Who Is an Indian Nuclear Scientist?

The Department of Atomic Energy receives thousands of applications from desperate candidates. Job interviews could be eventful

Undaunted by the submarine’s second-strike capability, the Prime Minister’s wife assaulted it with a coconut. Gods were further invoked through a brief puja. And India’s first nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant, was launched. Arihant is now part of the festive manliness of our nuclear programme. It enhances the urban, cool and sophisticated character of nuclear science. Are nuclear scientists, too, hip and sophisticated? Who are the new generation of Indian nuke boffins, and why do they become nuclear scientists? Three years ago, I had gone to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai to find out.

The truth is that Indian nuclear science today is the refuge of the small town underdog. The same social forces that populated The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, the same forces that changed the face of Indian cricket, also send applicants to the BARC. Metro children seldom become nuclear scientists anymore. Nor do graduates from the top rungs of engineering colleges. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) receives over 10,000 applications every year, from places like Bareilly, Airty and Digras, for about 300 research positions in the BARC and other research facilities associated with the nuclear programme. Job interviews, faculty members told me, could be memorable.

Dr RR Puri, head of human resources, recounted the experience of asking an applicant to describe the photoelectric effect. The boy said, “You know photo. You know electric. Combine them.”

Dr S Datta, a senior scientist, told me that he had once asked an applicant why Kolkata trams ran on direct current and not alternating current. The answer was, “If it uses alternating current, the tram would go forward and back.” Another applicant, when asked to explain the Uncertainty Principle, said, “Sir, it means everything in life is uncertain.” A professor tried to give him a clue by reminding him of Werner Heisenberg who proposed the idea that is at the very heart of quantum mechanics. The applicant had not heard of Heisenberg.

Professors told me that as they sat through the interview sessions for hours, listening to such candidates, they felt depressed. On such days, Dr RB Grover, director of the Homi Bhabha National Institute, said the future of India’s nuclear programme would seem bleak to him, “but then a bright chap comes along and the mood swings to sheer joy and great hope for the future”.

Many applicants confessed to their interviewers, sometimes at the start of the interview, that they had come primarily to tour Mumbai (DAE pays a travel allowance to applicants). Some even requested the interviewers to sign their allowance slips fast so that nobody’s time was wasted. But the professors were so desperate for talent that they persisted even with such applicants, asking them questions, probing to see if there was a genius hidden in the tourist.

Needless to say, a majority of the applicants were not tourists. They were serious. But many were from such unfortunate backgrounds that even though they had the passion to make something of their lives, they were simply not good enough. Interviewers told me of poignant scenes when the applicant, after failing to answer any question, would cry and beg, “Ask me one more question, sir, just one more.”

I met a few candidates who had cleared the interview and were undergoing training at the BARC to become nuclear scientists. They were studious and hopeful, and immensely patriotic. Back home, they had become heroes. One Akshat Kakkar, who was from Bareilly, said that every time he went home, people gathered around him and asked questions like whether he had managed to see or touch the nuclear bomb.

The impending nuclear scientists also had a uniform grouse—the word ‘radiation’ was needlessly maligned. They believed that people have a poor understanding of radiation and nuclear energy. Radiation is not so bad, was their message. One boy who was from a village in Maharashtra told me, “In some villages, people think that windmills drive away the rains. People who are against clean energy like nuclear power are as ignorant.” It was only when I met more senior scientists who worked at the BARC did I realise that the students were heavily influenced by a certain organisational philosophy that held the phenomenon of radiation in very high esteem. A scientist told me with considerable emotion, a bit dreamily even, “Without radiation, species will not mutate.”

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