In 2010, subject to government approvals, Indian farmers will seed their fields with transgenic brinjals—brinjals with a genetic variant that, courtesy Monsanty-Mahyco Ltd and a clutch of agricultural universities, protect them from insects. But 14 years ago, Polumetla Ananda Kumar successfully planted the first Indian transgenic brinjals in a field in west Delhi. Then he promptly burnt the entire crop to the ground. Kumar, head of the National Plant Biotechnology Centre at...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline...

We need to recognise that there is no intellectual democracy; elitism in science is inevitable and needs to be promoted.  The Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman had famously said, ‘the difficulty with science is often not with the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones. A certain amount of irreverence is essential for creative pursuit in science.’ The first grand challenge before Indian science is that of building some irreverence. Our...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...

India needs more science hubs. It is their inhabitants who will determine the achievements which will make lasting contributions to society.  A little over three decades ago, my parents visited my wife and me in the United States, for the first time. I distinctly remember my mother’s hurt looks when she saw me loading the dishwasher or mowing the lawn or just taking out the garbage. She wondered why, after...