All the grant-in-aid institutions have high quality programmes leading to degrees by research. Graduates of these programmes have very high employment potential.
As a part of the process of evolution, the most recent initiative is the proposal to set up an Institute within DAE having the status of a university. This institute will be called Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI) and an application has already been submitted to Ministry of Human Resource Development for this purpose. A new building for the BARC Training School is also being constructed in Anushakti Nagar.

Elevation drawing of new training school

No major change is required in the existing structure of the HRD programme at the induction level. One change proposed is to increase the duration of the OCES from one year to two years by introducing project work and award M.Tech./ M.Phil. at the end of two years. This, however, can be implemented only after HBNI is in place.

Radiological Physics & Advisory Division (RPAD), BARC conducts training programmes to cater to the needs of radiation safety in medical, industrial and research applications of ionizing radiation. The programmes include one-year post-graduate diploma in radiological physics, short-term training programmes and radiation safety awareness programmes. Requirements of radiation safety officers is bound to increase in the coming years and therefore, there is a need to strengthen infrastructure for providing these courses and to start similar courses at some universities.

A one-year training course in health physics to train health physics professionals for manning nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities is also in place and this will require expansion as the programme expands. Radiation Medicine Centre, BARC conducts two courses, two-year diploma in radiation medicine and a one-year diploma in medical radioisotope techniques.

DAE has good linkages with the university system as well as industry. There were proposals to further strengthen these linkages. Technology transfer should be encouraged and coordination at the DAE level in this area should be strengthened. DAE institutions and professional societies, wherein DAE employees have a major role, are engaged in several activities, example being National Initiative on Undergraduate Science and programmes for training students for participation in the International Olympiads run by Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, programmes for college teachers run by Indian Association of Nuclear Chemists and Allied Scientists (IANCAS), essay competition run by Public Awareness Division of DAE. All these programmes should be strengthened. Training provided to undergraduate students during summer, facilities and guidance provided to under-graduate and post-graduate students for projects should be continued.

All these programmes are able to cater to the requirements of the current programmes of the Department. Imperatives of providing energy security to the nation based on indigenous resources demand development of technologies, which have not been developed anywhere any where in the world. This would require very large high caliber manpower and nationwide effort spread over several universities and national laboratories. The Department has to further strengthen the existing mechanisms of extra-mural funding to involve the national university system to achieve its goals. Framework of involving universities to use large facilities of DAE has already been expanded by changing Inter University Consortium of DAE Facilities to UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research. This would facilitate involving university system in DAE programmes and concrete steps need to be initiated to translate the intent of the changeover into concrete action points.

Development of ADS31 would call for strengthening ‘physics based industrial activity’ in the country. This would also require trained manpower and skilled persons trained by DAE would migrate to industry as well as other countries. Therefore, planning for training manpower has to account for all such leakages.

Review of job assigned to young officers after 2 to 3 years, awards for young performers, job rotation, encouraging a culture for group working, mentoring of the young and upgrading infrastructure to facilitate long working hours were other issues which were emphasized. Job rotation can be very effective in developing multi-faceted professionals, who would be able to adapt to emerging and new technologies in a short time. To effect redeployment, there is a strong need to prepare a database of skill set of employees and to provide avenues for retraining.

In research and development, learning is an ongoing process and particularly when we are living in a domain where technologies get obsolete very fast. Hi-tech organizations have to carry on with orientation, re-orientation and re-re-orientation. There was also a strong emphasis on providing avenues for continuing education during the course of employment to fight obsolescence and to facilitate re-orientation.

There is an expectation that launching of HBNI would provide several well-structured programmes for enhancing educational qualification of the employees and would also provide an additional attraction to talented young to join DAE institutions. It would also increase synergy within the DAE system. DAE has within its fold institutions pursuing basic research as well as technology development. Increased cooperation between DAE institutions can ensure that basic research is translated into technologies very fast and in view of prevailing technology control regime, this is a national need. The proposed structure of HBNI provides for such an interaction through the medium of students, who would be working under the joint supervision of two scientists (one working in basic sciences and the other working on technology development)

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For scientists engaged in basic research, it is very important that mechanism for well-structured peer review is evolved and implemented. Wherever possible experts from other countries should also be involved for peer review. Board of studies of HBNI could conduct first level peer review of basic research. To encourage innovative thinking, it is desirable to introduce competitive funding through BRNS for employees of grant-in-aid institutions as well as constituent units.

Epilogue

Overall, the programme was a comprehensive exercise involving about 1000 young scientists and engineers and this constitutes a significant fraction of the total number of young scientists and engineers in the Department. More than 250 seniors mentored the young colleagues through the satellite meetings and otherwise and most of the seniors listened to all the presentations during the plenary session. All participants also had the benefit of interaction with highly experienced seniors like Dr Raja Ramanna, Dr M R Srinivasan, Dr R Chidambaram, Professor S K Joshi, Professor S P Sukhatme and Sh S Prabhakaran, who were present during the plenary session and some of them presented their wise counsel at the end of the session.

Achievements of the Department over the past 50 years were acknowledged and it was recognized that the DAE institutions are the beneficiary of long-term stable enlightened support to fundamental research. As a result, DAE has in its fold the best institutions in the country with the best brains the country has. Overall, it was felt that while the Department has performed very well during the past 50 years, in the next 10 years it might have to do almost as much or even more. Though the vision is something like a mature dream, one cannot lose sight of the fact that vision has to be amenable to implementation. Long-term energy scenario calls for massive expansion in nuclear power in the country and India has to develop new technologies that are needed consistent with its objectives and resources. However, India has to choose an independent path for technology development and this is because of two reasons; one because of prevailing technology control regimes and two being a large country with a high density of population, its problems are unique.