From Conversation to Collective Action

What the GROW-N Panel at NIT Rourkela revealed about India’s water-science ecosystem

On a winter evening at NIT Rourkela, a rather unusual panel discussion unfolded as part of HYDRO International 2025 conference. Instead of PowerPoint slides and narrow technical papers, senior professors, early-career researchers and doctoral students sat together to ask a deceptively simple question:

How do we build something that lasts?

The discussion was organised under the banner of GROW-N (Group on Remote sensing, Ocean and Water resources - for Networking), a young but ambitious network that aims to link science, practice, and policy across India. As the opening speaker explained, GROW-N was created to encourage data sharing, methodological exchange, mentoring of young researchers, and translation of scientific debate into public-policy relevance.

What followed was not a ceremonial panel. It was a candid, sometimes uncomfortable diagnosis of how research in India actually works.

1. The open-access trap and why Indian researchers are being priced out

One of the most forceful interventions came from a former institute director who spoke bluntly about the economics of modern academic publishing.

Over the last five years, most major hydrology and geoscience journals have moved to open-access publishing, meaning authors must pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) after acceptance. These charges typically range from USD 2,000 to 3,000. Converted into Indian currency, that becomes ₹2.5–3 lakh per paper, often more than a month’s salary for a young faculty member or post-doctoral researcher.

This creates a structural bias. Laboratories in Europe or the United States publish freely. Indian researchers, even when their work is scientifically strong, hesitate or are simply unable to submit.

Worse, the panelists pointed out something most students sense but rarely hear said aloud. Review bias is real. Papers from Indian institutions are scrutinised more harshly, while weaker submissions from well-known foreign labs pass through.

The result is not only unfair. It is dangerous. It slowly pushes Indian scientists away from writing about Indian rivers, Indian aquifers and Indian climate problems.

2. Indian journals already exist. We are simply not using them

The response was not to reject Indian journals but to recognise their value.

Two examples were repeatedly mentioned:

• Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, published by the Indian Society of Hydraulics
• Current Science, India’s flagship multidisciplinary journal

Both have regular publication schedules and credible peer review. Yet they are underused. Why?

Because faculty selection committees and promotion boards quietly send a message:
“International journals count. Indian journals do not.”

This mindset was openly criticised. As one senior professor said, a journal is only weak because we refuse to publish in it. Quality follows participation.

3. Conferences: networking without accountability

Indian hydrology conferences, especially the long-running HYDRO series, attract hundreds of researchers every year. Yet the panel exposed a persistent problem.

Every conference ends with recommendations. No one follows them up.

One speaker proposed a simple but powerful reform.
Each recommendation must name a responsible person or group. At the next conference, there should be a formal session reviewing what actually happened.

That single institutional change could transform conferences from social events into engines of policy and scientific coordination.

The panel also raised an uncomfortable statistic.
More Indians attend AGU (American Geophysical Union) and EGU (European Geosciences Union) meetings than attend HYDRO.

We spend crores on international airfares while our own national platforms struggle for funding.

4. Why India must build its own scientific software and instruments

Another major theme was technological sovereignty.

India imports almost all its hydrological models, data platforms and instruments. This is not just expensive. It is risky.

When software is foreign-made, we do not control:

• Algorithms
• Assumptions
• Source code
• Update cycles
• Long-term support

One veteran model developer explained the brutal reality. Writing the scientific core of a model is only 10 percent of the work. The rest is user interfaces, testing, documentation and maintenance. None of that earns publications. None of it earns promotions. So, people stop.

Without continuous funding and institutional recognition, indigenous software cannot survive.

Yet the payoff is enormous. When you build your own model, you also advance numerical methods, theory, coding skills and data infrastructure. Countries that control their scientific software control their scientific future.

5. The data paradox: we solve other nations’ problems, not our own

Perhaps the most troubling moment came when river data was discussed.

For many major Indian rivers that carry two-thirds of India’s surface water, flow data remains classified. Researchers cannot access it.

So, what happens?

Indian scientists end up modelling Colorado, Rhine and Mekong rivers, while the Ganga, Godavari and Brahmaputra remain scientifically under-analysed.

This is not a technical problem. It is a governance failure.

6. Should GROW-N become a formal society?

One senior panellist proposed a bold move.

GROW-N should not remain a WhatsApp group or an informal network. It should be registered under the Societies Act. That gives it legal standing.

Once registered, it can:

• Include Central Water Commission and CGWB
• Approach ministries directly
• Apply for funding
• Launch journals and data platforms
• Represent Indian water science as a unified voice

In today’s India, informal networks are invisible to policy. Registered societies are not.

7. A different idea of a journal

The panel did not dream of copying Nature or Water Resources Research. It imagined something different.

A Diamond Open Access journal             
No fee for authors. No fee for readers. Funded by government and scientific societies.

Such journals already exist in Europe. They are cheaper, fairer and scientifically cleaner.

But they only work when a community takes collective responsibility for quality, review and citation.

As one speaker put it, a journal is not a building. It is a culture.

A quiet shift

What made this panel special was not consensus. There was disagreement about whether to start a new journal or strengthen old ones, whether to outsource conferences or keep them academic.

But there was no disagreement on one point.

India has the scientific talent.    
What it lacks is institutional courage.

GROW-N, in that sense, is not just another academic network. It is an attempt to create a scientific public sphere for Indian water research.

Whether it succeeds will depend on something far harder than funding or software.

It will depend on whether Indian scientists decide to believe in their own institutions.

 

Written by ChatGPT from Panel discussion transcript, GROW-N at HYDRO, NIT Rourkela

Compiled by Amit Kantode.