Biologists From India

"My life’s work has been focused on building a new model of innovation that adds the condition of affordability to ensure accessibility. I have successfully challenged the Western world’s existing model of pharmaceutical innovation, which leads to the creation of monopolistic markets for novel, life-saving drugs that deliver high margins at low volumes"

"My big idea is to marry affordability and access to ensure that we leverage innovation to develop affordable, cutting-edge therapies for chronic diseases. I am on a mission to make a global impact by ensuring affordable access to healthcare"

"Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement"

"I believe we are in a humanitarian business, she says, and I think we are doing our bit for affordable access, which is what we want"

"That is what then gave me the raison d’être to focus on biopharmaceuticals"

"Just because we cannot afford human insulin, we are having to use animal insulin, so let me do something about it"

"We have a huge opportunity to build a very large business"

"Even in the U.S. now, the adoption of biosimilars is becoming far greater because health care costs are spiraling out of control, and anything you can do to rein in costs is going to be very important"

"I call myself an accidental entrepreneur"

"I have always believed that successful businesses thrive on great human relationships, which are formed through collaborations and extend out into personal and professional networks. Very often, strong personal networks lead to robust professional relationships"

"I was totally unprepared for the gender bias that a young woman had to face for daring to start a business in the male-dominated society of India of the 1970s. But, actually, my experience did not make me change my belief that knowledge doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender, and a woman can achieve anything if she puts her mind to it"

"We are seeing heightened awareness and discussions in India around facilitating women at work and addressing the issue of gender diversity. Recently we have seen the passage of the maternity bill in India, which has extended the maternity-leave period for women to 26 weeks. More recently, the Indian parliament is debating a proposal of awarding two days of paid menstrual leave every month to women at work in public and private sectors"

"I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure, and succeed after failing"

"I strongly believe that we can increase the number of women in leadership roles if we can plug their exit post-motherhood. In order to do this, we need to have a more enabling ecosystem that comprises the workplace, the home, and society at large. Good childcare infrastructure at the workplace and a strong family support system can help in a big way. As corporates, we can contribute by providing flexible human-resources policies that allow women to transition back to their jobs post-maternity in a smooth manner"

"The people who need your attention are the poor and not the rich."

"After the outbreak of Covid-19, one was hoping that the global calamity will be combated on top priority without any consideration of race, ethnicity and religion. But matters took such a turn in India that even the United Nations had to state that race, ethnicity and religion should be no consideration in dealing with the crisis. Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, said late in the day that the Novel Coronavirus does not see the barriers of religions or caste. Even the RSS Chief, though very late in the chronology of events, also said that whole communities should not be targeted for the mistakes of a few. By this time the damage was already done."

"Overall, during the last couple of months, the hate-filled atmosphere has taken a sharp upturn and the popular talk is veering towards shun Muslims and boycotting their trades. This does remind some of the boycott of Jew traders before the "" was put into action in Germany. Already the myths, stereotypes and biases against Muslims in particular and partly against Christians abound in the society. A hate-creation mechanism is already in place. This mechanism has become robust during last few years. The roots of this mechanism are fairly deep and it has been actively nurtured by communal elements. That a human tragedy like Covid-19 could have boosted divisive processes was unthinkable a few years ago. To create a negative image, to manufacture stereotypes and biases against the minorities, a large network of trained people, owing allegiance to Hindu nationalism have spread far and wide, deep into the vitals of society."

"To add to this, social media was brought into operation with thousands of trolls, fake news and what have you. Today’s speed of hate-creation has only become possible because of the ground "work" done over decades. It is in this light that many Muslim intellectuals have come together as a , which they call Indian Muslims for Progress and Reforms. One hopes that they will be able to push for reform and open the pathways for jobs for the Muslim youth while countering the media that demonises them. Apart from these contemporary steps, one wishes to urge upon them to study and reflect upon the foundations on which the present hate-ethic is being spread."

"Without promoting fraternity, our democracy cannot survive. And the dangerous demonisation of minorities has to be countered, as it is this hate which gets transformed into intense violence."

