Interviews: Meteorite Researcher And A Palaeontologist

Came across these two interesting interviews with a meteorite researcher and a paleontologist.

Meenakshi Wadhwa grew up in Chandigarh, North India. She wanted to study architecture. She ended up being a meteorite researcher. Quanta Magazine highlights her path from college to Director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University.

I totally related to this!

Applying from India, at a time when there was no internet, I had the Barron’s guide to graduate schools in the U.S., which was outdated by like 10 years at that point. I didn’t care about geography or any of that. I didn’t care if it was East Coast or West Coast or the Midwest. It was all half a world away.

.. and this was pretty amazing-

We get something like 100 tons of stuff falling on the Earth every single day. Spread over the entire planet, it’s not all that much if you think about it. Most of that is sand-size particles — tiny, tiny particles. Things that are about the size of a car, or van-size bolides, they hit a few times a year. Something the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor [which exploded over Russia in 2013], that’s a few times a year.

It's a terrific interview.

Dr. Lisa White is a paleontologist. Her specialty is Diatoms. These are single celled algae. They have a lot to tell us about past ecology and climate.  African Americans are poorly represented in the geosciences, and Dr. White as the director of education and outreach at the University of California Museum of Paleontology is actively working to increase diversity in the geosciences.

An excerpt:

I work nationally on a number of boards and with working groups and communities that are constantly examining the diversity in geosciences. We know our numbers don’t compare to engineering and the biological sciences. African American students are more likely to know about those fields and see the direct link to jobs. So we do have a bit of an image problem.

[It can be] difficult for students to have access to information about geosciences careers. There aren’t often a lot of standalone courses in high school. But there are a lot of interdisciplinary connections between all the fields, especially geoscience engineering, chemistry, water science, even agriculture…soil science.

Black Enterprise has the full interview.

Its always fun to read about how people arrive at a particular career trajectory.  A casual conversation, a book read during a holiday, or a trip taken with friends or for some other work can lead someone down  a career path they never thought they would take.

On Being On The Lower Rungs Of Science Hierarchy

This made me chuckle: On being a mycologist from Adam Rogers- Proof: The Science of Booze

"It was something even I, an undergraduate who didn't know anything could do", Scott says. " I could go out there and look for stuff" In the space of one anecdote, Scott had become a mycologist. You think you were an iconoclast in college? Try being a tall, gay, banjo-playing fungus major with a microscope in  your dorm  room,  walls decorated with fungal family trees you drew yourself".

and.. this on perceived scientific hierarchy:

Magnified fungi look like alien plants from a 1930s pulp sci-fi magazine cover, or a Dr. Suess illustration rendered by Pixar. Its a weird landscape, not to everyone's taste. 'If you found a new deer, you'd be on the cover of Nature," says John Taylor, a mycologist at UC Berkeley. "If you find a new fungus, you're in the middle pages of Mycotaxon. But we're not bitter".

That last sentiment reminded me of a conversation I had a long time ago. It was during my M.Sc field training week in Central  India. We were walking back to  camp after a long day's tramp through forests and stream beds. The conversation turned to career choices and the merits and excitement  of getting into a science career. One faculty with us reminded us not to expect attention. Most scientists  will live through  a low profile career.  They will meet a small circle of colleagues and peers. Their papers  will be read by a few  handful of others. You need  to accept this and be satisfied that your  choice and your work is adding  incrementally to our knowledge. Don't expect revolutions.

Is there a division in geology between glamorous and less weighty fields? Again, I  am reminded of the situation during my graduate days at Pune University. The geology department there grew out of a hard rock petrology tradition. There were experts galore on igneous, metamorphic rocks, structure and tectonics and field mapping. Sedimentologists studying hard, consolidated, heavily diagenetically altered and cemented rocks were considered real geologists. Working on unconsolidated Quaternary sediments and landforms was looked down upon. Even worse was if you were in the "environmental" field. Dibbling  dabbling with water samples was just not worth the trouble! It's not hard core geology- was the majority voice.

But times are changing.  The recent impetus in studying climate change means that Quaternary sediments and the secrets they hold about past climates and sea level changes is a hot area of research. So are fields like environmental geochemistry, spurred by increasing social awareness and a tougher regulatory regime, geared towards understanding the myriad pollution problems we face today. They attract funding from government grants and younger faculty and scientists are seizing the opportunity and launching their careers on *shudder* ..the unconsolidated stuff..

