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Modi's Indian Science Congress speech was confused

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Dinesh C Sharma
Dinesh C SharmaJan 12, 2016 | 13:47

Modi's Indian Science Congress speech was confused

In his speech at the Indian Science Congress session in Mysore last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he had asked for "a framework of scientific audit for scientific departments and institutions in the government". He did not clarify who had been asked to develop this new framework for auditing the work of scientific departments, nor did he elaborate why he wanted such an audit. Nevertheless, the remark pointed to a serious issue which was last heard in the 1980s.

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At present, scientific departments are audited by the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) in the same way as other government departments. This is mostly a financial audit that often exposes critical issues like cost and time overruns, unproductive expenditure on projects or infrastructure, non-utilisation of equipment, poor planning, incomplete activities under projects, poor quality and under utilisation of available manpower, irregularities in transfer of technology to private sector and ethical violations in research. All these are serious issues and need urgent attention of scientific departments concerned. They are indicative of poor governance of research laboratories as well as central research agencies that fund them.

Scientists and technocrats in government labs and research councils have often argued that their work can't be audited in the same way as a road construction project or a rural employment scheme. Unlike non-science projects where goals are clearly set and expenses earmarked, scientific research projects have openended or flexible objectives and their outcomes are uncertain. This is a reality for pure science or fundamental research projects, and, therefore, they can't be judged only through time-bound financial audits.

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Certainly, some scientific criteria can be developed and applied to audit such projects. However, only a few of research projects in the country would fall in this category. A bulk of the research has fixed goals such as development of a vaccine or a drug, technologies for water purification or sanitation, new crop varieties, missile systems, weapon electronics, and so on. Such projects with clearly defined goals, timelines and budgets can be subjected to regular audits by CAG which has officials specialising in auditing scientific departments. The audit should be transparent and ground rule should be clear.

If the prime minister has a new framework for auditing functioning of research councils and labs from a socioeconomic and national development perspective, then it is going to be a completely different ballgame. Such an audit will be far more complex and tricky. It would mean a thorough review of the functioning of the scientific department, revising or setting new goals for them and reorienting their functioning to achieve them.

There can also be social audit of scientific departments by independent panels, on the lines of social audit panel set up by communications minister Rajesh Pilot for the department of posts in the early 1990s. It is, therefore, important for the government to spell out what kind of audit it plans and allow a discussion before embarking upon actual exercise.

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(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

Last updated: January 12, 2016 | 15:05
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