On a winning trajectory

From home-grown fighter aircraft to discovering an Indus Valley Civilisation settlement in Haryana; from indigenous DNA vaccine against Covid-19 to using bacteria to clean up railway toilets, India saw several science and technology milestones in the first quarter of the new millennium. Some of them are breakthroughs in their own right, others have socio-economic importance.

The investment in S&T has risen although it is still short of two percent of GDP. Indian scientists are part of global mega-projects. Following the Human Genome Project, large-scale investment was made in genetics and the fruits have begun to emerge. However, there have also been shortcomings such as not having indigenous Bt cotton seeds in the public sector or the policy failure of being unable to attract the brightest students to S&T. But a new thrust has certainly been given since the turn of the millennium. Here, we pick the big five: 

Chandrayaan-3 and deep space missions

Chandrayaan-3’s soft landing on the moon near its south pole and the successful release of a rover that collected scientific data for nearly two weeks was possibly one of the biggest accomplishments for Indian scientists and engineers. It came four years after its predecessor Chandrayaan-2 crashed on the lunar surface. The success demonstrates Indian scientists’ mastery of critical technologies and signals India’s readiness to explore the outer world after spending four decades on sending remote sensing and communication satellites. Buoyed by the success, the government has approved a mission to Venus and more complex missions to the Moon. It has also given the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) a goal of landing an Indian on the moon in another two decades. One of the upcoming missions to the moon will test technologies that are required to take an Indian there.

The ISRO began its deep-space journey modestly with Chandrayaan-1 in 2008. It was an orbiter and its most critical scientific instrument Moon Mineralogy Mapper that found water molecules trapped inside minerals, came from NASA. It was followed by the Mars Orbiter Mission in 2014 and the first dedicated astronomy satellite AstroSat a year later before the Chandrayaan-2 setback. Things slowed down during the pandemic years, but the moon landing success was soon followed by the Aditya-L1 mission to the Sun and the astronomy satellite XpoSat to study pulsars and black holes. Another mission to study the exoplanets is in the works. All these are happening when steps are being taken to send the first Indian to space in an Indian spacecraft (Gaganyaan-1) without compromising on its socio-economic duties by launching more communication and imaging satellites. Space surely has no limits for scientists.

Homegrown Rotavirus vaccine

Unlike Chandrayaan-3, this didn’t make front-page banner headlines, but the story behind the first truly homegrown vaccine is no less fascinating. It all began in the mid-1980s and the research was over by the late 1990s. Two 'candidates' had been finalised. The development work leading to the selection of the right one and taking it to the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) began in 2000 with the formation of a consortium that included the manufacturing firm Bharat Biotech and institutes such as IISc Bengaluru and AIIMS Delhi.

Rotavirus is the most common and deadly cause of severe diarrhoea and dehydration in infants and young children killing over 450,000 worldwide including 100,000 plus from India. The idea for an Indian rotavirus vaccine first came into being in the mid-1980s when two independent groups of researchers spotted two unusual strains of rotavirus that infected newborns in hospital nurseries without making them sick. At AIIMS M K Bhan discovered one of those strains (116E) during his routine testing of newborns while at IISc C Durga Rao stumbled upon a similar strain (1321) at hospitals in Bengaluru and Mysuru.

After the first round of trials in 2004-05, the 116E strain was found to impart higher immunity to diseases (36.6% of 116E recipients as against 15.4% of 1321 recipients), leading the consortium to focus all efforts only on the 116E vaccine candidate. Two more rounds of trials followed, each churning out impressive results, paving the way for the development of a commercial vaccine that entered the UIP in 2016 in four states on a trial basis. Within two years, the vaccine was taken to 10 states. Currently, the government procures about 80-90 million doses every year. It has been pre-qualified by the WHO and is today exported to more than 20 countries. The indigenous Rotavac is also cheaper than similar vaccines made by multinational pharma giants.

Accurate forecasting of cyclones

The Odisha super-cyclone killed nearly 10,000 people. The meteorologists' inability to provide an accurate forecast with sufficient lead time and the government’s failure to evacuate led to one of India’s worst natural disasters. Over the next 15 years, the Indian Meteorological Department has put in place an elaborate system that provides 100% accurate cyclone forecasts at least five days in advance for the local administration to move people out of danger zones. In recent supercyclones such as Phailin, Amphan and Fani, the casualty figures are minuscule compared to 1999.