Found It! Memories Of Early Days Of Geology Education

A mouse got in to an old book shelf a few days ago. Panicky cleaning up ensued and there from the back out came a treasure.. (not the mouse.. it ran away)

This well worn copy of the Petrology classic was my introduction to rocks when I started taking geology classes during my first year B.Sc. The book written in the late 1920's was still being used in the mid late 1980's and early 1990's! There were about a hundred of us packed in the intro geology class with the instructor drawing rough sketches on the black board and explaining the basics of the interior of the earth and the three primary types of rocks, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.

I quickly gave up of Tyrrell and turned to other sources.. but those afternoons I do remember.. I knew that after two years of high school not knowing what I was going to do in life that I was on to something special. Geology has stayed with me ever since.

My decision to take up geology had interesting reactions from family and friends. My immediate family, mom, dad, sister and my grandfather completely supported me. Others were less convinced. I was not very good at math so engineering was out. I was not very good at biology so medicine was out. These two were the prestige courses for students.. they had high social standing and these degrees lead to high income careers. Taking a degree in pure sciences was basically admitting that you hadn't done well in the exams and thus could not hack it in the tough technical degrees.

Getting a B.Sc was for the duffers. But my relatives could not say that to me. So they were very sweet about it.." Geology?.. Yes you should take it.. someone has to do it..  we need oil.. minerals"... blah blah blah..

This condescending attitude continued until I got a scholarship to go to the U.S. Then snobbery took over. Getting scholarships to the U.S was again something that mostly only students from technical colleges like the IIT's were supposed to be successful at. Suddenly I was on par with them. Support for me was now because I had at last brought some prestige to the extended family.. "my nephew got a scholarship to the U.S... for a PhD"..

That I had really become passionate about geology and it meant to me more than scholarships and going to the U.S. completely escaped them.

Increasing Interest In Teaching At Community Colleges

Rob Jenkins writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the recent interest expressed by more graduate students in a career teaching at 2 year community colleges:

In any hiring cycle, about 40 percent of the available teaching positions are at two-year campuses. Moreover, a surprisingly large number of Ph.D. students are actually, and actively, interested in community-college careers, perhaps because they've discovered (as I did) that what they really enjoy most is teaching....

....However, the fact is, community colleges have been hiring more and more Ph.D.'s—mostly because they can, given the glut of Ph.D.'s on the market, but also because many two-year colleges these days aspire to become four-year institutions. I know of a few that are now hiring Ph.D.'s exclusively. I think it's a really bad idea for a teaching institution to effectively eliminate so many outstanding, qualified teachers from consideration just because they don't have research degrees. I also think that, in its own way, that sort of intellectual posturing on the part of some two-year colleges may actually contribute to the glut of Ph.D.'s. But alas, nobody asked me.

His advice for aspiring applicants for a community college job: Teach, teach, teach.. put as much teaching experience on your resume as possible.

India Facing A Shortage Of Geologists

Geology and livelihoods - 7

An article in the Hindu Business Line points out to the shortage of geologists in the Indian public and private sector. 

Industry watchers estimate that the combined shortfall in public and private sectors could be as high as 600 geologists a year and growing.

"We need some 300 geologists a year, but the availability is less than 100," said Ms Shantha Sheela Nair, Secretary, Ministry of Mines. The Ministry is investing heavily in training programmes to upgrade the skills of existing manpower.

"We need educational institutions to produce geologists even to meet the current demand," Ms Nair said adding Indian geologists are in huge demand the world over.

Besides the private sector mineral and oil companies that employ geologists to map and explore resources, public entities such as the Geological Survey of India (GSI), the Indian Bureau of Mines, the Central Ground Water Board, Oil India Ltd and ONGC hire geologists in large numbers. 

"It is not only geology. Students are not opting for even the basic science courses," said Mr Balachandran, Director of the Hyderabad-based GSI Training Institute (GSITI). "Several universities have even withdrawn the post-graduate courses for lack of demand," he said.

The article suggests that it is the growing preference for IT courses that is responsible for this shortage.

That does play a role....but there is nothing new about the career preferences of Indian students. As long as I remember geology was not the hot subject to major in. The best and the brightest have always preferred either engineering or computer sciences or medicine or MBA to geology.

What has changed is the opening up of the Indian oil and mining industry to foreign players. The Indian education system has not added too many new geology seats over the years and now the new demand seems to be overwhelming the system.

The public sector appears to be suffering a double blow. A low supply of good quality recruits and a flight to the private sector of their experienced geologists.

See: Geology and livelihoods

Hydrologist Will Be One Of Top Careers In 2010

US News and World Report has a listing of best science and technology careers and hydrologists figures among the top.

