Drive for accessibility sees research relayed in regional tongues instead of English Scientists and policymakers across India are aiming to bring science to the nation’s citizens and residents whose main language is not English. They’re producing content such as articles and podcasts, and giving talks about discoveries and studies in health science, biology, biotechnology and astronomy in some of the nation’s 22 official languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil. As one of the languages used officially by the Indian government, English is largely considered to be the country’s language for science — but just 12% of the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens can speak and write it. Those who are trying to broaden the mix note that many more people will be able to access scientific content if it is available in other languages. “Speaking and writing in regional languages makes science more inclusive,” says Maggie Inbamuthiah, founder of Mandram (which means ‘platform’ in Tamil), an organization based in Chennai that seeks to create a platform on which ideas in science and technology are communicated in regional languages, including Tamil and Kannada. Initiatives to write about science and produce science-related content in languages other than English have been under way for several decades, as many urban schools and most higher-education institutions moved to an English-based curriculum. Those multi-language efforts started to expand with the advent of the Internet, which has provided easy access to content, new media, platforms for distribution, and the ability to find collaborators and new audiences. Digital spaces and media have brought new players to the undertaking, and have re-energized those who have been involved in these efforts for years. Language evolution Although digital platforms and social media help researchers and others to communicate scientific findings and discoveries to the public, any such endeavour is pointless if readers, viewers or listeners cannot speak or read that language. Few of India’s languages have an up-to-date lexicon of scientific terms, and many researchers in the country have long become accustomed to thinking and writing about science in English, says Inbamuthiah. Still, she notes, language is fluid and adaptable. “We enrich a language by adding new words,” she says. “With time, we become more comfortable using them.” Today, the effort to communicate science in multiple languages has a number of participants. Kollegala Sharma, a zoologist and senior principal scientist at the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR) in Mysuru, India, has been producing Janasuddi (jana means both smart and knowledge and suddi means news in Kannada), a weekly science podcast, since September 2017. The 20-minute episodes, which comprise science research, news and interactive sessions that might include audience questions or comments, is in Kannada and is circulated through the WhatsApp platform. Listeners mainly include public high-school teachers — about 1,000, up from the 20 or so when Sharma first launched the programme. It’s also available on public radio. The Indian government is supporting the endeavour. K. VijayRaghavan, a molecular biologist and principal scientific adviser for the government, is a vocal proponent of making science accessible to people in their first language. He is working to provide increased funding and support for such efforts, and engages with many science communicators on social media, including Twitter. Spreading influence Other initiatives are emerging. Research Matters, a website that curates science news and articles in multiple languages and has more than 700,000 visitors, launched in November 2016. TED Talks India was launched in December 2017, and features prominent scientists who discuss topics such as neuroscience and astronomy in Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. In January, the Indian Department of Science and Technology teamed with Doordarshan, a public service broadcaster, to launch two science-communication initiatives, DD Science, shown on Doordarshan, and Internet-based India Science. Both feature science-based programming in Hindi and English. Others are also exploring the podcast realm. Last July, IndSciComm, an online science-communication collective, started Sea of Science, a podcast series in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese and Tamil that talks about model organisms used in biological research. The series producers say that it is challenging to translate scientific terms and concepts into regional languages. “But working on them is just as much about love of language and wanting to reach out to people as it is an exercise of scientific understanding and language experience,” says Shruti Muralidhar, a neuroscience postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and one of the producers. She says that they had to turn to online dictionaries, scientific lexicons and Google for support. The producers also worked out a system of ‘romanization’ that helped them to keep some terms intact while maintaining the cadences and sentence structure specific to the language. While writing the script for the Tamil podcast, producer Abhishek Chari, a freelance science communicator in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had to translate the English word ‘metabolism’ into Tamil. Etymologically, it comes from the Greek word metabolē (from metaballein, ‘to change’) plus the suffix ‘-ism’. But trying to directly translate this word into Tamil (possibly with the term maatram, meaning ‘change’) won’t capture the biological meaning that the word ‘metabolism’ is used to convey, says Muralidhar. “Looking it up on Google Translate, valarchithai came up as a Tamil equivalent of metabolism. This worked perfectly because valarchithai is a compound word consisting of ‘grow’ (valar) and ‘disperse or shatter into pieces’ (chithai), so the term would mean ‘grow plus disperse’,” she says. “The agglutinative (putting multiple words together) nature of the Tamil language came to our rescue.” Last June, Inbamuthiah