Building India into a powerhouse in maths

Despite its rich legacy and size, India doesn't fare well on global benchmarks of maths. This needs to change if the country wants to meet its security challenges and enable social mobility. Here's a road map on how to do it

- Devesh Kapur

Mathematics (including statistics) is the foundation of modern science and technology, and its role in critical areas of national security such as cryptography is even more singular. However, despite a rich historical legacy (Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara, for instance) as well as renowned mathematicians in the 20th century (such as S Ramanujan, SN Bose, PC Mahalanobis and CR Rao), India has fared less well in this critical field in recent years.

A recent study evaluated the contributions of top mathematicians based on the Discipline H-index or D-index, which tracks each scientist's published scholarly papers and citations in their specific discipline. Among the top 50 mathematicians, only one is of Indian origin; among the top 100, four are of Indian origin. Among the top 500, 15 are of India origin, but just one is based in India. Among the top 2,332 mathematicians, just 17 are based in India (less than 1%). India ranks 19th, lower than tiny countries such as Israel, Austria and Belgium. While there have been two Indian-origin winners of the Fields medal (the Nobel Prize of mathematics) - Akshay Venkatesh and Manjul Bhargava - their parents had emigrated to Australia and Canada, respectively. And while institutions such as the Chennai Institute of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Statistical Institute and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, have excellent mathematicians, the pool is thin.

Given India's size, this is deeply dismaying. There are two reasons why India should be doing much better in mathematics.

First, among all Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, the last one is the least capital intensive. There is relatively less need for capital investments in labs and equipment, which need to be constantly upgraded. Mathematics also does not require large running costs of elaborate support infrastructure such as lab technicians or costly reagents.