Job opportunities should be plentiful for environmental scientists and especially for hydrologists. There were 8,100 hydrologist jobs in 2008, and employment should grow more than 18 percent by 2018. The government has stepped up environmental regulations and has begun cleaning up contaminated and hazardous waste sites—all efforts that increase the need for hydrological research. Competition for openings is limited by the small number of universities and colleges that offer degrees in hydrology.

The figures are for the United States but I would predict that a career to do with water holds a lot of promise in any country. This is not a new observation. Sometime back Science Careers carried a lengthy article on hydrogeology careers and called them "recession proof".

Population pressures, water reallocation challenges between rural and urban consumers, climate change and past mismanagement of water resources means there will be plenty of work for hydrologists and hydrogeologists for decades to come.

Undergraduate Degree By Salary: Geologists Not Doing Too Badly

PayScale College Salary Report has published a list of best undergraduate college degree by salary for the United States. Undergraduates who go on to earn a Master's or a PhD are not included in this survey.

Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary

Methodology Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees. Typical starting graduates have 2 years of experience; mid-career have 15 years. See full methodology for more.

Among the pure sciences, physics, statistics, math and biochemistry are ranked higher but geology comes next with a starting median salary of $ 45,100 and a mid career median salary of $ 84,200.

See the full list here and the methodology here. Tip: Greg Mankiw

Indian Petroleum Geoscientists Are Being Unshackled

Geology and livelihoods - 6

The September issue of Journal of Sedimentary Research has a paper on the sedimentology and stratigraphy of continental slope reservoir facies of the Krishna- Godavari Basin south east India.

Sandy Debrites and Tidalites of Pliocene Reservoir Sands in Upper-Slope Canyon Environments, Offshore Krishna–Godavari Basin (India): Implications

I am not that interested in the contents of the paper. Instead I am going to point to the authorship-

G. Shanmugam1, S.K. Shrivastava2 and Bhagaban Das3

1 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Texas at Arlington, P.O. Box 19049, Arlington, Texas 76019-0049, U.S.A.; shanshanmugam@aol.com
2 Reliance Industries Limited, E&P Business, Reliance Corporate Park, Thane Belapur Road, Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai-400701, India
3 Reliance Industries Limited, E&P Business, Reliance Corporate Park, Thane Belapur Road, Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai-400701, India

This is just about the first paper I have come across in a top sed geology journal authored by researchers working for a private Indian petroleum /energy company and it is just one sign that the Indian hydrocarbon industry intellectual landscape is undergoing a rapid change the last decade or so. Previously all Indian oil fields were managed and operated by nationalized petroleum companies. But in the last few years the government has thrown open exploration blocks to private players and Reliance Industries Limited is one of the most active of the lot.

Private participation has caused quite a ruffle in government operations since lots of talented middle and senior level geologists has left government companies to work for the private sector. Financial gain allied with inducements of greater intellectual freedom especially for the Ph.D types are the main reasons for the move. Reliance for example has set up a well funded sedimentology research lab and the results are showing.

Companies like the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) - a nationalized behemoth- are feeling the pain of this fleeing human capital. One complaint I have heard is that specialization is not always respected and handled with care at these government oil companies. A Ph.D with an expertise in micropalaeontology and biostratigraphy may spend long years doing some other work. That essentially is a waste of talent. No wonder lots of specialists are jumping ship and heading for private organizations who are putting their specialization to a challenging test.

A better use of specialization is good news for geoscientists and for the industry. ONGC will have to follow suit if it wants to retain talent. That in fact will be critical for exploration and exploitation of emerging oil fields. Out of the 160 blocks auctioned for licensing since the year 2000 ONGC has leases for about half of them. A lack of specialists in the government sector could limit India's future oil and gas production capacity.

See: Geology and livelihoods

Are Geologists Unhappier Than Actuaries?

Via NPR Science Friday a ranking of best jobs you can have. The criteria considered? Stress, Work Environment, Physical Demands, Income and Outlook. No intangibles like the feeling you get after finding that prized fossil after a week long search in 100 deg heat.

Science jobs score high in this list. Several in the top ten. Mathematicians get the highest ranking. Geologists are ranked 30th. That is low in my admittedly biased opinion. But physical demands is one the criteria used, so that may have bumped geology to a lower ranking than many fields. In terms of salary /outlook geology compares well with fields ranked much higher.

The worst jobs are lumberjack and dairy farmer. And I thought all those French farmers making cheese looked quite happy on Discovery channel!

