Get in the best scientists, give them creative freedom, and innovation will happen. A scientific institute in Bangalore is showing the way
Nobody quite knows what Homi Jahangir Bhabha had in mind when he hired biologist Obaid Siddiqi in 1962 at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the hub of India’s nuclear programme. Perhaps he wanted to create a more well-rounded ethos by bringing in biology in an environment of physics and math—a routine practice in good institutions today, but a rarity in India then.
Rockstar researchers everywhere get market-based salaries, but NCBS, bound by Indian pay scales, can’t pay such salaries. So, it has found ways to get around this sticky issue. In some cases, the parent universities pay the salaries, and NCBS provides research grant and infrastructure—for which there is enough money in India now, whereas the West is facing a crunch. Researchers here are raising handsome grants from various national and international bodies. Being part of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), a well-funded agency, allows NCBS to be ambitious.
(This story appears in the 02 March, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)