survey design, sampling and framing of the schedule. For the huge amount of Rs.2.5 crores spent on the project, the report has many shortcomings.

For one, the present report focusses only on science education, human resource and public attitude towards S&T and is thus limited in its coverage of S&T features as against the scope envisaged. At the time of the feasibility study three years ago, the report in its first stage was conceived to generate a measurement and monitoring system of S&T in the country. The exercise is yet to arrive at such indicators. It is also far from providing a framework to answer questions that it had initially posed: Whether good academic science is leading to technology? Is high technology leading to basic competence? Is technological competence leading to industrial success?

One of the chief reasons for the "chaotic and even contradictory picture" of Indian achievements in S&T and their utilisation for social benefit is, as the report notes, the absence of reliable data. For instance, the existing data on the number of graduates in the country, given by sources such as the 1991 Census, the NSS household survey data or that of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), are widely disparate. The NSS surveys or the Census do not capture detailed information such as the number of graduates with science degrees or data on human resource in S&T. So the project itself had to generate the primary data through a massive household survey to meet the requirements of the study. "In such a scenario," the report says, "the attempt to generate State-wise data on education and occupation might be considered one of the major contributions of the ISR."

Data from an all-India field study called the `National Science Survey-2004' (NScS), undertaken by the NCAER, have formed the main basis for the results presented in the ISR. The NScS covered 347,000 individuals from whom "limited information" was sought. "Detailed information" was sought from 30,000 of them. In addition, 6,722 students and 1,687 teachers were selected for "detailed" questioning. It would have been helpful to understand what "limited" and "detailed" mean in these contexts. But the report neither provides any information in that regard nor includes a copy of the schedule or the questionnaire used in the survey.

The NScS data were supplemented with data available from other secondary sources such as the Censuses of 1981, 1991 and 2001, the household NSS of 1993-94 and 2000-01, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the IAMR. The great deal of variation in definition and classification, the method of collection, estimation and consistency adopted by the various agencies posed a serious problem. It is interesting to note from the report that the relevant 2001 Census data on education and occupation are not yet publicly available.

According to the ISR, there are 48.7 million people who have done graduation and other higher degrees (excluding diploma-holders) and a quarter of them have a background of science education. Of this, 39.2 million are graduates (22.3 per cent of them are from the science stream), 9.3 million postgraduates (19.4 per cent from science) and 0.3 million doctorates (one-third from science). Assuming that the sampling design was representative of the total universe in question, this marks an increase from the 20.5 million as enumerated by the 1991 Census and the larger 31.6 million as estimated by the NSS sample of 2000-01.

While this itself may be a reasonable comparison, the ISR's attempt at drawing conclusions with regard to enrolment in science is flawed. In the absence of Census or NSS data with regard to enrolment in science courses, the ISR has compared its NScS data with enumerated data as compiled by the UGC. This comparison shows that the proportion of those enrolled in science has gone up from 28.8 per cent of the population in 1995-96 to 34.6 per cent in 2004. There is an obvious problem here in trying to assess time trends in this fashion.

First, the UGC data are an enumeration of institutions under its purview. The NScS data, on the other hand, is household-derived information that would include all institutions and all disciplines categorised as "science" under the survey, which apparently includes computer science and Information Technology as well. These are disciplines that are not well represented in the institutions linked to the university system and which have been taken over by private institutions in a big way, a trend the NScS data would capture. Obviously the universes in the two data sets are not the same. So it is dubious to compare the two and to conclude, as the ISR does, that, "While concerns have been expressed about falling science enrolment in the country, the report shows that the proportion... has gone up". The report claims, to add weight to its conclusion, that over three-fourths of the teachers polled in the NScS had said that science education is growing, but this may be just a perception based largely on the levelling off or marginal increase in the last couple of years. A true estimate of time trends in natural sciences is bound to reflect the decline in enrolment.

Also, the widely held belief based on college-level micro data is with regard to enrolments in natural sciences only (and is not reflective of engineering sciences, including IT). Indeed, a similar comparison of the disaggregated data for natural sciences alone does show a drop in enrolment. The report would have done better if it had quantified the growth in the IT sector from the enormous growth in the engineering sciences - from 6 per cent in 1995-96 to 11.2 per cent in 2004 . The report makes a whole lot of other similar conclusions from this faulty premise; for instance, the statement that, mathematics is the most preferred subject among science students or enrolment in medicine is on the decline. These statements are not backed by hard figures and also seem to go against the grain of evidence at the micro level.

The report concludes that the number of postgraduate students grew at a rate much faster than that of graduates during 2000-04 as compared to 1995-2000. According to the report, the rate increased from 5.2 per cent to 23.6 per cent and within this the numbers enrolled in science rose by about 2.7 times and those in engineering more than 10 times. As a result, while the proportion of postgraduates studying science rose from 36.5 per cent in 1995-96 to 41.4 per cent in 2003-04, the proportion doing engineering rose from 5.4 to 26.4 per cent in the same years. Using this faulty premise again, the report says that of the 31 per cent students enrolled in science subjects in 2000-01 (and 34.6 per cent in 2004), the number of those going in for further research and doctorates is relatively small.

While this inference seems plausible in a qualitative sense, the quantified data of the ISR data is on firmer grounds when it does not try to quantify time trends but merely assesses the situation based on its survey data alone. According to the report, despite a high proportion (33.4 per cent) of annual enrolment in science as well as a high share of science in the total educated stock (23.1 per cent), the NScS has shown that nearly 30 per cent of this stock (which has done class XII or more in science) is not being properly utilised. For graduates, this fraction (as unemployed or as housewives) is almost a fifth (22.3 per cent), the proportion of postgraduates is significantly higher (62.8 per cent) and in the case of doctorates the proportion is almost 14 per cent. This obviously is, as the report notes, a matter of great concern. The Prime Minister too has expressed concern over the matter while releasing the report. Of course, expressing concern alone is no solution; with not much of avenue open in the industrial sector except in the IT service sector the government should institute policy measures that will increase employment opportunities in science.

Though the NScS shows that there is no apparent decline of interest in science, the report has cautioned against complacency and has identified areas that need to be attended to with some urgency, which include appropriate policy making. A third of the students said that they did not study science as they did not feel motivated enough, another 40 per cent said that there were too many students in a class for them to understand what was being taught (implying a low teacher-student ratio) and around 45 per cent said that computers/equipment used to teach were either inadequate or obsolete. Teachers apparently gave different explanations saying that science education is costly and difficult, and has limited job opportunities. Half the teachers interviewed by the NScS also said that more equipment was required to teach science subjects and their inadequate training was a limiting factor. These and other issues need to be addressed to motivate students to take up science and encourage the public to respond to science better. The stumbling blocks are factors related to policy and state support.