Well, what about those mathematicians? The list finds them to be the most satisfied with their career. And they do also have a high opinion of themselves.

Source: xkcd comics

But actuaries are second best?! That is actually quite close to a mathematics career. But still it's really hard for a geologist to accept that!

India Exploration Geologists Fleeing Govt. Petroleum Companies

Geology and livelihoods - 3

I got my bachelor's degree in geology from Fergusson College, Pune. Last week we celebrated the centenary of the department. That is an awfully long tradition of geology in this part of the country. As is inevitable I bumped into colleagues, contemporaries, seniors I had not seen for more than a decade. The department had gone to heroic lengths to get in touch with old students. And I mean really old. There was a sprightly old gentlemen who graduated in 1938 and who soon became one of the star attractions of the afternoon!

I thought it would be fun to compare his lab journal and notes with today's syllabus. What vast differences and maybe some similarities? Come to think of it we still don't teach plate tectonics in second year! :-)

Among the many talks, the one that caught my eye and made me think a bit was a talk by a friend of mine who now works as a senior exploration geologist with a private energy company. He mentioned that around 200 middle and senior exploration geologists have over the last 5 years left government owned oil companies and joined the private energy sector.

Now that is a massive transfer of human capital. I won't say loss of capital since the vast majority of those who left are still working within the Indian oil and gas scenario. Still the government companies feel a little aggrieved. They invested in these people and one fine day all that knowledge base is gone.

I did get the impression talking to friends who have followed this path lately, that financial incentives although certainly important were only part of the motivation. Many, especially those with a Ph.D feel that the government companies don't make full use of their expertise. My friend who is a micro-paleontologist and sedimentologist in a decade and half career with the government didn't always work in his field of specialization.

That is a waste of expertise. Private companies though can't and won't waste. Specialization is rewarded. So while I appreciate the difficulty government companies are facing due to these departures, I see this trend as theoretically a more efficient allocation of human resources.

One practical problem with this theory of efficient resource allocation is that private oil companies hold rights to a very small portion of India's old and new oil producing basins. Private oil companies were only allowed 100% equity in oil and natural gas projects since 2000 under the New Exploration License Policy. So government owned oil companies have ownership of almost all the mature oil fields. Since 2000 nearly 160 new exploration blocks were licensed. Government companies like ONGC along with other national oil companies have done very well in the bidding process winning maybe more than half of those blocks. Not a single international oil major even entered the bidding process.

Besides infrastructure expansion capability, this could turn out to be another limiting factor for India's future oil and natural gas production capacity. India currently imports more than 60% of its oil needs and as its older fields decline, is relying on new finds on the west and east coast offshore basins to boost its domestic oil and natural gas production and relieve it's import requirements. The east coast deep water basins are thought to hold close to 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If true, in terms of energy equivalence this is like doubling India's proved oil reserves as of January 2007 of around 5.6 billion barrels.

The country needs geologic expertise especially in the newer deep water blocks. The government holds rights to a lot of these, but many of their experienced geologists are leaving.

See: Geology and livelihoods

Geoscience Salaries And Careers in U.S and India

I came across several articles on geology careers in the U.S. These appear to be boom times for geologists with the oil and gas and mining industries in U.S and Canada on a hiring spree. The table below summarizes geo-science employment stats and salaries in the government and private sectors.


Source: Sciencemag Careers

Here are the links to three articles on geology and hydro-geology careers in the U.S.

In the Geosciences, Business Is Booming
Geoscientists in High Demand in the Oil Industry
Hydrogeologists Tap into Demand for an Irreplaceable Resource

The three articles give you a good idea about the state of the geology market in the U.S. There are some parallels with what is happening in India. Although statistics about the Indian geology market are hard to come by, I keep talking with friends and colleagues who are in the industry and academia and so I have a fair idea of demands and hiring trends.

Just as in the U.S., geology graduates are finding that their skills are in demand in the oil and gas sector. However unlike North America where even a strong bachelors degree can land you a high paying oil job, in India only Masters level students are hired. Maybe that says something about the standard of bachelor level training in India where state colleges do not always offer the best quality geology training. Starting salaries are nowhere compared with the U.S. In Indian money they come to about Rs 2-5 lac per year (range equivalent to about $5 K to $ 12 K).