There are several contributing factors behind this remarkable turnaround. The two most crucial ones are the network of 39 Doppler radars, of which 15 are along the coastline, and indigenous modelling and decision support systems for accurately predicting the cyclone’s track and intensity. The first Doppler radar came in 2002 and it took two decades to build the existing network. Another 34 radars will soon be added of which 2-3 will be on the coast. The IMD currently has seven cyclone forecast models and can use a few additional ones from other global agencies. “We use 10-12 models to give predictions on every aspect of a cyclone,” says Mrutyanjay Mohapatra, IMD chief. “We also have very good computations to run these models,” adds M Rajeevan, former Secretary to the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences. This, undoubtedly, is one of the major successes of Indian scientists and one that continues to have an immense social impact.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

UPI is another significant technological intervention that came and conquered within a decade, making cash transactions a thing of the past for crores of Indians. In many urban localities, even small-time roadside vendors decline cash and ask the customers to make UPI payments. According to the Union Finance Ministry, between Jan 1 and Nov 30, there were 15,547 crore transactions worth Rs 223 lakh crore.

The story began in 2010 with the launch of an immediate payment service with the Union government deciding to give a push towards digital transactions. In 2012, the Reserve Bank of India set up a working group to study the feasibility of creating a unified payment system. The group recommended creating a common platform to integrate various banking systems and make inter-bank transactions more convenient. In 2015, the National Payment Corporation of India — a not-for-profit organisation founded by the RBI — and the Indian Banks' Association began the work. The UPI was launched in April 2016 with 21 banks. As of now, 637 banks support UPI.

UPI’s phenomenal growth happened due to three factors: integration with the banks, linking it with Aadhaar and unprecedented penetration of smartphone and mobile broadband networks. A game changer in the digital transaction landscape, UPI is also recognised by seven other countries including France, UAE and Singapore. Currently, there are over 350 million active UPI users in India and more than 340 million QR codes at various merchant locations to facilitate payments in a seamless digital manner. The UPI ecosystem is expansive, featuring over 77 mobile applications currently. India’s retail transactions, in that sense, have changed forever.

Bringing back the vultures

After two decades of hard work, ornithologists, wildlife scientists and forest officials have now taken the first few steps to bring back the vultures to the wild after the raptors were wiped off from most parts of the country, thanks to diclofenac and similar drugs. The country had over 40 million vultures in the 1980s, when the first sign of their unusual deaths was recorded at Keoladeo Ghana National Park, between the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. By the turn of the millennium, the number of oriental white-backed vultures and long-billed vultures declined by more than 92%. By 2007, they had declined by an astonishing 99.0% leaving just a few birds in the wild.

Sensing an extinction danger, conservationists began the artificial breeding of vultures, even though the process is notoriously slow and troublesome. The first specialised centre was at Pinjore in Haryana and later more such facilities came up in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Assam. Several hundred birds were bred in captivity in those facilities before it was decided to release them in the wild. The first release of captive-bred vultures happened in 2020. In the last few years, over 50 such birds were released successfully. In 2024, two batches of 10 birds each were set free at Tadoba-Andheri and Pench tiger reserves. This is expected to help the vultures thrive as they can recycle the remains of prey hunted by the big cats and thus complete the carbon and nitrogen cycles. 

2025: All set for the big leap

In the next 12 months, Indian scientists will operationalise the first nuclear fast breeder reactor heralding stage II of India’s three-stage atomic energy programme, besides completing all the trials for sending an Indian to space in an Indian spacecraft. The long-awaited Samudrayaan will be readied for its first dive up to a depth of 500 metres under the ocean. The Gaganyaan mission to space and the Deep Ocean Mission are scheduled for 2026 but the two specialised craft will be ready this year.

The next few months will witness progress on two astronomy payloads, Pratush and Daksha, to explore the mysteries of the universe. While Pratush will look for signatures of the 'cosmic dawn', Daksha will study the afterglow of gravitational waves. India’s most advanced earth-observing satellite NISAR — built in collaboration with NASA — will also be launched.

Indian biologists and medical researchers will be a step closer to the launch of a new antibiotic named WCK 5222, which has shown immense promise in clinical trials. This is from the same company that came up with another antibiotic named WCK 4873 (nafithromycin) designed to treat both typical and atypical drug-resistant bacteria. In 2025, scientists are expected to further finetune gene therapy for the treatment of cancer (CAR-T cell therapy), haemophilia and sickle cell anaemia. DNA-based biomarkers to distinguish between shahtoosh and pashmina shawls and a compact drain cleaning machine may also become a reality. Exciting times, certainly!