Later this month, 33 scientists will be awarded the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar (RVP), the current government’s revamped approach to independent India’s long tradition of annually awarding scientists with promise. The rejig is in doing away with the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) awards, once awarded to scientists under 45 by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). It comprised a certificate, a cash prize and some additional monetary benefits. The RVP replaces it with a medal and a certificate and, renaming it the Vigyan Yuva-SSB. There are also other RVP awards — the Vigyan Shri, Vigyan Ratna and Vigyan Team awards. The latter will be for scientists over 45 who have made distinguished contributions in science and technology over their entire career as well, as for teams of scientists and technologists with exceptional contributions.
In theory the total number of awards, under all categories, is capped at 56, though those selected for this year are fewer than the ceiling. The team award has been conferred on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s ‘Chandrayaan-3 team’, which certainly has over three members. These may well be technicalities and, being the first edition of the prizes, could be transitional. The list of awardees spans a wide range of fields from astrophysics to agriculture, and this is not unique to the RVP, the awardees are overwhelmingly from centrally funded and the most elite of India’s scientific and research institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, CSIR and atomic energy institutions. The RVP awards were instituted after the Ministry of Home Affairs and heads of science departments concluded in 2022 that there were too many awards being given out by individual scientific departments and that it was necessary to trim them and raise their ‘stature’ to national awards. While distinguished scientists have always received the Padma awards, just as those in other fields, the original schema for scientist-specific awards was to encourage them to stick to research, whose outcomes are not always immediately tangible and whose impact is not immediately assessed. Much like Olympic medals, Nobel Prizes continue to elude Indian scientists and this has been a touchy topic for many governments. The national awards are not a substitute or catalyst for the Nobels. The government should not assume that scientists only crave honour and recognition. Too many scientists in India labour with minimal funds, substandard equipment and a discouraging milieu, forcing them to compete at the cutting edge of research with their hands tied. Raising the budgetary allocation and making scientific research more rewarding in India will do greater service to science than tokenism.
