David Gross, the 2004 Physics Nobel laureate, sees enormous potential in Indian science but also expressed his disappointment with the scientific progress of the nation.
Karnataka recently hosted its first Quantum India Bengaluru (QIB) 2025 event in Bengaluru on July 31 and August 1. The first day saw a healthy participation from startups, government officials, tech companies and educators from institutions like IISc, RRI, among others.
The event also saw foreign participation, with the highlight being the presence of Duncan Haldane (Princeton University), the 2016 Physics Nobel laureate and David Gross (UCSB), the 2004 Physics Nobel Laureate.
Gross, who won the Nobel Prize along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, spoke to AIM exclusively on the sidelines of QIB.
Drop in R&D Investment
Gross helped establish the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) in Bengaluru a decade ago, and believes India is falling behind its global competitors despite having “enormous potential”. He cited a substantial decrease in government spending on research and development (R&D) as a primary reason.
He expressed that he is “very depressed” that the Indian economy has improved dramatically in the last 10 years. Still, the amount of money and resources that the Indian government gives to research and development has decreased substantially over the past 10 years.
India’s R&D investment was 0.8% of its GDP, he cited. “This has since dropped to 0.64%.” He argued that this approach is not suitable for a country aspiring to be a world leader, as India’s GDP growth has been accompanied by a decline in its relative investment in future development.
In contrast, on July 1, India approved the Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) scheme, which aims to scale up private sector participation in research and innovation across strategic and emerging domains. The scheme, backed by a ₹1 lakh crore corpus, is poised to offer long-term financing or refinancing at low or nil interest rates.
Gross noted that while he is “impressed by the young Indian talent,” he is “not that impressed with the Indian government”. He stated that “some of the best colleagues in the United States are Indian students, postdocs, and faculty.”
However, he feels India is “falling farther behind” in a relative sense compared to other rapidly developing scientific economies like Korea and China.
Duncan Haldane agreed as he added to the conversation: “It can’t just be the government. It has to be the industry as well.” But, the two instantly pointed out that they’re not asking to put pressure on the industry since “software companies are now facing a lot of things. They’re investing in everything.”
India vs China vs USA
Gross shared an incident from his first visit to India. Looking at the development, he believed that no other country stood a chance in scientific or even quantum development. According to him, India could have come out as a winner in the tech race.
“It [India] had many advantages that China didn’t have. I must say I’m disappointed,” he said.
He believes that investing in science is an investment in the future that pays many times over. He pointed out that the budget for the ICTS is a “teeny, teeny part” of the cost of a single fighter plane. Gross acknowledged that experimental science, such as developing new materials, can be expensive, with a modern experimental lab requiring startup costs “in the order of a million dollars”.
He contrasted this with China, which, according to him, provides substantial start-up support. While Gross noted that the political climate in the US might make it “desirable for some of the Indian diaspora to come back to India,” he stressed that this is not enough. India must create the right environment and opportunities to retain this talent. He expresses that without these investments, the country risks losing its “best minds” to other places where they can “do the best science”.
Brain Drain Must be Reversed
Gross, a theorist himself, believes that to be a world leader, a country must develop its own ideas. He stated that “we’re still relying largely on the science and the applied science that’s developed elsewhere,” which is not a viable approach, and that without basic science, a country would “never develop new applied applications, new technologies”.
“The lesson of history is that if you don’t have the basic understanding, if you don’t have the basic science, you lose the best people, because they’ll go elsewhere to do that. If you want to compete with the rest of the world, you’d better not just use their ideas, but develop your own ideas.”
Gross praised institutions like ICTS as a great example of how India can attract top talent back to the country. He mentioned that ICTS and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai have become “world leaders in some areas of basic science”.
“So, with almost no investment and good leadership, it is possible to attract back some of the top scientists who were working in very basic science back to India,” he concluded.
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