Indians belittle fellow Indians in their pursuit of independence, more than anyone else. When Rajiv Gandhi wanted to buy a 2nd hand supercomputer from US at an inflated price, Professor Vijay Bhatkar begged him to invest in indigenous efforts in the supercomputing race. (1/n)

Rajiv Gandhi reluctantly decided to put the deal on hold, for some time & approved the project. Then, Prof Vijay Bhatkar & his team of engineers eventually built the first Indian supercomputer : PARAM 8000 in 1989-90, & eventually , prof Bhatkar was the architect of the (2/n)

other supercomputer models in the PARAM series, which made India self-sufficient. At that point of time too, “science” journalists mocked the project , saying why India needed supercomputer when there was so much poverty, hunger & inequality. This was the foundation (3/n)

for HPC in India (High Performance Computing) , which is used mainly by various Govt departments like DAE , ISRO & Meteorological departments. But, unlike other “celebrated” scientists, Prof Bhatkar never got the “limelight”. Have u ever wondered why ? Because he is a (4/n)

member of Vijnana Bharati , a NGO that was started in IISc by some eminent Indian scientists to endorse “Swadeshi” technology built from scratch : in India & by Indians. Science journalism in India is one of the most compromised professions, as most of the journalists (5/n)

are extensions of foreign corporations tasked with painting India as a land of “unscientific” primitives lacking “scientific” temper (P.S :What is that ?? ). That’s why, whenever India achieves something new in science , on its own, u see a flurry of articles trying to (6/n)

sow the seeds of doubt. When India rolled out its indigenous vaccine , the usual suspects : the Tamil-Mallu cartel at Newsminute , Wire & Hindu (sorry for stereotyping but that is the truth) raised questions on the efficacy of the vaccine citing lack of 3rd phase data, (7/n)

despite Govt clarifying that it was a back up vaccine. Today, the same suspects who were saying “Pfizer over Modi’s vaccine” are abnormally silent on the 23 deaths of senior citizens in #Norway . Will Pfizer face the same scrutiny in the fraternity of science journalism? (8/n)

I doubt. Anyways, I’m not surprised because I witnessed the schadenfreude when ISRO failed in the ambitious Moon Landing Project . I saw a spasm of relief in the “usual suspects” because it failed in Modi’s tenure & hence, Modi won’t get the credit. And yes, no Indian agency(9/n)

has faced more ridicule in the Western press than ISRO. Remember that racist cartoon in NYT on ISRO & cows ? After all, they can’t digest the fact that the elite club of nations in space tech has a new player : India. And to further exacerbate the gloom, articles in India (10/n)

were planted in leading dailies to question the need of pursuit of space missions in India. Attached herewith is a sample specimen, but if u surf the net, u will find a cornucopia of such articles attempting to belittle Indian science. Same argument can be extended (11/n)

as to why there is a repeated agenda on belittling Ayurveda or indigenous medical systems, by the “science” journalists in India. Yes, I agree that stupid statements by a bunch of overexcited party workers of the incumbent party on efficacy of Ayurveda are way (12/n)

over the mark & in fact, cause more harm to the cause of genuine research in Ayurveda,because unlike Modern Medicine that is far more active in reaction to a malaise specific to an organ, Ayurveda’s approach is different, with emphasis on a lifestyle with incremental (13/n)

benefits over immediate action as espoused by modern medicine. While it is easy to dismiss indigenous medicine as quackery, we must take into account the curious case of TuYouYou , the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, who is trained in Chinese indigenous medicine & is (14/n)

credited with the discovery of the anti malarial drug : artemisinin, which she credits to Ge Hong’s (an ancient Chinese Medicine expert) treatise on medicinal herbs. A true scientific mind demands evidence & hence, if u indeed want to reject Ayurveda, then please do it (15/n)

by citing empirical evidence instead of Wire’s or Rema Nagarajan’s articles or Anu Bhuyan’s Twitter threads.

Approaching towards the coda of my thread,I would like to shed some more light into this new fad of brouhaha over climate change.While climate change is an issue, (16/n)

we must call out its hijack by a bunch of petulant attention-seeking Desi pasquinades of Greta Thunberg in India , that includes the likes of Licpriya. And with due respect,there are tons of researchers &engineers in India working in clean energy , instead of filing PILs on(17/n)

on the eve of festivals. For instance, how many of u have heard about Ather Energy, a startup by 2 IIT grads ? If u haven’t, well, let me tell u that they are one of the most exciting startups in Bangalore working in electric scooters, with good profits. While we drool (18/n)

over Elon Musk’s Tesla, we should look a bit around us, of efforts made by fellow Indians & appreciate them. After all , a pat on the back can go a long way to infuse confidence in entrepreneurship! Now here is the question we must ask : why do we know of school-missing (19/n)

Licpriya or Greta while being oblivious of Ather Energy ? Because that is what science journalism in India is all about : sensationalism , with a proclivity towards veiled Modi-bashing than coverage of new exciting trends in indigenous science.

Thanks for reading my long (20/n)

thread & as a parting assignment, I’ll leave a task for all of u : How many of u have heard about George Sudarshan? If not, read & tell me what is so special about him .

And also ask, why u have no idea of him ?

It’s a weekend. Do a bit of self research . (21/21)