India Needs A Nobel Prize Mission, Says Ex IIT Director

Former director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi has advocated a national mission for India to bag a Nobel prize in science. Professor V. Ramgopal Rao recently shared a LinkedIn post where he extensively wrote about the need and ways to help Indian innovators to become Nobel laureates.

Prof Rao writes that it won’t be possible with “everyone wishing it” but would require “careful long-term planning, investments, a chance of culture, and execution.” Prof Rao, who himself has 49 patents to his name in the area of electronic devices and nanoelectronics, said that this needs to be a national mission.

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” he wrote in a tweet, quoting Norman Vincent Peale, a famous self-help author. Sharing a screenshot of the LinkedIn post, he added, “India needs to launch a National Mission for winning a Nobel Prize in sciences in the next 20 years, out of work done here. Technology with deep science is like stamp collection. They need to go hand-in-hand.”

Take a look:

According to Prof Rao, unless 50 people knock on the “Nobel doors” every year, it would not happen. Prof Rao then listed some ways that this agenda can be shaped into a reality. The country needs to identify 100 research topics with a chance of winning the Nobel Prize and identify 500 young faculty talents from top Indian institutions “doing cutting edge research.”

Prof Rao suggested that this group of talented individuals must “regularly network” with the Nobel Laureates all over the world. Things such as generous research grants, fully-paid exchange tips, and flexible sabbaticals should be a part of this mission, along with “Laureates-in-residence programmes,” said Prof Rao, in the post.

Till now, only four Indian-origin people have won a Nobel Prize in sciences, including the famous Indian physicist, C.V Raman.

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