The Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) was established in 1914 by two British chemists – Professor J.L. Simonsen and Professor P.S. MacMahon – in Kolkata with the intent to promote scientific enquiry and build the foundation for scientific research in the country. Modelled on the lines of British Association for the Advancement of Science, the flagship idea of the ISCA was to organise an annual gathering of scientific researchers from across the country, and encourage them to share work that can enable advancement of research through collective wisdom, constructive criticism and knowledge sharing. This flagship event later came to be known as the Indian Science Congress (ISC) that would be organised in the first week of January every year, where the Indian scientific community would gather to discuss and share ideas. The first general president of this science congress was Ashutosh Mukherjee, father of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the ideological fountainhead of the current regime. After independence, the ISCA came under the supervision of the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru set the convention for inaugurating the science congress as one of the first events of the new year as its general president. He rarely missed any of the ISC meets till his demise in office. By then he had left a rich legacy – that the serving prime minister of India would inaugurate the annual science congress – and prime ministers, thereafter enthusiastically followed this tradition. The beginning of the endIn 1938, the science congress was opened for foreign dignitaries for the first time. In the early days, it attracted many luminaries of their field including immunologist Michael Heidelberg and astronomer James Jean. In the modern era, the participation list included trail blazers like noble laureates Ada Yonath, the first woman to win a science Noble Prize in 45 years, Robbin Warren, field medallist in Mathematics and Manjula Bhargava among others. With such a glorious past, the 102nd science congress was held in 2015 at the University of Mumbai. It is here that a paper, authored by one pilot-training principal, claimed that aircrafts more advanced than modern ones existed in ancient Vedic-era India was presented, sparking an outrage. The science congress that followed the year after, at the University of Mysuru in 2016, was packed with more creativity and an even more breathtaking flight of imagination. In this version, a paper titled “Lord Shiva: As a Greatest Environmentalist in the World” was slated for presentation by its author, a trained botanist and the then chairman of Madhya Pradesh Private University Regulatory Commission. The paper was cleared for presentation from 300-odd submissions and argued that Lord Shiva, regarded as the “destroyer of the cosmos,” was possibly the greatest environmentalist of the world and was supported by “evidence” like Shiva riding a rat, a peacock, and a mythic bull, and providing purified water of the Ganges river from his topknot. Unfortunately, the author failed to show after experiencing a “dramatic fall” from the stairwell and the audience was left devoid of the unparalleled scientific wisdom. However, one bureaucrat did end up on the stage with his paper on the ’scientific’ benefits of blowing a conch shell. In the audience that year to hear such pearls of wisdom on science was the Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Against the version of science that he’d studied and practiced all his life, the proceedings of the ISC appeared no more than a “circus” in his words and he vowed never ever to return to this event. The ISC continued for another eight years and since 2024, it remains suspended over funding issues and “operational” constraints. The demise of ISC shows Indian scientific research a mirrorThere is one half that sees everything wrong in the ISC story and there another that sees it as a winning step in the civilisational war. Like the idea of citizenship, the conception of science has come under scrutiny and needs resolution. There was that settled idea of science, and one actively sponsored by the saffron party’s predecessor, passionately sponsored by the first prime minister and practiced successfully by a noble laureate from the land. Then there is the emergence of a new definition that restatement of mythological and hagiographical accounts in the lingo of science to reclaim an imagined past is indeed science. The demise of ISC shows Indian scientific research a mirror – that it stands at this crossroad and until this paradox is not settled, it will be unsure of the path forward. One year after ISC’s demise, the average vacancy of permanent faculties in the 29 public state universities of Madhya Pradesh was found to be 80%. It was also found that Raja Shankar Shah state university in the city of Chindwara, established in 2019, has a sanctioned strength of 175 permanent faculty positions, all of them vacant. In Bhopal’s Barkatullah University, whose executive council recently showed expediency in passing the proposal to change the Urdu name of the university as if it is the last stumbling block to achieve greatness, the vacancy of permanent faculty stands at nearly 65%. This shortage is so severe that the same professors head multiple