Ever since the British journal Nature first introduced its index in 2014, the ranking has become a reliable barometer to gauge the scientific output of cities across the world. After tabulating the proportional contribution that researchers in Kolkata made to papers published in leading scientific journals globally, the Nature Index 2024 has ranked the city 84. Kolkata not only left behind all its Indian counterparts — Bengaluru (85), Mumbai (98), and New Delhi (124) — but researchers from the city, it turns out, have also contributed to more natural-science and health-science journals than those in Edinburgh, Helsinki, Geneva and Frankfurt. According to Nature, Kolkata accounted for 12.5 per cent of India’s total research in 2023.
The headlines that followed all tell a story. Some called Kolkata “India’s top scientific city”, while others referred to it as “India’s leading city for scientific research”. Bratya Basu, the West Bengal minister for education, too, was quick to go on record: “This recognition is a testament to our scientific community and an inspiration for future generations.”
Professor Sumantra Chattarji, director of the Centre for High Impact Neuroscience and Translational Applications (CHINTA) at TCG CREST, feels heartened by this news. Having moved from Bengaluru to Kolkata last year, he has an interesting perspective on the Nature Index findings. When the neuroscientist decided to leave the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bengaluru, several of his colleagues were intrigued. “I’d worked there for 23 years,” says Chattarji. “NCBS is a leading research centre in biomedical sciences and, for decades, Bengaluru was the central place for those who want to study science and technology.” Chattarji’s friends from Bengaluru have been sending him messages in response to the latest report from Nature. He senses surprise in such texts.
Though Kolkata lags behind cities in China — Beijing and Shanghai top the Nature Index — Chattarji hopes it will soon be able to attract talent from elsewhere in the country and abroad. As head of CHINTA, in Salt Lake's Sector V, he wants to tap into the local talent pool here, but he also wants to bring back students and scientists who had left Kolkata during an exodus that lasted decades.
Chattarji’s research is cutting edge. In the past, he has asked a commonsense question through his work— “why is it that our emotional memories are far stronger than our factual memories, and how does stress affect these memories?”. Of late, his lab has been studying synaptic defects and their reversal in Fragile X Syndrome, the leading cause for autism. “Even more recently, I’ve grown interested in neurodegeneration. I’m looking at how neurons and their signalling go wrong in these disorders by working on human brain cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.”
Chattarji’s present inquiry focuses on a form of movement disorder, or ataxia, that is prevalent in certain populations in Kolkata. “I wanted to do something that had local relevance, and for that, I need to scout from the deep local talent pool of students who are both motivated and academically gifted. Being in Kolkata brings me closer to the real source of scientific talent.”
In an interview to My Kolkata, Chattarji explains why the Nature Index deserves attention: “This index may be reflective of some of the underlying fundamentals that are strong in West Bengal’s science and technology education, and also the depth and breadth of science and technology institutes in this region.”
Edited excerpts from the conversation follow.
‘This is not a fluke. The fundamentals in Kolkata are solid’
A large chunk of top scientific minds working in Bengaluru also come from Kolkata and West Bengal, according to Chattarji Getty Images
My Kolkata: On the Nature Index this year, Kolkata has been adjudged “India’s leading city for scientific research”. Are we right to feel proud of this achievement?
Sumantra Chattarji: It is a matter of great pride and joy that Kolkata can be up there, and beat Bengaluru, which is the place to be as far as science and technology go. I’m personally very happy. A lot of eyebrows were raised when I made the move from Bengaluru to Kolkata in February last year. I had left the TIFR in Bengaluru to come here. Nobody makes that sort of a move. At the time, I had reasons for optimism despite the many challenges, and I think they are reflected in this report. There are solid, underlying causes that have put Kolkata at the top of this list. This is not a fluke. The fundamentals here are solid, and that’s why Kolkata is where it is today, despite all this talk of decline. I am glad to see that this report from Nature has actually captured that.
The ranking is based on the number of contributions authors and institutions from the city have made to papers published in high-quality scientific journals from around the world last year. How fair and accurate is this barometer?