Another parallel is the relative stagnation in academia. In the U.S. falling research budgets has lead to many Universities not hiring replacements when a senior faculty retires. A survey shows that the number of geoscience faculty is down to 12,354 today from a figure of 13,554 in 1999. In India again there is a problem of a flat hiring trend in academia but probably for a different reason. A large number of vacancies are only to be filled by reserved category candidates (i.e reserved for candidates from India's backward classes) and many geology departments have difficulty finding suitably qualified candidates with a Ph.D in geology to fill these posts. Starting salaries in academia are less than what oil and gas pays.

One difference that emerges between the geology markets in the U.S and in India is in the environmental geology field. There is a tremendous demand in the U.S for geologists in the environmental consulting field. Hiring is strong both in governmental agencies as well as the thriving private environmental consulting sector which hires about 80% of hydro-geologists. A wide variety of skill sets are in demand to deal with various water resources (both water quality and resource management) and environmental problems and increasingly climate change related impacts on the environment.

In India environmental geology has never been a marketable skill primarily because India until very recently has not had strong environmental regulations in place. Government geology agencies have not developed well funded environmental geology programs, since dealing with water quality, water resources and myriad other environmental issues has not been given priority and backing. Consequently the private environmental consulting business has also seen small growth for geologists, since most such businesses end up servicing government contracts.

There are however two areas in which geologists have been making an impact in the environmental field in India. One is groundwater prospecting where solo operators armed with electrical resistivity measurements and a strong knowledge of local geology have built successful careers. My experience at least in the state of Maharashtra has been that most of them are genuinely skilled. Occasionally you do come across scamsters given to theatrics like using a magnetic compass to "point to water" or even dowsing. But most seem above board. The other area and one which is rapidly growing due to the infrastructure boom is in geo-technical services, essentially geology consulting for building foundations, road alignment, slope stability, tunnel excavations, all engineering geology applications.

Geology jobs in India traditionally have been mostly with the government. That is changing with private oil and gas and mining companies being allowed in the Indian market. There is also a growing awareness at the highest political levels that India is facing enormous environmental problems, a legacy of several decades of neglect. Multi-national companies setting up shop here will one hopes bring more stringent environmental impact assessment and remediation standards. That along with a concern for global warming and its impact on water resources, I hope will open up new niches for geologists.

And I Thought Geologist's Were Doing Great

Starting salaries for college graduates from Marginal Revolution who got it here:


Missing from the list are geologists who believe it or not would be top of this list. Both the petroleum and mining industries are on a hiring spree. College graduates in Australia, Canada and the U.S are in great demand. Average salaries for geology graduates in the U.S and Canada are now comparable to an M.B.A. More than a decade of low oil and metal prices meant that geology was not seen as an attractive career and there was a growing tendency to specialize in environmental related fields rather than in petroleum or mining geology. Today with prices skyrocketing and natural resources companies expanding their exploration and R&D programs there is a sudden shortage of these type of geology skills in the market. India is doing well too. Starting salaries for Master's students with oil services companies are around Rs. 4-5 lakh per year. Maybe not as much as an IIM graduate but not bad either.

Shear Sensibility has a good post on how teachers can cope with a sudden influx of geology students which is a now a likely scenario given these heady times and Geotripper writes a somewhat idealistic post on whether geologists are unique in that they are in it for the love of the field and not so much the money.

Geology hiring have always been boom and bust affairs. I thought I had the wretched luck of graduating in the mid-nineties when oil prices were really low, but in retrospect it did help me diversify my skills and work experience. My old geology skill sets won't go away and I have already got feelers from oil companies on whether I would be interested in rejuvenating those skills after a gap of so many years. It's always interesting to speculate what the geology job market will look like 15 -20 years from now. Will the current crop of petroleum geology graduates feel the need to go back to school to diversify their portfolio to include renewable energy and environmental geology to meet the demands of a changing energy mix?

Wanted Geography Clerks

A job announcement in the GIS Jobs Clearinghouse:

Wanted Geography Clerk: U.S. Census Bureau, Bothell, WA

DUTIES:
Reviews source material and identifies the features requiring updates. Moves, reshapes, adds, and deletes features, updates line features, and address information. Uses source materials, various program files, and menu selections to effect updates. Sorts, files, or assembles various documents for further use in Geography operations and performs miscellaneous clerical activities, as needed.

It something of a relief to know that one of the world's most technological advanced nations still has need for clerks. Let's face it. Lot's of jobs even in high-tech are clerical in nature but considering the obsession with political correctness in America, one would have thought that the word clerk would be banished by now. How about: Wanted: Data developer and file relocation specialist. But the wheels of government turn exceedingly slowly even in the United States, and so a few clerks do make it now and then in a high tech job list.

