People fret about the buses India has missed in its technological growth. The list is familiar: aircraft, advanced weapons, new materials, and biotechnology . In each, we look at what others built decades ago and ask why we did not. There is value in this introspection, and there is danger. The value is that it forces us to ask whether our systems can be streamlined and enabled. Catching up is not a bad thing. Much of the world’s industrial history is a history of catching up. The danger is that catch-up-itis can become a habit. If our ambition is always defined by what someone else has already done, we will always arrive late, pay for licences and know-how, and build on foundations laid elsewhere. The costs of technological catch-up are a heavy burden, and they recur with every new wave.
Today, the distance and time from curiosity to application are short. Much of our understanding of how genes are regulated came from studying viruses that infect bacteria. More recently, studying how bacteria defend themselves gave us CRISPR technology within just a few years, which has an extraordinary range of applications. This shift lets thinking and training lead, and it shows that investing in fundamental research will enable leading than playing catch-up. The bus we need to board is the next one, and it has not yet left. Third is flexibility. Many say we are a low-trust society and that our regulators should trust our research system more and be more flexible. However, India does have many high-quality islands of excellence in universities, institutes and laboratories. These institutions do comply with the rules and regulations, and should be freed from the weight of General Financial Rules compliance, a weight few other countries place on their scientists. Accountability should be measured by outcomes, and not by procedure at every step. Flexibility can allow these institutions to leap ahead.
Because compliance with guidelines is poor, necessitating onerous rules, the response to this is to point out that trust is low. However, over the past 50 years or so, we have increasingly seen fundamental research and application sewn together at the hip.
