Samir Shukla on some Indian academics

Worried Indian scientists and my friend’s sons
“As the story of my friend is obviously unique and one of a kind, I hope that it is not linked by my readers with my scientist friends I mentioned in the opening paragraph in any manner.

We all know that most of the academic community toiling in Indian institutes have been constantly engaged in pushing science and technology ahead for benefits of the nation and the result is evident. 

The state of the nation clearly proves that our academic researchers exactly know what are the areas of research that the nation needs them to work on and hence no one should dare ask them what to do, or rather no one should dare ask them what they are doing at all.

It is nothing but sheer misfortune that with so many hard-working researchers toiling in India, we remain the only large sovereign nation not to have won even one Nobel Prize for science. So, let us not start making false assumptions on that irrelevant trivia.

It is also just some dirty trick of fate that, with all these scientists diligently working and solving the problems of the nation for all these decades, we still have billions living below poverty line and enduring a hell of a life, as there is no doubt that scientists have no role to play in the prosperity of a nation.”

My comment: I did not read all the comments but I see this sort of things by some approximate Anna Karenina principles: “All large groups are similar” and “The larger the group, the closer it is to the general populace around”. I think that our views of academics were formed when the group was small with few shining lights highlighted by texts of an earlier period.