"The provocation and justification for the aggression at level of ideas was provided by Shah Bano blunder by a section of Muslim leadership. After this there was no looking back and all the medieval history was used to demonise the Muslims of today. The additions to the list of stereotypes were fast and furious. Love "jihad", and cow protection mobs came in, and each served to undermine the Muslim identity and marginalise the community, while the graph of violence saw a parallel rise. The outcome was ghettoisation or seclusion of the minorities, among whom insecurity grew and threw its members further into the arms of maulanas with their rigid pronouncements about Islam. These maulanas and their teachings is what a section of the media uses to characterise the whole community. The moderate Muslims, the ones trying to articulate humane values, have been pushed to the margin."

"You see, if E. O. Wilson says that Indian scientists should do taxonomy, now of course, someone will say that you are preventing them from doing the sort of high science that is done elsewhere. So it should not come from there, it should come from us. I think that we must recognize where we have the advantages and where we have the disadvantages."

"He (Bose) was modern India’s first physicist after all, one of her very first scientists. He was his motherland’s first active participant in the Galilean - Newtonian tradition. He had confounded the British disbeliever. He had shown that the Eastern mind was indeed capable of the exact and exacting thinking demanded by western science. He had broken the mould."

"Bose was the first Indian to be admitted in person to the sanctum sanctorum of English, thus western science."

"His model of an electric eye which records with electric signals message received from outside world, his physical model of memory as a mechanism for storing information justified this being considered a precursor of the modern discipline of cybernetics."

"Our investigative research into the origin and first major use of solid state diode detector devices led to the discovery that the first transatlantic wireless signal in Marconi’s world-famous experiment was received by Marconi using the iron-mercury-iron-coherer with a telephone detector invented by Sir J.C. Bose in 1898."

"The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth."

"I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph 2 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, r, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals."

"I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity of all life. The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The crescograph opens incalculable vistas."

"The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph."

"From his (Karna’s) low caste came rejection, came every disadvantage; but he always played and fought fair! So his life, though a series of disappointments and defeats to the very end – his slaying by Arjuna– appealed to me as a boy as the greatest of triumphs. I still think of the tournament where Arjuna had been victor, and then of Karna coming as a stranger to challenge him. Questioned of name and birth, he replies, “I am my own ancestor! You do not ask the might Ganges from which of its many springs it comes: its own flow justifies itself, so shall my deeds me! [Further he wrote :] Like that of my boyhood’s hero Karna, my life has been ever one of combat and must be to the last. It is not for man to complain of circumstances, but bravely to accept, to confront, and to dominate them."

"I have sought permanently to associate the advancement of knowledge with the widest possible civic and public diffusion of it; and this without any academic limitations, henceforth to all races and languages, to both men and women alike, and for all time coming."

"Not in matter but in thought, not in possessions nor even in attainments but in ideals, is to be found the seed of immortality. Not through material acquisition but in generous diffusion of ideas and ideals can the true empire of humanity be established. Thus to Asoka, to whom belonged this vast empire, bound by the inviolate seas, after he had tried to ransom the world by giving away to the utmost, there came a time when he had nothing more to give, except one half of an Amlaki fruit. This was his last possession, and his anguished cry was that since he had nothing more to give, let the half of the Amlaki be accepted as his final gift."

"Ashoka’s emblem of the Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of thunderbolt. It was the RishiDadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of the Amlaki that we can offer now. But the past shall be reborn in a yet nobler future. We stand here today and resume work tomorrow, so that by the efforts of our lives and our unshaken faith in the future we may all help to build the greater India yet to be."

"They would be our worst enemy who would wish us to live only on the glories of the past and die off from the face of the earth in sheer passivity. By continuous achievement alone we can justify our great ancestry. We do not honour our ancestors by the false claim that they are omniscient and had nothing more to learn."

"Capacity to endure through infinite transformation must be innate in that mighty civilization which has seen the intellectual culture of the Nile Valley of Assyria and of Babylon wax and wane and disappear, and which today gazes on the future with the same invincible faith with which it met the past."