partnered with the Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC) to organize The Jigyasa Project, a one-night presentation in Bengaluru of science talks and audience-interactive sessions in Kannada, Hindi and Tamil. A second presentation was held in December 2018. Each event included six scientist-presenters, had 100–150 attendees, and covered topics from genetics to intellectual property. The organization plans to continue to hold events every June and December. The 12 scientists who took part agreed that their presentations were challenging because they required them not just to translate talks into another language, but also to translate the underlying scientific concepts. “I was quite nervous giving a talk in Hindi, and it was a big challenge for me,” says Uma Ramakrishnan, a molecular ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru. “I thought about what I was going to say, and rehearsed it with some of my Hindi-speaking students, just to make sure I was communicating my thoughts correctly. Local benefits Ramakrishnan thinks that the effort to communicate science in languages other than English is very important, especially for field researchers like herself, whose work is local and regional, such as investigating tigers in Rajasthan or biodiversity in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot along India’s west coast. “Doing fieldwork across India, my team and I have often informally communicated our research in Hindi or Malayalam to local people,” she says. “For the people who live in these places, this is one way in which science can feel tangible and local. Platforms like Jigyasa provide an opportunity to make this more accessible to a larger audience.” Mahinn Ali Khan, spokesperson for BLiSC, says that she observed a real sense of camaraderie between the audience and the scientists at Jigyasa. “Speaking in your own language helps you immediately drop the formality and reserve,” she says. Khan thinks that, although researchers are eager to engage with non-scientists, the shift to accepting science as a subject that can be discussed in a language other than English still faces some resistance from the public. “At this point, these are passion-driven projects for most of us,” agrees Inbamuthiah.   If you have a career story that you'd like to share, then please complete this form, or send your outline by email.

Microbiologist Yogesh Chawla was part of the team that led the protests demanding hike in research fellowships in India during 2014-15. He rues in this guest post that not much seems to have changed in the country’s treatment of its research scholars since. Following months of agitation by young scientists across India, the Indian government announced a hike in fellowships for research scholars earlier this month (February 2019). The stipends for junior research fellows (JRFs) were raised from a monthly Rs 25,000 to Rs 31,000, and that for senior research fellows (SRFs) from Rs 28,000 to Rs 35,000. The research scholars have been protesting every few years to bring to light the abysmal pay parity, delayed and irregular disbursal of stipends, semester fee charges, and scarcity of fund allocated to science. The protests typically last for a few months reaching a crescendo on social media, and finally end with the science administration promising and then delivering a hike. India’s current government has enhanced their fellowship twice, almost doubling it from Rs 16,000 in 2014 to Rs. 31,000. It is a step, albeit small, in the right direction to bridge the gap in pay disparity of researchers. However, the challenges facing India’s research scholar are far from over. History of protests During the fellowship hike movement of 2014-15, five of us scholars represented the protesting researchers in negotiations with the institutional authorities and government representatives. Several issues were discussed at length then, and still remain unresolved. Policy changes that were mooted then to streamline the system are still pending. A hike is not the only thing to fulfill the vision of better scientific rigour or improvement in the quality of Indian science. One of the objectives of such fellowship hikes is to attract talent to science disciplines by providing economic emoluments parity, laurels, awards and recognition. The need of the hour is to have a multi-pronged approach to bring Indian science at par with world standards, to make Indian research relevant to the country’s needs, to transform India into a torch bearer of scientific excellence, technological advancements and innovations. These are important but imposing challenges for India and the country’s science policy is a key tool to overcome them. Rewarding merit How do we bring rigour into India’s science? Can we have measures to reward scholars – the backbone of our scientific quest – who work tirelessly beyond stipulated office hours? Will rewarding the first author for publishing quality research be a game changer?  Publishing in high impact journals may not be the ultimate or accurate parameter of judging the quality of science but it is a practical parameter. A thorough scientific study in a reputed journal does suggest a work of excellence. Impact factors, citations or the impact of research on problems specific to India can be taken as criteria to judge merit. The overarching idea is to reward hard work, judged and scrutinised for scientific quality and rigour by independent peers. This way, we would be able to bring equity to the hard and diligent work. Any scientific misconduct or falsification of data should be made punishable. Currently, Indian authors publish around 100,000 articles every year but their average citation impact is around 0.8, which is nearly half of the citation impact of articles published from USA or UK (~1.6)1. Rewards for and equity to good quality work would boost the overall scientific rigour. It wouldn’t cost much to the government exchequer but would certainly impact the morale and enthusiasm of researchers favourably. It could be a robust way to kick start ideas, innovations and excellence. Likewise, universities, departments