Emulate China to reverse brain drain: Nobel laureate

Aparna Banerji

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Tribune News Service

Phagwara, January 4

Nobel Prize winner in physics Ferderick Duncan Michael Haldane on Friday said India needs to emulate China to reverse brain drain.

The physicist, who bagged the 2016 Nobel Prize along with David J Thouless and John Michael Kosterlitz, said while science could only warn about global warming, it was only the politicians who could play a part in solving it.

Asking the young to be “numerically literate”, he said India needed an environment where scientific innovation was encouraged through experimental work — an area where China was leading the way.

He said, “India has to be a part of the technological developments of the future and China is investing a lot of money in this... That’s what Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also talking about. He wanted to encourage the state universities. I think you also need to prevent researchers going out. You want to keep funding top institutions and make it possible for productive people to stay, you need to think experimental. What China has done is, it has put a lot of money into experimental physics and material science. They have been quite successful in reversing the brain drain.”

Asked whether India needs to follow the example of China, he said, “It has to. The key is to identify excellent people. And setting up world-class centres of excellence for a better scientific culture.”

Questioned whether science was disturbing nature, he said, “Scientists or science is not disturbing nature. It’s the technologists. We need to reverse some of the bad effects of our technological advances too.”

Responding to a query on the failure of recent climate change summits in resolving the global warming crisis and whether scientists could find a solution to it, he said, “Through science, we are trying to learn about global warming. In some countries it has been paid heed to. I think we have a duty to tell the facts like they are. In science things are not really a matter of opinion. Scientists could just tell it like it is, but the politicians are the people who run society. We can’t make them do something.”

Meanwhile, Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani and Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will visit the Lovely Professional University campus on the third day of the Science Congress on Saturday.

Time capsule buried for posterity

• To remind the future generation about scientific advancements and civilisation progress, a time capsule with 100 items representing a cross-section of contemporary technology and country’s scientific prowess was buried at Lovely Professional University by two visiting Nobel laureates on the occasion of the 106th Indian Science Congress
• Israeli biochemist Avram Hershko and American physicist F Duncan M Haldane along with the Chancellor of the institute buried it at the university. The capsule was buried at a depth of 10 feet

Objects in container

• Objects which were kept in the five-side concrete and one-side glass-encased module included landline telephone, smart phone, weighing machine, water pump, stop watch, headphones, handy cam and pen drive 
• The capsule will also preserve several scientific equipment like rheostat and double microscope