Why India’s associate membership to CERN might not necessarily be cause for celebration
Earlier this week, India became an associate member of CERN. On a personal level, this is something that made me really happy. After I graduated (and hence renounced my membership to CERN), I received a strongly worded email from CERN warning me of strict diplomatic consequences if I didn’t return my office key. I’m glad to know that my late return of the key did not severely impact Indo-CERN relations.
On a less personal note, I find this news somewhat troubling. It seems to have been covered almost exclusively in a positive light by the Indian media. While there are undeniable benefits (to science and to India) from this new alliance, I think that on the whole, this move is detrimental to the future of Indian science, and here’s why.
A brief history of CERN
To put things into context, I think it’s worthwhile to go over why CERN was established and what niche it occupies in international science. Two things changed about the way particle physics research was conducted after World War II.
- The length scales at which new physics was to be found (i.e. the size of the particles/phenomena that were being studied) became so small that tabletop experiments were not suitable anymore
- The war-ravaged countries of Western Europe couldn’t afford to use a large fraction of their budget for fundamental physics research the same way that the two big superpowers of the era could
As a result, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (abbreviated as CERN in French) was formed, with the intent of pooling together the monetary resources and the intellectual brainpower of Europe to do experimental nuclear and particle physics.
More than 6 decades of research in particle accelerator advancement resulted in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is what brought CERN and all the grandiose epithets associated with it into the mainstream public consciousness (see God Particle, Big Bang Machine).
The administration and operation of Large Hadron Collider and CERN in the 2010s
The LHC is a truly global affair with scientists from all over the world contributing to the construction of the accelerator and the detectors and the analysis of the experiments. As of last month, there were 22 member states (each with a nominally equal say in the administration), with Israel being the only non-European member.
In addition, it has 5 associate members — Serbia and Cyprus are associate members in the pre-stage to membership while Turkey, Pakistan and Ukraine are associate members. Associate members have fewer rights than member states, but more so than non-member states — we’ll get into that when we talk about India’s membership.
Finally, for countries and organizations that do not want to contribute as much financially, but still want to be in the cool kids club, a third category exists — observer states — which as of last month included the European Commission, India, Japan, the Russian Federation, UNESCO and the USA. These are countries that have, in the past, made significant monetary, technological and scientific contributions to CERN, but which do not contribute to the annual operational costs.
What does it take to be a member of CERN?
The membership fees so to speak, of CERN, require a nation to contribute a certain fraction of its gross GDP every year. CERN’s website also mentions the number of personnel stationed at CERN as another factor in determining this contribution, but as far as I can tell this dependence has a negligible effect.
Associate members are required to pay a lesser amount, which also appears to have some dependence on GDP (Turkey, which has a GDP roughly 4 times that of Pakistan, pays roughly 4 times as much). The number being floated around in the Indian media lists India’s putative annual contribution to be around 11.5 million CHF, which seems to be within 10% of what it should be based on GDP, given the numbers for Pakistan and Turkey.
11.5 million CHF (US $11.3 million, or 77.8 crore INR) is a lot of money. One question that the media should really be asking (and is not) is — is an associate membership worth 11.5 million CHF ?
What does an associate membership of CERN get you?
I’m going to assume that all the benefits that India could possibly get are listed in CERN’s press release .
India’s Associate Membership will strengthen the long-term partnership between CERN and the Indian scientific community.
Doesn’t really mean too much, as far as I can tell.
Associate Membership will allow India to take part in meetings of the CERN Council and its committees (Finance Committee and Scientific Policy Committee).
It is unclear what this means exactly, but India will definitely have some say in the running of CERN now. An observer state is just an observer in these meetings. An associate member gets some voting rights, but not all of them, and CERN’s website is unclear about the extent of these partial rights.
It will also make Indian scientists eligible for staff appointments.
This is good news for you if you’re an Indian particle physicist, I guess?
Finally, once the Agreement enters into force, Indian industry will be entitled to bid for CERN contracts, which will open up opportunities for industrial collaboration in areas of advanced technology.
Having worked for a summer disentangling some really atrocious FPGA code from one of CERN’s contractors, I have no faith in their contracting ability. Jokes aside, this is potentially huge for the Indian economy. The LHC, is arguably the biggest and most complex machine built by mankind, and any future endeavors are likely to be of a similar size. If Indian companies can compete on par with their European counterparts for these contracts, then this could be really good for the economy in general, and any number of subsets of the engineering industry in particular.
Alright, so I guess there are definite benefits of being a member state. But the question isn’t just about what this membership is buying you, but also about the opportunity cost of this investment
What can 11.5 million CHF buy you in India(n science)?
The science budget of India for the year 2016 was $1.19 billion. The amount India will be contributing to CERN just for operational purposes, is about 1 % of this.
The number of Indian scientists at CERN (according to CERN) is just shy of 300, while the total number of full time researchers in India according to this nature article is 200,000. I strongly suspect that the latter does not include grad students while the former definitely does, but let’s just take these numbers at face value and say that 0.15% of researchers in India are affiliated with CERN in some way.
So at least 1% of the science budget is being spent just to buy an associate membership for about 0.15% of the scientific community. This lump sum does not include the money being spent on salaries for its scientists (science in India is almost entirely government funded), computing costs, costs for detector development/maintenance (for the parts that India has built), the cost-of-living adjustment for when said scientists travel to CERN, travel and conference grants etc. All of these expenses are a very necessary cost of doing world-class science, and I whole-heartedly believe that we should spend as much money as we can on it.
My biggest objection to the move, is that this associate membership is not gaining India anything significant in addition to what we already spend on CERN science. I do not believe that vague promises of industrial contracts (none of which are likely to come into effect before at least 2022 when the next major upgrades happen), vague promises of staff appointments and a very very small say in the running of CERN (which isn’t all that important anyway IMO) are worth 1% of the annual science budget.
What are other non-associate-members doing with their money?
I think it is worth noting that most nations outside of the EU which are known for their strong scientific programs are not member or associate member states of CERN (with the notable exception of Israel).
China (the US-president-elect’s favorite nation to talk about) is talking about building it’s own super collider which will be even YUGER than the LHC.
The US itself has been content to remain an observer state for the past 50 years. I find it hard to believe that the opportunity to upgrade its membership has not arisen in that timespan, given its close diplomatic ties to Western Europe. The US is home to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider as well, which is a specialized experiment for studying collisions of heavy ions (which teach us about the Strong Nuclear Force).
Japan, another observer state, has the KEK, which is built to collide electrons and positrons — this will answer questions about a different kind of physics, than the hadronic collisions (collisions of protons and atoms) of RHIC or LHC.
For a fledgling economy like India, building a lower energy, but more specialized particle accelerator (akin to the US and Japan), would have been a great way to carve a unique niche for itself in the world of particle physics, and also to create jobs (in science, R&D and manufacturing) and indigenously develop science and engineering talent at scale.
I’m sure I lack the policy expertise of the higher-ups who made this call, but as an ex-particle physicist and a concerned citizen of India, this decision doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
The views expressed in this article are mine alone. I have worked on the CMS experiment in CERN as a graduate student at MIT from 2012–2015, but none of the facts/opinions expressed in this article necessarily require that experience.
