* No Muslims among its 26 officials, headed by the CEO
* There is only one Muslim on the powerful Oversight Committee
* 14 Muslim members across 13 Programme Advisory Panels
* India has 255 researchers per million people
THE Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a statutory federal body established in 2008 to support basic research in emerging domains of science and engineering and support research scientists, has fewer Muslims. It has no Muslims among its members and officials, as of mid-2025, according to a new book by Mohammed Abdul Mannan, At The Bottom Of The Ladder: State Of The Indian Muslims – https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0GF1Q9R25 – which quantified Muslim presence in 150 key organisations, including Union ministries, departments, and organisations.
It provides financial assistance to people engaged in science and engineering research, academic institutions, research and development laboratories, industrial concerns, and other agencies for research. The SERB aims to build the best management systems to match the best global practices in the area of promotion and funding of basic research.
Its vision is to position science and technology as the fulcrum for social and economic change by supporting relevant, competitive, and quality scientific research and development. The premier national research funding agency is keen to raise the quality and footprint of Indian science and engineering to the highest global levels in an “accelerated mode” through calibrated support for research and development.
Its goal is to stimulate the search for new knowledge and encourage invention, discovery, innovation, and development by supporting bottom-up research competitively and at all levels of the research ecosystem. It also supports conceptually new directions having the potential for non-incremental and transformative success, along with strengthening deep expertise in specific domains through inter-disciplinary and multi-institutional ‘top-down’ programmes.
India has only 255 researchers per million people, far less than the US, which had 4,245 researchers per million. The government has to ensure funding for research and development for the country to remain competitive in the sector. India had been ranked 75th on the Global Knowledge Index 2020 of 138 countries and had a score of 44.4, which was on the lower side of the global average of 46.7. Researchers per million population stood at 888 in Brazil and 484 in South Africa.
The number of researchers per million population in India has increased to 262 in 2020 from 255 in 2017, 218 in 2015, and 110 in 2000. India produced 25,550 doctorates in 2020-21, of which 14,983 were in science and engineering disciplines. India’s research output was the fourth highest worldwide (1.3 million academic papers between 2017 and 2022), behind world leader China (4.5 million). In 2021, the total number of researchers in the country was 3.42 lakh. The premier agency for planning, promoting, and funding internationally competitive research in emerging areas has a board to govern its affairs. It has an Oversight Committee, whose members advise and assist it.
None of its 17 members on the board is a Muslim in New Delhi, as is the case with 26 top officials headed by the CEO. One of the nine members of its Oversight Committee is a Muslim, Prof Talat Ahmad, Vice Chancellor of the University of Kashmir, as a non-official member. Fourteen are Muslims as core and coopted members across 13 Programme Advisory Committees (PACs) formed for Chemical Sciences, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Himalayan Glaciology, Engineering Sciences, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences, and the Scheme for Young Scientists.
Three Muslims are co-opted members on the Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) on Biomedical and Health Sciences (BHS), while there are no Muslims on the PACs on Civil, Infrastructure and Transportation Engineering, and Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering. The 29-member Inorganic and Physical Chemistry panel has Prof Shabana Khan of the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research at Pune.
There are no Muslims on the 26-member Mechanical, Manufacturing, Aerospace Engineering, and Robotics panel, as is the case with the 32-member Plasma, High Energy, Nuclear Physics, Nonlinear Dynamics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Lasers, Optics, Atomic and Molecular Physics (PHENNA-LOAMP), or the 32-member Chemical and Environmental Engineering panels.
The PAC on Earth and Atmospheric Sciences has two Muslims as core members out of a total of 31 – Prof Gufran Beig of the National Institute of Advanced Studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and Prof S A Haider of Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.
The 12 members on Exponential Technologies include a Muslim, Prof Javed Iqbal from Bio-Green Remedies in Hyderabad. The Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences (IBS) panel has one Muslim among 26 members – Dr Bushra Ateeq, Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences & Bioengineering (BSBE) at IIT Kannur. No Muslim is on the 26-member Mathematical Sciences panel.
The Organismal and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) Committee has three Muslims out of a total of 42 as core members – Prof Qudsia Tahseen of the Department of Zoology at Aligarh Muslim University, Dr Saman Habib from the Molecular and Structural Biology Division at the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, and Prof Manzoor Ahmad Shah of the Department of Botany at the University of Kashmir. Thirty-one members on the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science panel are not Muslim.
There are two Muslims among 181 members on five Expert Committees on Start-up Research Grant & National Post-doctoral Fellowship Schemes. The 38-member Chemical Sciences panel has one Muslim – Dr Shaikh M. Mobin from the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore, as a coopted member. No Muslim is on the 44-member Engineering Sciences panel.
The Physical and Mathematical Sciences panel has one Muslim among 31 members as a coopted member – Prof Sharifuddin Pirzada of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kashmir. No Muslim is among the 32 members of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences panel, as is the case with the Life Sciences panel’s 32 members. In two other Expert Committees for Research Scientist (SRS) Scheme and Teachers Associateship for Research Excellence (TARE) with 94 members, four are Muslims, including Dr M Shaikh Mobin of the Department of Chemistry at IIT Indore. None is a Muslim among 21 Programme Advisors/Coordinators and Programme Officers, as is the case with other scientists numbering 60-plus.
To read and obtain more data, please visit:
At the Bottom of the Ladder: State of the Indian Muslims –https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0GF1Q9R25
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