departments. Currently, the Madhya Pradesh State Service Commission (MPSSC) is in the middle of conducting entrance exams for the post of assistant professors after a gap of eight years. The last cycle of these exams was held in 2018, the results of which kept trickling in for the next four years. The state of IITs is not much different either, where the average vacancy of permanent faculty positions has persistently hoovered around 40%Starved of funding and staffThe departments in universities that spearhead scientific research thrives on continuity of trained and intellectual minds and are therefore in need for timely succession and adequate staffing at all times. From such well-staffed departments emerge multiple enquiries that translate into books, research papers and thesis for publications.But the chronic shortages in science departments across many public universities for years has broken this continuity and the contagion has spread into other areas that concern infrastructure, students’ participation and the overall atmosphere for research. Lab equipment in many of these under-staffed departments have rusted away or is now stored behind lock-and-key for there is no one to use them. Many universities even struggle to find students to pursue research, while the faculties that joined the profession during the heydays of ISC are signing out as retired souls, breaking the valuable chain of succession so needed in the research lab. There is no one to take the hand-over from the departing talent, no system to preserve the legacy of past research and no thought to archive the years of knowledge of retiring scholars as they move on for age or better pastures elsewhere. Prying administrationIf this was not sufficient of a blow, the governance for these universities is now a prying one. Research scholarships take months for disbursements and many grants and scholarships for research are now withdrawn. Continuous tightening of FCRA norms makes it debilitatingly impossible for publicly funded labs that are autonomous by statute to seek grants and pursue collaborations with institutions, with donors promoting research through funds and independent laboratories. The post of Vice-Chancellor has also undergone a make-over. Its Hindi name was elevated from a “Kulpati” to a “Kulguru” but its autonomy and empowerment was concurrently downgraded. Global research and papers can’t be accessed independently. International travel for participation in seminars, invitations to faculties from international universities to visit ours or proposals to pitch collaborative research with global institutions now need a chain of approvals that are beyond the vice-chancellors’ paygrade.For proponents of private education in higher education as a solution to the struggles of publicly funded universities, the quality of scientific research emerging from these private institutions is so mediocre that India attained the ignominy last year of having four of the world’s top 10 universities with the maximum number of retracted research papers, three of which were private institutions.The new private universities who claim to carry good intent will take another decade to produce any research output that can appear as a blip on globally tracked citation indexes. We need a publicly funded ecosystem of scientific researchWithout research, a university is nothing more than an examination controller and one that can operate with far less shenanigans and Kulgurus. A publicly funded autonomous university is also a promise of sovereignty to its citizens that access to a quality higher education is everyone and its research agenda is one of public good. Both these claims can’t be made by private alternatives. A publicly funded ecosystem of scientific research creates a research agenda for public good that might otherwise remain exclusionist and elective for a private one. The time is now for India to reflect upon its attitude towards the public-education infrastructure, scientific research and the nature of political sponsorship for it. AI’s dramatic rise has exposed the shortcomings of India’s scientific research infrastructure and the rush to plug these gaps through budgetary allocations, courting the private sector for the purpose, and organising events around it. Without addressing issues of governance that breed a culture designed to scuttle scientific research, such attempts will merely shadow box the issue. In the absence of a bottom-up public infrastructure for research that is autonomous in spirit and empowered to build scientifically curious minds, there will be no meaningful progress.While, the momentum in the public discourse swells seeking reforms in education, this is a selfish plea on behalf of Indian scientific research. The heightened public discourse about education reforms should also include discussions about the fate of scientific research in the country as it is the pinnacle of education in any society. Our research ecosystem needs its own awakening. On this plea, we will find a surprising unanimity among Ashutosh Mukherjee, Pandit Nehru and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Ankur Bisen is a Senior Partner at The Knowledge Company, and the author of ‘Wasted: The Messy Story of Sanitation in India, A Manifesto for Change’ (Pan Macmillan; 2019). The author is on X: @AnkurBisen1