The IISERs have a leadership problem

The Indian government created the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) to offer students an intellectually vibrant research environment and to bring them into research at a relatively — vis-à-vis the Indian milieu — early stage.

The institutions prize autonomy as an essential ingredient of good science, including in the form of scientists being able to decide which questions are worth pursuing and with what resources. Top-down control is inimical to this vision. That said, the government also brought the IISERs within the statutory framework of the National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act 2007, which required each IISER to have a Board of Governors that included senior government officials and other government nominees. The IISER statutes specify, among others, the secretary of higher education and the director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru too.

While publicly funded science should be publicly accountable, suboptimal appointments or outright vacancies are objectionable as they can lead to policy paralysis — at best.

Multiple roles

Consider the current composition of the seven IISER Boards.

The IISc director is an ex-officio member of most IISERs. The chair of IISER Pune’s Board is also the chairperson of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. The chair of the IISER Berhampur Board was given “additional charge” while also chairing the Board of IIIT Guwahati; the Board also has nominated positions lying vacant, including one for an IIT director and two for eminent scientists.

IISER Bhopal’s current director is listed as the “director-in-charge” after their predecessor, Gobardhan Das, left to join NITI Aayog in June. At IISER Thiruvananthapuram, the chairperson simultaneously chairs the Boards of IIIT Kottayam and the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Kurnool.

There are also signs of churn among sitting government officials. Interim appointments are routine and vacancies can arise during transitions. Ex-officio positions also change when officials move between posts. But taken together, several IISERs are operating under temporary or incomplete leadership.

A closer look at the qualifications of the extant leaders also raises questions.

IISER Pune chairperson M. Madan Gopal is a retired IAS officer whose educational background is in commerce and journalism. Its director is a chemical engineer by training, whereas the IISERs have little focus on engineering. IISER Thiruvananthapuram chairperson Vijayalakshmi Deshmane is a surgeon. IISER Tirupati chairperson Hari Bhartia is a chemical engineer and co-founder of the Jubilant Bhartia Group. IISER Berhampur chairperson Satyabrata Dey is an executive in the footwear industry.

While there is no rule that the chairperson of a scientific institution must be a scientist, it matters for each institution’s credibility and vision. The government had earlier appointed the finest scientists to the IISERs’ helm before dropping the practice. Today, going by awards, fellowships or global achievement and recognition, there are few outstanding scientists in positions of authority on the IISER Boards.

The Boards can benefit from people with expertise in administration, industry, finance, and public policy — but there is a strong case to draw the leadership of institutions focused on basic science from the scientific community, where there are many people with distinguished research careers and substantial experience in running academic and research organisations.

The question is not about the competence of the current crop of leaders but why India’s many accomplished scientists are not being asked to lead institutions whose central purpose is basic science.

The availability of this ‘research cadre’ also calls into question the practice of moving the same people between institutions.

People familiar with the IISERs’ functioning today describe a situation where the administration is losing its ability to keep up with students’ needs vis-à-vis a good education in basic science. By design, the directors and the Board have the power to institute positive changes. However, as a senior scientist at one of the IISERs put it, “There is no vision or imagination and no sense of leadership propelling the institution towards its core goals of carrying out high-quality frontier research in and teaching basic science at an international level.”

Weakening autonomy

The Indian government’s choices are weakening the IISERs’ institutional autonomy. With ‘outsiders’ and people whose attention is already divided between multiple institutions as leaders, scientists have less control over decisions that affect their work.

An institution whose governance has begun to decline can still remain scientifically productive for many years as long as the people who built its reputation remain and the ‘IISER’ label is still valuable. But given the cumulative effects of the IISERs’ flagging leadership — of the institutions becoming less autonomous and less collegial — it is reasonable to brace for more warning signs, including concentration of authority and an increasingly risk-averse institutional culture.

None of them is conducive to good science or a good education.