These efforts had, nonetheless, a galvanising effect. Taking advantage of the University Act of 1904, which allowed the existing Indian universities to organise teaching and research instead of merely affiliating colleges, Sir Asutosh Mookhejee took the initiative of establishing a University College of Science in Calcutta. Eminent scientists such as P. C. Ray, C. V. Rarnan, S. N. Bose and K. S. Krishnan taught there. This very college, although starved financially all through, produced a group of physicists and chemists who received international recognition. By contrast, the contributions of many government scientific organisations staffed by highly paid Europeans were rather poor. Those who put India on the scientific map of the world were many.

The need for an annual scientific meeting had been felt all along, so that different scientific workers throughout the country might be brought into touch with one another more closely. So far it had been possible only in the purely official and irregular conferences such as the Sanitary Conference or the Agricultural Conference. Thus, was born the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) in 1914 with the following objectives:

•  to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific enquiry;

•  to promote the interaction of societies and individuals interested in science in different parts of the country; and

•  to obtain a more general attention to the cause of pure and applied sciences.

The objectives have not changed much since then and the ISCA has now grown into the largest organisation of Indian scientists and technologists representing all disciplines of science and technology.

In the wake of the World War I (1914-18), the Government realised that India must become more self-reliant scientifically and industrially. It appointed an Indian Industrial Commission in 1916 to examine steps that might be taken to lessen India's scientific and industrial dependence on Britain. The scope of the resulting recommendations was broad, covering many aspects of industrial development. But few of the Commission's recommendations were actually implemented. Similar was the fate of numerous other conferences and committees. Whenever requests were made by Indians for starting new, institutions or expanding existing ones, the government pleaded insufficiency of funds or inadequacy of demand. The interests of the colonial administration and those of the nationalists in most instances often clashed.