Scientist sacked for exposing CSIR incompetence

Krishna Kumar

With just three days to go before his Fulbright Scholarship in India ended, entrepreneur and scientist Dr Shiva
Ayyadurai was called by a scientist friend and told that the top man of the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, India’s premier scientific institute, wanted to meet him.

When Ayyadurai walked into CSIR Director General Samir Brahmachari’s office June 10, the director general
welcomed him with a question: Why do you want to go back to Boston?

“He said CSIR was planning to spin off technological companies and that he wants me to form the CSIR-Tech
that will do this,” Ayyadurai said. He heard Brahmachari out, then asked the CSIR chief to make him an offer he
couldn’t refuse.

Brahmachari made an offer; Ayyadurai accepted it. Five months later, Ayyadurai finds himself with a
termination letter. He has written to Prime Minster Manmohan Singh saying he was fired for criticizing the CSIR
leadership (read Samir Brahmachari)

How did a highly accomplished scientist-entrepreneur end up like this? The story unfolded thus:

“He said I would be recruited at the level of an additional secretary, which he said took people decades to
reach,” Ayyadurai says, of that day when Brahmachari made him an offer. “He said I can be the CEO-equivalent
of the companies I spin off, and hold equities in them. When I went back to my father-in-law who was a retired
civil servant, he couldn’t believe it. He asked me to take it down in writing.” Ayyadurai did – but the DG wrote
the job description written down on a piece of one-sided paper, without dates or any signatures.

How could a man with his experience have accepted a handwritten note as an offer letter? “In the US, when I
shake hands with a CEO, the deal is done. I told Samir the same thing – that I am taking it in good faith,”
Ayyadurai responds.

The actual offer letter came two days later – and it said Ayyadurai has been appointed to the post of
‘outstanding scientist’ (Scientists and Technologists of Indian Origin). None of the other promises made by the
Brahmachari were contained in the letter.

“I was excited about the opportunity,” Ayyadurai told India Abroad. “I accepted it in good faith. The money
didn’t matter to me. In the US I do my science, I do my entrepreneurship. I don’t understand government
jargon.”

The next day, Brahmachari introduced Ayyadurai as the next head of CSIR-Tech, and said his first assignment
was to come up with a structure for it – and then things began to unravel.

Ayyadurai and another scientist, Deepak Sardana, started working on a report about the ways in which the
organization could be turned into a profit-making centre of excellence. In the months that followed, Ayyadurai
says, he visited almost all of CSIR’s 42 laboratories and spoke to a majority of its 4,000-odd scientists. After
this, Ayyadurai and Sardana put together a 47-page report titled CSIR-Tech: Path Forward.

The two entrepreneur-scientists highlighted 12 CSIR-developed technologies that had the potential to be
generate billions of dollars for the organization. “Some of the labs and some of the products and technologies
are better than anything else available in the world,” Ayyadurai said. “Labs at the NAL can build full aircraft out
there. They can get into civil aviation. But they are not allowed to do that. I put all these things in the report.”

Besides focusing on the opportunities, the two scientists also incorporated a full chapter on ‘challenges’ – and
those four pages spoke of the difficulties scientists face with the leadership. The authors talk about how the
organisation suffers from a ‘lack of professionalism’, how some scientists feel a ‘loss of faith in leadership’ and
how a coterie of sycophants might ruin it all for the organization. They also suggested that CSIR introduce
‘openness in communication’ and establish ‘accountability of all participants’.

“Three days later, I get a gag order directing me not to talk to scientists and not to conduct workshops,”
Ayyadurai says. And last week, he received the official letter withdrawing his appointment; the reason cited is
because an ‘unreasonable financial package has been demanded.’

“Samit promised me that I would get Rs 500,000 once I am on board as the CEO,” Ayyadurai says, responding
to the charge that he had asked for Rs 600,000 per month. “Then they said, till I get my PIO card I cannot be
taken officially on board, and that I would be treated as a business consultant till then. I said I was cool with the
Rs 100,000 I was entitled to.”
The authorities then realized that there is no provision to terminate employment by withdrawing an offer of
appointment that has been officially accepted. So CSIR, November 6, sent him a letter terminating his stint as
‘business consultant’.

“This is also illegal and irrelevant,” Ayyadurai says. “I was never hired as a business consultant. I was hired as
an STIO. So how can they terminate me from a post that I do not even hold?”

Ayyadurai has documentation to show that he has been appointed STIO; CSIR however officially says he was
functioning under a short-term consultancy contract which can be terminated at any time.

The scientist is now busy writing his own letters, and the next one planned is to Prime Minister Singh, again –
but not to protest his sacking. “I will write to the prime minister about these 12 technologies that can be
commercialized with great gains for the country and also can be hugely monetized,” he said. Brahmachari
could not be reached for comment.

Scientists and experts outside CSIR say Ayyadurai was right in his actions, and in the criticisms he made in his
report. “VSIR is an impossible place to work in,” Deepak Sardana, the co-author of the controversial report, told
India Abroad. Sardana resigned two days earlier and is planning to go back to Australia from where, like
Ayyadurai, he was invited by Brahmachari to come and work with CSIR.

Dr Lalji Singh, a former director of one of the CSIR labs, said there was nothing wrong in what Ayyadurai did.
“Though I have not met the gentleman, I have seen the report and I would say it is spot on. Some 2000
scientists have communicated with Ayyadurai.

“If Brahmachari asked him how to run CSIR-Tech Ayyadurai, with virtually no resources at his disposal, has
come up with a brilliant plan. If Brahmachari did not want to hear this, he should not have called him in the first
place. But after having invited a scientist, CSIR cannot behave in this manner. This is a democracy,” he said.

Reports say CSIR, founded in 1942, awards more PhDs and files for more patents than any other R&D facility in
the country – however, he has struggled with turning those patents into revenue earners. Over the past 10
years, CSIR laboratories have been granted 5,014 patents in India and abroad; the cost of filing them was Rs
228.64 crore and the revenue earned has been Rs 36.8 crore.

It is facts like these that scientists point to, when they say Ayyadurai spoke nothing but the truth. And when
you read the report, it is clear that only someone who comes from outside the system could have written it.

Ayyadurai, for his part, sees his immediate future as hazy. “First, about the report itself, I have got a lot of
positive feedback from many scientists,” the scientist said. “They are overcoming the sense of fear that
prevailed till now. They are basically seeing that this guy has stood up and he has given up a lot.

“I agree that the chapter where we directly and absolutely attack the current leadership is strongly worded.
We call them a coterie of sycophants. But that is the way science is. Science is fundamentally about revealing
the truth. To innovate is what I was brought to do. India will never be a major innovator – in fact, at this rate
India will never be an innovator, period. America is where it is because of the rebellious streak and the
conducive environment for practicing science.”

He traces the malaise to a hangover of the Raj. “In the medieval British system it is all backroom deals,” he
points out. “In this report, I have concluded that you cannot have great science in a medieval infrastructure.
That is why the best Indian scientists pack their bags and go to the US, where they flourish,” he adds.

Thus far, his experience has been bitter – but he is not yet ready to give up and return to greener, more
amenable pastures. “What is bone-chilling is that I put out a report and exposed what they were talking about
in their backrooms,” Ayyadurai says. “And this is how they respond. I do not have the time to play the Indian
bureaucratic game. We have an opportunity here. I am here to fight, and see to it that science gets an
opportunity to thrive.”