Any such parameter-based assessment of something as complex as ‘scientific output’ will have its limitations, its pros and cons. If you have to cut across societies, cultures and economies, you have to have a set of agreed-upon measures, and the metrics that Nature uses are widely accepted. More importantly, it is important to note we have been measured by the same metric as all other cities. Within that framework, and with all its caveats, Kolkata has done very well.
Bengaluru ranked 85th on the list. There is very little that separates it from Kolkata. How fierce is the competition between the two cities?
There are some things to keep in mind while trying to understand how science happens. We have to ask, who is doing the science, and where? As far as ‘where’ goes, Bengaluru is a popular destination. And as for ‘who’, there is a wide spectrum of talent pools who are coming through the ranks and getting picked in a place like Bengaluru. But this pipeline of talented and strongly driven students often originates from outside the city. A large chunk of them actually come from West Bengal and Kolkata. Even in other top national institutes and universities across the country, a strikingly large number of students come from this state. Experimental scientific work is very demanding. It requires a lot of persistence. I hope everyone in the scientific community will agree that a disproportionately large number of kids from West Bengal are making it into the top institutes to do this kind of work.
So, by that measure, it is not surprising that Kolkata features so high up on the list. West Bengal and Kolkata have the environment and strong educational foundation that produces a large number of good students. And Bengaluru is where many of these students are ending up. What I find striking about this report is that the top two places — Kolkata and Bengaluru — are covering the two ends of this phenomenon — the ‘who’ and the ‘where’. They are the building blocks, but, interestingly, this report also suggests that Kolkata is providing a good ecosystem for doing science locally. This makes us rethink the decades-long exodus of talent from the city.
Historically, how significant was the brain drain?
There was a time when people from all over India came to Kolkata to study medicine, science and technology. We had it all, but from the late ’60s and the ’70s, as socio-political turmoil grew in the state, most of those who could afford to leave the state, left. As a result, Bengal’s brain-drain has lasted for decades. Despite that, the city features as a top-ranked city for doing science. That is heartening. This can only mean that there’s a deep well of talent and desire to do good science here. Even if a lot of them leave, there are enough scientists who continue to do good work. The trick now is for Kolkata to leverage that potential and not only retain more of its talent, but also attract people back. We must think of bringing to Kolkata scientists from other parts of the country, as well as abroad. I believe this [report] provides us a very solid platform to feel good about things and be more optimistic.
‘What makes Kolkata stand out is the sheer depth and breadth of its science’
Kolkata has a large number of very high-quality students who learn in an intensely competitive system, explains Chattarji TT Archives
Besides heading CHINTA in Kolkata, you are also a visiting professor at the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh. Kolkata beat Edinburgh this year. Seeing how you work in both places, what, according to you, gives Kolkata the edge?
Compared to Edinburgh, I think what makes Kolkata stand out is the sheer depth and breadth of the kind of science that’s done here — everything from the fundamentals of theoretical physics, mathematics, applied physics, chemistry, to all of the biological sciences, medicine. Because of its sheer volume and firepower, Kolkata altogether impacts large numbers of students, who are going abroad or elsewhere in India. That scale and impact cannot be matched by Edinburgh despite the very high-quality work being done there.
Also, we have such a large number of very high-quality students who learn in an intensely competitive system, which allows very few of the really good people to make it to the next level. We simply cannot absorb these many talented people, so the competition is intense, and the standards are naturally very, very high at the level of school and high school education. I think the kids who are getting high marks in high schools here are on average better than most kids in the UK, at least in terms of their core skills in maths, physics, chemistry, biology. Students here have to raise their bar so high only to survive. That kind of competition is not faced by students in the UK now. One other thing to remember is that post-Brexit, UK universities are taking a big hit because of all the new barriers that have come up in terms of grant-funding, and in students coming to the UK from places outside. Their access to a wider talent pool of students is shrinking.
Kolkata has been home to several great scientists and researchers — Mahendralal Sirkar, CV Raman, Satyendranath Bose and Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, to name a few. Is the city living up to this rich legacy? Can it do more?
