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Defeated and tired, Shreemanta Parida sat in aisle seat 25G of the Frankfurt-bound Lufthansa flight out of India and struggled to understand how his homecoming had turned into humiliation.
The non-resident Indian scientist, appointed two years ago as chief executive officer of a government vaccine research programme, resigned last month and returned home to Berlin, saying India’s science bureaucracy had prevented him from working.
Scientists familiar with Parida’s plight say his 25-month stay in India is a tale of how an entrenched science bureaucracy stonewalled a newcomer, senior administrators failed to curb the harassment, and good intentions deteriorated into bitter acrimony.
In emails to senior DBT officials, Parida has indicated he was denied access to VGCP documents and kept out of meetings while the programme’s initiatives were run by someone he described as a “shadow” scientist-bureaucrat. Parida did not get any office infrastructure, computer, staff or even an official email address, and his salary was held back for months, he says.
“It was humiliating,” Parida told The Telegraph from Berlin. He said he had pleaded several times with then DBT secretary Maharaj Kishan Bhan for intervention that would allow him to carry out the tasks he had been hired for.
But email correspondence, documents and interviews with scientists in the DBT and other institutions suggest that differences of opinion and friction between Parida and DBT adviser T.S. Rao erupted into confrontation. The correspondence indicates Rao declined to share key VGCP papers with Parida.
Trouble also emerged with Parida’s attempt to steer the VGCP along directions mandated by its own guidelines. He wanted to discourage funding of individual, piecemeal projects and to promote “theme-based” research where multiple teams collaboratively engage with different aspects of the challenges to vaccine development.
Yet, the DBT went ahead with tradition, inviting proposals for individual research projects. “The call for proposals went out without my knowledge,” Parida said.
DBT secretary Bhan set up a committee of three scientists to review Parida’s performance and hand in their report by November 30, 2012.
But two of the three scientists told this newspaper the DBT never followed up on the communication and the panel never met. The third, neurosurgeon Prakash Tandon, said he did not recall even being told he was on this panel.
The DBT declined to respond to queries why Parida’s salary had been withheld for several months and why the DBT’s displeasure with his performance had not been officially communicated to him at any point during his tenure.
The_Telegraph
The non-resident Indian scientist, appointed two years ago as chief executive officer of a government vaccine research programme, resigned last month and returned home to Berlin, saying India’s science bureaucracy had prevented him from working.
Scientists familiar with Parida’s plight say his 25-month stay in India is a tale of how an entrenched science bureaucracy stonewalled a newcomer, senior administrators failed to curb the harassment, and good intentions deteriorated into bitter acrimony.
In emails to senior DBT officials, Parida has indicated he was denied access to VGCP documents and kept out of meetings while the programme’s initiatives were run by someone he described as a “shadow” scientist-bureaucrat. Parida did not get any office infrastructure, computer, staff or even an official email address, and his salary was held back for months, he says.
“It was humiliating,” Parida told The Telegraph from Berlin. He said he had pleaded several times with then DBT secretary Maharaj Kishan Bhan for intervention that would allow him to carry out the tasks he had been hired for.
But email correspondence, documents and interviews with scientists in the DBT and other institutions suggest that differences of opinion and friction between Parida and DBT adviser T.S. Rao erupted into confrontation. The correspondence indicates Rao declined to share key VGCP papers with Parida.
Trouble also emerged with Parida’s attempt to steer the VGCP along directions mandated by its own guidelines. He wanted to discourage funding of individual, piecemeal projects and to promote “theme-based” research where multiple teams collaboratively engage with different aspects of the challenges to vaccine development.
Yet, the DBT went ahead with tradition, inviting proposals for individual research projects. “The call for proposals went out without my knowledge,” Parida said.
DBT secretary Bhan set up a committee of three scientists to review Parida’s performance and hand in their report by November 30, 2012.
But two of the three scientists told this newspaper the DBT never followed up on the communication and the panel never met. The third, neurosurgeon Prakash Tandon, said he did not recall even being told he was on this panel.
The DBT declined to respond to queries why Parida’s salary had been withheld for several months and why the DBT’s displeasure with his performance had not been officially communicated to him at any point during his tenure.
The_Telegraph
