The lack of diversity in India's notoriously shallow pool of scientists has been discussed and debated for some time without much change, a reflection, perhaps, of the survival instincts of entrenched interests.
The latest attempt at diagnosing these problems is journalists Nandita Jayaraj and Aashima Dogra's book Lab Hopping, reviewed by Devangshu Datta in 'India's missing female scientists'.
Lab Hopping is a chronicle of Jayaraj and Dogra's efforts to understand the reasons for the lack of diversity in science. In 2016, they began the website thelifeofscience.com to bring out the stories of women and non-binary persons working in science.
Since then, they have interviewed hundreds of individuals to document the obstacles faced by women and non-binary persons in the field of scientific research. In fact, this book must be seen as a continuation of their earlier work, 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists in India. Where Women Scientists sought to inspire girls with an interest in the field by providing them role models they could follow, Lab Hopping looks at policy.
Datta writes: "The result is this book, a pioneering attempt to highlight these issues. These are at the heart of India's underperformance in multiple areas and many are not just specific to STEM; these pervade India's social and corporate landscape."
From poor working conditions to sexual harassment by male colleagues, the book lays bare the institutional apathy that exists in this field and, more broadly, across the social landscape.
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Datta says, "The writers also point to many other issues plaguing STEM. One is an absence of Dalit and Scheduled Tribe representation, and a pervasive attitude that 'reservation' students are less intelligent". This is also reflected in the frequent reports of deaths by suicides at premier scientific institutions. This book "should be essential reading for policymakers", says Datta.
Talking about gender and policy, in 'Making gender budgeting work', Subhomoy Bhattacharjee reviews Lekha S Chakraborty's book Fiscal Policy for Sustainable Development in Asia-Pacific: Gender Budgeting in India.
Bhattacharjee says the book explains that gender budgeting should be about generating outcomes and not just the allocation of money. "The book, in this context, is a most useful primer to guide policymakers. With each chapter, the author walks with policymakers, at central, state, and at the local governance levels, to show how to make use of the fiscal space to generate better gender outcomes," Bhattacharjee says.
Chakraborty is a professor at the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy, and the book benefits from her "decades of study of both public finance and its application to gender issues", writes Bhattacharjee.
Gender budgeting, says Bhattacharjee, summarising Chakraborty's argument, "promotes greater fiscal autonomy at the local level, it helps identify special gender needs, unlike one-size-fits-all policies, that promote administrative capabilities at the sub-national level and, finally, is 'significant for the redistribution objectives between regions'".
For such change, policymakers and mainstream academic economists would need to be open to ideas that may challenge the orthodoxy that creeps into expertise over time. But, as one recent controversy showed, the boundaries drawn around ideas considered acceptable are rather narrow.
Sticking to orthodoxy is also a trait associated with the Indian civil services, as AK Bhattacharya points out in 'A framework of intentions', his review of Transforming the Steel Frame by Vinod Rai, the former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.
It is a book that can leave readers "a little disappointed because of the huge gap that you will sense between the book's promise and what it finally delivers".
It is a book that can leave readers "a little disappointed because of the huge gap that you will sense between the book's promise and what it finally delivers".
The book is an anthology of 14 essays, with eight written by retired officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the steel frame of the title, and the rest by experts and business leaders.
Where the outsiders are "brutally frank as well as perceptive", the former Babus offer "generally mundane, bookish" prescriptions, writes Bhattacharya.
From lowering the maximum qualifying age for taking the Union Public Service Commission exam to restricting the number of attempts, the former bureaucrats espouse views "routinely endorsed by many expert committees, but none of them has been implemented so far", says Bhattacharya.
A protective attitude runs through some of the essays, Bhattacharya points out, with some essayists even rejecting the reforms like lateral entry into the civil service.
In contrast, Manish Sabharwal of TeamLease, in his essay, "presents a refreshing perspective by explaining why and how the famed steel frame has degenerated into a steel cage". Rai's two essays in the volume are thought-provoking, writes Bhattacharya.
Though there are good recommendations, the reviewer is left with: "Par, Yeh Sab Hoga Kaise? (But, how will all these suggestions be implemented?)"
If the first three reviews privileged the institutional, the fourth review is of a book that deals with the personal. In 'Food for drama', Veenu Sandhu reviews Shobhaa Dé's latest, Insatiable: My Hunger for Life.
Keeping with the theme of weaving the personal into the general, the review picks up from an earlier conversation between Sandhu and Dé 10 years ago.
Much like that earlier conversation, writes Sandhu, Dé's book is filled with "excitement, exuberance, unapologetic, in-your-face opinion and tonnes of stories".
It is a book that highlights the people in Dé's life, from the staff at her home to people she meets at the beauty parlour, and celebrities like economist Abhijit Banerjee and the actor Aamir Khan.
"But more than anything, it's about food, a delicious theme that runs through her relationships, passions, encounters, and even her insecurities," Sandhu writes.
The book is a chronicle of a year in Dé's, from January to December 2022.
Though intensely personal, like Dé's search for "Anuradha", the name she was given at birth, it constantly engages with the political. In the book, Sandhu writes, "You find her questioning the fallout of a time when the political has become personal."
Dé is caustic and candid, serious and sarcastic, funny and fiendish, writes Sandhu. And though she moves around in some "hoity-toity circles", in the book, she "comes across as an outsider looking in critically, sometimes with amusement, at times with contempt".
