India's Top Annual Science Prizes Announced After A Year-Long Break

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards- country’s top annual science prize were announced on Monday. The awards have celebrated and nurtured the best science talent under 45. The awards acknowledged the work of 12 scientists and were declared at an event in New Delhi after a year. 

Two scientists were selected for five of the seven categories, namely, physical sciences, biological sciences, chemical sciences, mathematics and engineering sciences- while one each was selected in the fields of earth and planetary sciences, and medical sciences. 

“The award has given me fresh impetus to keep continuing my work, and is truly inspirational. I would be happy to help in giving back to Indian science,” said Apoorva Khare of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, one of the winners in the mathematical sciences category. Khare has authored a book titled Matrix Analysis and Entrywise Positivity Preservers.

“I am happy to receive this prestigious award for our work to understand the impact of climate change on hydrological extremes such as droughts and floods. This award shall motivate us to identify newer frontiers that can help in climate change, adoption of increasing extreme events and variability in water resources,” Vimal Mishra, awarded in the earth and planetary sciences category, told The Indian Express. 

The Bhatnagar Prizes are announced every year on September 26, the foundation day of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR)- the institute responsible for these awards. The awards were withheld last year despite the completion and finalisation of the selection process  and list of winners, respectively. Jitendra Singh, the Science and Technology Minister had then stated the reason that the government wanted to rationalise the awards given by all the science-related ministries. The awards reappeared at the launch function of the ‘One Week One Lab’ programme of CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (CSIR-NIScPR).

“Even though it is not conventional, the announcement of SSB 2022 is historically important, wherein not only CSIR, but the minister’s office (Dr Singh) played a very, very great and critical role. The timely support from the minister, his office, secretaries and all well-wishers made this possible. It is my responsibility to thank each and every one in the country to help CSIR to get these results announced today,” said N Kalaiselvi, Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Kalaiselvi announced the names of the 12 awardees in the presence of the Science and Technology Minister whilst acknowledging the strangeness of declaring winners at such an event. This year’s list did not have a single woman scientist which caused further disappointment in the scientific community. The previous year’s list with 11 awardees did not carry a single woman either, as pointed out by Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai. However, there were three women present in the list declared year before that. “It will be noticed. While I think gender sensitivity by and large is much better than in previous years, award lists like this suggest that women have to perform and achieve much, much more than men to be recognised at all. It is impossible to objectively justify 0/23 in the last two years’ award list,” he said.