GIS Jobs Clearinghouse is a fascinating website. It's a job board but in its style it is very mid 90's, reminiscent of the early days of the Internet. No style sheets, no ASP, no imagery and no gimmicks. Just a list created in plain old HTML. But what a penetrating glimpse into the American economy. GIS stands for geographic information systems, a technology to create, manage, analyze and produce maps of spatial data. GIS is used as a tool for varied applications, ranging from urban planning to demographic studies to epidemiology to forestry to electrical utility management. Traditionally a tool used by government institutes involved in natural resource management, the use of GIS has penetrated deep into the private business sector as well. GIS makes complex spatial patterns easier to understand, something which is critical for business decision making and so the private industry has embraced the technology for varied applications. Here are few example from GIS Jobs Clearinghouse.

GIS Analyst, Ecology and Environment, Inc, Buffalo, New York

GIS Analyst, Children's Environmental Health Initiative, Durham, NC

Demographic & Mapping Analyst, Newspaper Services of America, Downers Grove, IL

GIS Layer Developer, Global Energy Decisions, Boulder, CO

A few years ago in 2005 I gave a talk to the Rotary Club, Pune on GIS. It was a standard spiel on the wonders of GIS but at the end I showed a revealing graphic, a comparison of the GIS job market in the U.S and India. Only the private sector was compared since data on Indian government job vacancies was hard to come by. My interest was not in the size of the market but in what way is the private sector using GIS. This information I could glean from the job announcements, in the expected job duties section. A 3 month snap shot was taken from several online job boards. Take a look below:


In the U.S. besides a great demand for high-end application developers the other main thrust area was analysis of data. It is in this area that science graduates find employment. If you scroll down GIS jobs clearinghouse you will be struck by the number of GIS analyst positions. What's in a name you'll say, but this position announcement is a rough guide to the diverse ways GIS is utilized in the U.S.

As the figure to the left shows (updated to Dec 2007), all sectors make use of the GIS analyst. Geologists, urban planners, ecologists, biologists, image specialists all are employed for projects that utilize their science training along with GIS for solving real world problems. I can say from personal experience that it is a very satisfying and enriching work atmosphere. In India, along with application development the other thrust area was data conversion. This has been powered by the outsourcing revolution whereby hundreds to thousands of college graduates no matter what their background sit and churn out data mostly for foreign clients. Employment for science graduates in jobs that make use of their science training were far and few between.

Three years later I decided to revisit this comparison when I saw the job vacancy for the geography clerk. Maybe things were changing in India. Again only the private sector is compared over a time period from Oct 2007 to early Jan 2008.

In India, the data conversion juggernaut still rolls on while the demand for science skills is disappointingly low. Some conversations I had with colleagues in the GIS industry and alumni from GIS training institutes seem to confirm my little data collection spree. Most graduates get offered data conversion jobs, only a few get to do real analytical work. There are many reasons for this. Until recently there has been a lack of awareness in much of the private sector about the power of GIS. The government controls much of the base data on natural resources, urban plans, topography and difficulties in getting hold of data in a timely manner has slowed the use of GIS. Our environmental permitting regime has not been very strict, many would say it has been an eyewash. This has meant that companies traditionally did not take environmental impact assessments seriously enough to use detailed and often expensive GIS methods. And finally the government itself has not leveraged the true potential of GIS. In the U.S. government organizations of all levels, from municipalities, state government agencies to federal agencies all use GIS for various purposes. Such a dependence has lead to a flowering of private companies offering all sorts of specialized services to the government. In India such a synergy with the private sector has not developed to its full potential. It has been very hard in India to set up a profitable GIS company that exclusively offers high end analytical and modeling services. Most companies involved in GIS use a profit making data conversion section to sustain a smaller analysis section or in many cases GIS is just one part of a wider IT offering. To be a little optimistic, in all these areas some major progress is underway. Awareness is growing and sectors such as telecom and infrastructure are leading the way in GIS applications. These are sectors with deep pockets and in the absence of data they have resorted to creating base data from scratch. Government is slowly relinquishing its control on data and making it available through online clearinghouses such as the Environmental Information Centre and the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, although the latter online data clearinghouse was not working last time I checked. And environmental impact assessments are now mandatory for clearing any significant development project. This should give impetus to smaller more specialized companies to enter the fray. As the government gets more involved in the use of GIS, there is likely to a parallel growth of the private sector not just as data creators but as suppliers of science backed specialized solutions. The 2008 trend should be seen as an industry in transition. