OSMJ (2016) 8-11 © STM Journals 2016. All Rights Reserved Page 8 OmniScience: A Multi-disciplinary Journal ISSN: 2231-0398(online), ISSN: 2347-9949(print) Volume 6, Issue 2 www.stmjournals.com Probing India’s Failure to Produce Nobel Laureates in Science after CV Raman Hardev Singh Virk* Visiting Professor, SGGS World University, Fatehgarh Sahib (Punjab), India Abstract India’s track record is very poor, if we consider the number of Nobel Laureates produced by India since the inception of Nobel Prizes in 1901. Rabindra Nath Tagore was the first Indian recipient to receive this coveted Prize in 1913 in Literature. CV Raman was the second Indian to be awarded this prize in 1930 for his world famous discovery known as ‘Raman Effect’. After these two, some Indians have been awarded Nobel Prizes in Science, Literature, Economics and for promoting Peace, but most of these Indians were awarded for their work done in other countries, except for two Peace Prizes. It clearly shows that Indians have potential to win Nobel Prizes, but there is something wrong in the Indian ethos that we fail to produce Nobel Laureates on Indian soil. The reasons of our failure are analysed in this article with special reference to CV Raman, our first and last Nobel Laureate in Science during the last 86 years. Keywords: Indian Nobel Laureates, CV Raman, IACS Calcutta, Golden Era, Biography, Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR), DST INSPIRE *Author for Correspondence E-mail: hardevsingh.virk@gmail.com INTRODUCTION The era of 1930s is known as ‘Golden Era of Indian Science’. Indian scientists like JC Bose, CV Raman (Figure 1), DS Kothari, SN Bose, MN Saha, DM Bose and many others produced world class research publications comparable with anywhere in the world. After 1947, India launched on its Science and Technology development programme by setting up a chain of National laboratories under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Tata Institutes of Science at Bangalore and Bombay, having earned the international reputation in research, were already functional before 1947. An ambitious program to develop nuclear energy, using indigenous nuclear power reactors, was initiated under the supervision of HJ Bhabha as Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission. There was proliferation of universities in India after independence; however, they failed to produce Nobel Laureates. We can only boast for Calcutta University which produced the first and last Nobel Laureate in Physics, CV Raman, during the last 86 years since 1930, the year Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize. Rajinder Singh writes in introduction of Raman’s biography [1]: “Within India and abroad, the Indian physicist Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman, remains a legendary Figure in the history of science. At the end of the 1920s he founded the Raman spectroscopy, an analytical tool to determine the molecular structure of substances. He was the first Asian to win the coveted Nobel Prize in the field of physics.” He further writes: “Author’s aim is to show the achievements of Indian scientists in the field of Modern Western Science, and obviously show that the ‘Indian brain’ is as good as that of a man/woman from Western culture”. I am somewhat astonished and intrigued by the second statement of author. If ‘Indian brain’ is as fertile as anywhere in the West, then why India failed to win a 2 nd Nobel Prize in Physics (or any other area of Science in India) after CV Raman? We have to look into the reasons, which may be classified as socio-cultural, religious and political. When the British-Indian Government established three Universities in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857, it was envisaged that Modern Science will be taught in vernacular languages in Indian Universities.