CSIR declares Bhatnagar award for 2022 after months of speculations; four Bangaloreans on the list

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research on Monday announced the names of 12 winners of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards – including four from Bengaluru – putting at rest months of speculations of the Narendra Modi government doing away with India’s most prestigious science award.

Though Bhatnagar awards are traditionally announced on Sept 26, on the occasion of CSIR Foundation Day there was no such announcement last year, giving rise to intense debate and discussions within the academic community on whether the coveted prize would also be stopped in the line of many other scientific awards.

Even as the announcement ends such speculations for the time being, there are still no answers on why the names have been made public after a year and when will the winners of this year be selected.

Sources told DH that the selections for the 2022 winners were made in the last year itself, but the list was never made public for reasons best known to the CSIR. Also no calls had been initiated by the CSIR so far to select the 2023 awardees.

The awards were announced by CSIR director general N Kalaiselvi at the one-week-one-lab programme of the National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research, Delhi in the presence of Union Science Minister Jitendra Singh.

“The minister’s office played a key role to help CSIR get these results announced today,” she said, without elaborating on the nature of such “help”.

Out of the 12 winners, three are from Indian Institute of Science, four from various IITs and two from CSIR laboratories. The remaining three are from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and Microsoft Research Laboratory, Bengaluru.

For the second consecutive year, there are no women scientists on the coveted list. In 2021, all the 11 winners were men whereas in 2020, there were 11 men and three women who were selected as the Bhatnagar award winners.

“There are so many superb women scientists below 45. Their omission cannot be a statistical anomaly or a reflection of merit,” said Rahul Siddharthan, a scientist at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

The Union Home Ministry last year asked eight science and health departments to drastically cut down on the number of awards they confer and institute “new awards with high stature” including a special Nobel Prize like award (Vigyan Ratna) that would be open to all scientific disciplines. The CSIR, however, was allowed to retain the Bhatnagar award.

The coveted prize is given every year to scientists under the age of 45 years and carries a purse of Rs five lakh and a citation.

Winners:

Biological Sciences: (1) Ashwani Kumar: CSIR Institute of Microbial Technology,

(2) M Subba Reddy: CDFD, Hyderabad

Chemical Sciences: (1) AT Biju, IISc

(2) Debabrata Maiti, IIT Bombay

Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences: (1) Vimal Mishra, IIT Gandhinagar

Engineering Sciences: (1) Dipti Ranjan Sahoo, IIT Delhi

(2) Rajnish Kumar: IIT Madras

Mathematical Sciences: (1) Apoorva Khare, IISc

(2) Neeraj Kayal, Microsoft Research Lab, Bangalore

Medical Sciences: (1) Dipyaman Ganguli, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology

Physical Sciences: (1) Anindya Das, IISc

(2) Basudeb Dasgupta, TIFR