PS: I wrote it on 26th December 2023, 2am during a cozy night in Kolkata, thought would be great to public it today.
Imagine born in a society where everyone wants to become a doctor, engineer or a lawyer as a “stable life” job. People think being a researcher is great intellectually, definitely but it is not a high paying job. You got to be the best of the best as a scientist in order to earn equally as your ‘average’ peers. In some sense, definitely it is true. But imagine being into the infinite illusions of fundamentalism and steretypicalism where your marxist and slightly narcissistic mentality and ideology resembles the mere existence of a sociopathic scientist. You are blindly diving into the new innovations as the days pass by. When you sleep all you could think of is how you can translate the current conventional affordable mindset leading to the fatalities of the innocent people working in industries. How the world could be converted into a place where non-ideality is the new ideality, and thinking out of the box is actually thinking inside the box (maybe could be known as Schrödinger’s box).
A nation which is obsessed from the most simple things like politics, where every action even in the world of science is the mere governance of a political stunt, how can the mentality be changed, where we can stand neck to neck or even better than the Russians, Koreans, Japanese or even the pretentious western world. The world of research has delved as low as to publishing articles non stop of readiness level 1 rather than looking at practical solutions to combating real life situations at readiness level 8-9. From Bhatnagar awards to even the small conferences, biasness and political relations help in winning the awards. How will the ‘actual’ Indian researchers have motivation? Why would the Indian students not go abroad in this situation? Will even me writing this make a change?
Where endless tax payer’s money goes into pockets of the politicians rather than towards guiding a change towards the progress of the country, is there still hope? As all of these questions came in my head a night before my speaker session in Kolkata, I was almost speechless. Should I change my career path? Should I quit research? Or should I go to abroad like everyone else and not work towards the systematic and comprehensive progress of my nation? Or should I give it my all to define the new era of Indian research never seen since independence? Will the path be easy? Will it make me mad like einstein, oppenheimer, edison? Am I made for this?
All I could think of was no one tried changing it, and if they did they became the part of the system making them like everyone else. Do I have to first climb the ladder of the Indian conventional research system and then break it in order to establish a new pillar of Indian advanced sciences?
All these questions were rambling in my head, when I realize, maybe it’s a long road towards a new energy transition revolution, maybe it will be the toughest road ever taken. But it will be fun, maybe as fun as what einstein thought while analyzing and illustrating the dual nature of light.