Shopping malls can explain the low scientific productivity of India

Why cannot India produce great science? Let me start with a simple observation. Last Sunday we were in the crowded eating zone of a large shopping mall. After we picked food, I told my friend that I had to wash my hands. Well, there is no wash basin in the entire eating zone. You have to go all the way to the toilet room to find a wash basin. This is interesting because, in Indian tradition, not washing hands before eating is considered unhygienic and uncivil. Yet, most of the expensive restaurants in India do not provide a basin for washing hands. Why? Because designers simply copy-paste ideas from the USA or Europe. They do not muster the courage to even add a wash basin. Or perhaps a designer once tried to include one but was rebuffed due to fear of losing peer approval.

This is the exact same reason why we cannot produce great science. If you have a great Idea, it is very difficult to get approval from your Indian peers because the idea has not been approved by peers in the West.

Before you decide to argue that science does not work in the same way, let me tell science is not as objective as most people think. As Max Plank once said: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Objectivity is a scarce resource in scientific discourses. You cannot even prove that 1 + 1 = 2 objectively if your peers are determined to prove you wrong.