and institutions should be rewarded for their scientific excellence. However, when impact factors of publications become the criteria for a reward, they potentially exclude scholars and scientists looking at grass root problems (that may not be very popular research areas but are high on social benefits) or high impact work in a scientific journal. Scholars of such fields should be recognised through other laurels and awards. Another policy change that may ensure a respectable life for senior researchers wanting to continue research in India is to enhance the fold increase of the fellowships between JRF to SRF and SRF to the postdoctoral level (say, around 1.4 to 1.5-fold of their previous level). SRF and postdoctoral researchers are generally in their late 20s or early 30s, a time they typically start or support a family. Scholars who earn their PhDs in Indian institutions should be rewarded since many JRFs leave Indian PhD programmes to pursue PhDs in foreign labs or institutes. JRF fellowship shouldn’t be a stop-gap arrangement for aspiring graduates of foreign universities. A JRF scholar who continues research in India and gets promoted to SRF should be rewarded with a healthy raise in stipend to pursue research in India. The same logic applies to postdoctoral fellows. The long-debated issue of brain drain could have a solution in a good postdoctoral fellowship with independent grants. The Chinese initiatives “Thousand Talents Plan” and “Thousand Youth Talents Plan”2are great examples of how to attract scholars to postdoctoral positions through government grants and fellowships and to pursue them to return and serve home institutions. This way, trained and qualified PhD scientists could fuel the nation’s economic and scientific growth and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cry of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan, Jai Vigyaan and Jai Anusandhaan” would sound real. India by the numbers China’s plan to recruit talented researchers (Yogesh Chawla is a PhD from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He can be contacted at yogi1chawla@gmail.com.)

More than 100 researchers describe their work and the struggles they face, including gender bias and achieving a positive work–life balance. Two science journalists in India continue to build on The Life of Science, a multimedia website that they designed and launched in 2016 to highlight the research and lives of more than 100 women in the country. The site, founded and run by Nandita Jayaraj and Aashima Dogra, aims to chronicle the scientists’ experiences in the lab and field. Jayaraj and Dogra, who work full-time on the site, compile feature stories, blogposts, podcasts, video and picture features about the women, whose work spans the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The journalists met in 2014 in Bangalore, while working on a now-defunct children’s science magazine. When this shut down in 2015, they decided to explore their mutual interest in science communication. Dogra had already planned to travel the country on a brief busman’s holiday, and visited the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Kalimpong to talk to women who worked there. Meanwhile, Jayaraj was interviewing geophysicist Kusala Rajendran at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and biophysicist Aruna Dhathathreyan at the Central Leather Research Institute in Chennai. When the two journalists conferred about the information they had gathered, they decided to create a website to publicize the stories. “We were curious about the science under way in laboratories in our back yard,” says Jayaraj about the site’s early days. “We also wanted to break the stereotype of the scientist as an old male person.” As the two began writing full-time, they crowdfunded for their work on the Indian platform BitGiving. Jayaraj and Dogra have since launched a second campaign to fund their work on the site, which includes compiling some of the content into two books. Each scientist’s story offers a glimpse into her world — from the physical environment in which she lives and works, to the nature of her research and how she reached her present position. “I particularly like how the narratives let us see the woman behind the science and scientific journey,” says Vidita Vaidya, a neuroscientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, who is featured on the site. The site showcases India’s diverse research landscape. Some of the scientists work with state-of-the-art equipment such as dilution refrigerators, confocal microscopes and high-performance computing clusters; others make the most of sparse funds and scant supplies. Yet the stories’ common threads resonate with many others who aspire to, or are navigating, a scientific career: the struggles to balance family life and career, and to counter bias and stereotypes. The interviewees offer ideas for ameliorating some of the struggles, such as establishing campus child-care facilities and promoting female scientists into leadership positions. “Nothing on this scale has ever been done before,” says Vaidya. She hopes that the site can help bring together those who are profiled, as well as other women who work in STEM in India. Jayaraj and Dogra continue to find more women to profile. Viewer numbers and other metrics are not available, but the developers intend to continue the site in perpetuity. Indian online news sites including The Wire and Firstpost have syndicated some of the articles. Those profiled are delighted at the chance to connect with readers. Number theorist Kaneenika Sinha at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune has received e-mails from parents seeking suggestions for training their mathematically talented child, junior scientists who plan to repatriate and want ‘insider’ information, and students with questions about her work. Jayaraj and Dogra are experimenting with different formats, including photo stories, cartoons and podcasts. “We see The Life of Science not really as an entity or ‘our’ project,” the two say, “but what it stands for — and that is the voices of women in science.”