Public R&D labs face attrition heat

Even as the world's largest public-funded research network ""India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) ""remains headless since January 1, 2007, irresistible job offers from private research sector is increasingly pulling scientists out of CSIR and other public R&D firms.

Last week, Ramesh Sharma (name changed), a senior scientist of National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, decided to end his long association with the prestigious public sector research lab and join a fast-growing pharmaceutical company in the same city. What attracted him most, apart from the fresh research challenges it posed, was a 20-fold increase in his salary.

Like Sharma, hundreds of scientists attached to India's public research organisations are negotiating similar offers from industry. The dream salaries and challenging research opportunities are making them prefer industry research in the private sector.

Even freshers, who earn between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 in government R&D labs, are being offered two to three times their salary by the industry.

The demand is heavy on researchers in the area of life sciences, computer sciences, electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering, says K V Raghavan, chairman, Recruitment and Assessment Centre, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

Salaries of scientists have gone up as a result of growing focus on R&D in the private sector as it fights to stay competitive in global markets.

While global research firms are finding India a cost-effective R&D outsourcing destination, domestic firms are in the process of enhancing their research capabilities to face the changed patent protection era "" hence the sudden demand for researchers.

Ironically, the government seems to be blissfully unaware of the crisis the CSIR and other public funded labs are in. The CSIR is without a full-time administrative head ever since R A Mashelkar, its high-profile Director General for over a decade, retired on December 31, 2006.

Though T Ramasamy, secretary, department of science and technology, is managing the situation on an additional charge, scientists feel that the CSIR should have a full-time head.

"Leading an organisation like the CSIR is an extremely serious issue. The succession plan was drawn by me and V Prakash's appointment as new director general was announced months before my retirement. He joined as an understudy on December 1, and I introduced him to the entire system. However, he couldn't take over due to medical reasons and the post remains vacant," Mashelkar says.

According to him, public research organisations are facing one of their biggest crises ever as they are increasingly losing senior scientists.

"The differential between industry salaries and CSIR used to be two- to three- fold a decade ago. Today it has grown to 10 - 20 times," he says.

"Unless the government takes this seriously, and offers better packages and incentives to scientists, we are to face a big problem," said Mashelkar.

While some CSIR officials feel the attrition rate to be around 10 per cent, Mashelkar feels that the damage is much serious. "Losing a research head is like losing 100 junior scientists. Considering the fact that the demand is more for senior researchers, the damage could be immense and can't be gauged in percentage," he explains. There are over 4,000 scientists in the CSIR system.

About half of them are in chemistry and life sciences streams. The seriousness of the issue could be gauged from the comments of M K Bhan, secretary, department of biotechnology (DBT), who says that the DBT is finding it extremely difficult to get new recruits or retain quality officials in its R&D organisations.

"We need to have a system that encourages scientists to work with us," he says.

Mashelkar adds: "The government should implement the recommendations of the Science Advisory Committee of the Prime Minister to encourage recruitment's in public research organisations. There is an urgent need to increase the retirement age from 60 to 65. Incentives to scientists should be more. Facilities should match the industry standards," he said.