"Nothing can be more vulgar or more untrue than the ignorant assertion that the world owes its progress of knowledge of any particular race. The whole world is interdependent and a constant stream of thought has throughout ages enriched the common heritage of mankind. It is the realization of this mutual interdependence that has kept the mighty fabric bound together and ensured the continuity of permanence of civilization."

"[Science] was a human heritage] belonging neither to the East or the West."

"The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would never pluck flowers. 'Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?' His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!""

"Sir J.C. Bose's pioneering works in quasi-optic millimeter wave research in Calcutta, India about 100 years back during 1890s are highlighted. He developed an elegant millimeter wave spark transmitter, self recovering coherer detector, wire grid polariser, cylindrical diffraction grating, dielectric lens and prism, rectangular waveguide, horn antenna and microwave absorber, for the studies of reflection, refraction, absorption and polarisation of millimeter waves and its application to wireless remote control for firing a gun. All these pioneering activities indicate that he was well ahead of his time and prompted us to call him the "Father of Radio Science"."

"Then afterwards, when victory is yours, we too-all of us Bengalis-will share in the honour and the glory. We do not need to understand what is it that you have done. Or to have given you any thought, time or money, but the moment we hear the chorus or praises in The Times from the lips of the Englishmen we shall lap it up. Some important news papers in our country will observe we are not inferior men; and another paper will observe we are making discovery after discovery in science. Earlier we shall not have felt an iota of responsibility towards you, but when victory has been won and you return home bearing a crop of records, then you will be one of us. Soughing and ploughing you will do alone; reaping we shall do together. The victory you will find will be more ours than yours."

"O Hermit, call thou in the authentic words Of that old hymn called Sama; "Rise! Awake! Call to the man who boasts his shastric lore From vain pedantic wranglings profitless, Call to that foolish braggart to come forth Out on the face of nature, this broad earth, Send forth this call unto thy scholar band; Together round thy sacrifice of fire Let them all gather. So may our India, Our ancient land unto herself return O once again return to steadfast work, To duty and devotion, to her trance Of earnest meditation; let her sit Once more unruffled, greedless, strifeless, pure, O once again upon her lofty seat And platform, teacher of all lands."

"...the "Resonant Cardiograph," Bose then pursued extensive researches on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with an unerring accuracy by which a one-hundredth part of a second is indicated on a graph. Resonant records measure infinitesimal pulsations in plant, animal and human structure. The great botanist predicted that use of his cardiograph will lead to vivisection on plants instead of animals."

"To bringing about the scientific renaissance (In India) Sir Jagadish had influentially contributed. Indians are justly proud of the possession of a few men who have gained world-wide reputation in their particular fields of activity, and this pride reacts strongly on public opinion. At the Research Institute a group Indian post-graduate students devote their lives to research. The published Transactions of the Institute show that under the leadership of this eminent Bengali, Indian research is making substantial contribution to scientific knowledge, that in this field there is no fundamental difference between the Western and the Eastern mind, as was assumed when Sir Jagadish began his work."

"The generally accepted interpretation of Jagadish Chandra’s scientific activities is that he had essentially the biologist’s conception of Nature; lack of opportunities for biological studies while as a student in Calcutta and later lack of any teaching post in biology, induced Jagadish Chandra to take up the post of teacher in physics."

"Bose was a physicist and a physicist he remained in his outlook to the very end."

"Agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system of nearly 700 million people in the country and we need to build our food security on the foundation of home grown food."

"But for [...] his contributions, India today would have been a decimated, depopulated country as prophesied by the American doom-sayers Paddock Brothers!"

"Dr. Swaminathan is a living legend. His contributions to Agricultural Science have made an indelible mark on food production in India and elsewhere in the developing world. By any standards, he will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of rare distinction."

"The magic happens only when the artist serves with love and the listener receives with the same spirit."

"Land and water management should be given ‘Number One' priority for achieving evergreen revolution. No less important is to achieve the utmost efficiency in investment as well as in the use of water."