I think one of the key lessons to take from that rich legacy is how much they achieved with how little! But it is not only about looking back and worrying if we can measure up to their legacies. Those pioneers often lacked the resources — financial and technological — but they had great ideas and singular focus. They did amazing work under very difficult conditions. We need to take inspiration from them, but we must not think that our best times are behind us. I sometimes feel we look back into the past a little too much. We have to move forward with the talent pool we have here and now. Science, in the past, was very personal. Today, it is a lot more ‘industrialised’. The muscle and firepower of American and Chinese universities is huge. It is not easy to scale up to that level overnight. We have to achieve scale and quality gradually.
What we need is a boost of inspiration and ambition. We need to be more optimistic. People think science is very cut and dried, confined within the boundaries of labs. But just like art and music, it’s an intensely social and creative experience. Science, too, is a ‘cultural’ experience — it needs enrichment, a diversity of talent and views, an environment that is stimulating, and a society which supports and appreciates its achievements. We must revive our can-do attitude and move ahead, because we have a whole bunch of things going well for us. We need to recognise, co-opt and leverage those positives.
‘It is astounding to see how Jadavpur University still punches above its weight’
Buildings and equipment don’t make good universities, people do, says Chattarji TT Archives
When the Nature Index released its findings in 2022, Jadavpur University ranked first among state-run universities in India.
I think Jadavpur’s achievements throughout the decades are remarkable. Seeing all the struggles that state universities go through, it is astounding to see how Jadavpur still punches above its weight. The pool of students the university attracts is obviously impressive. Increasingly, they are coming from smaller towns and villages, and these youngsters are all hungry and driven. What we now need is very good infrastructure. Setting it up isn’t enough. That infrastructure also needs to be well maintained. That’s the weak link. Grants might help us set something up, but it’s sad to see how often that setup becomes dysfunctional, part of the furniture. Once the equipment is procured, we need the right people who can run it and produce data. That’s the link that needs to be strengthened. Buildings and equipment don’t make good universities, people do. The students coming to universities like Jadavpur are exceptional. The folks who teach them will now have to inspire them, and leverage this vast talent pool.
'China seems to have it all… but America still draws the best talent’
‘Will there come a time when a student coming out of IIT or Jadavpur wants to go to Beijing and not Caltech?’ asks Chattarji Getty Images
Globally, Beijing retained the top spot, and Shanghai came in at number two. Three other Chinese cities — Nanjing, Guangzhou and Wuhan — are in the top 10. What lessons can India learn from China’s new dominance?
I think there’s a lot to be learned. If you go back and look at the mid-’80s, our economic indices were roughly comparable to that of China. Both China and India started out with a deep traditional respect for scholarship. Both countries had students who were good in the traditional scientific subjects — math, physics, chemistry — but soon, a remarkable bifurcation happened, and China just skyrocketed. China didn’t just pay lip service to science; they truly put their money where their mouth was. They invested massively in terms of scientific infrastructure, without necessarily expecting an immediate return. They invested in the system to produce excellent students on a scale that was absolutely mind-boggling. We can see that investment paying rich dividends today.
Many people from my generation have gone back to China in larger numbers. The resources and support from the government they get there are often better than what they would get at an American university as a faculty member. China seems to have it all — the money, the infrastructure, brilliant minds who are extremely hard-working and ambitious. That said, however, I don’t see Indian, European or American students rushing to do a post-doc in China. This might be because of language, culture or the political system. America still draws the best talent, including Chinese students. China’s firepower is reflected in these indices, but will there come a time when a student coming out of IIT or Jadavpur wants to go to Beijing and not Caltech? That’s what I am curious about.
‘At CHINTA, we are reaching out to talented people to encourage them to come here’
Doesn’t Kolkata have the same problem? Are people coming here from other states?
I don’t have the statistics to quote numbers, but I feel the answer to your question is no, they aren’t coming. That might be because of the image problem the state still suffers from. I feel this is why this report in Nature needs to be showcased. People outside don’t give us half a chance, but here we are, in a place where we can hold our heads high. We need to use such findings to get people back. That’s what I’m doing in CHINTA. We are reaching out to talented people to encourage them to come here. Scientifically, they’ll get opportunities to do good work, and culturally, too, life in Kolkata is absolutely lovely. I think it has got a lot going for itself. And this little report, which I think should be taken seriously, tells us that even in the area of scientific output, we are still very much in the game.
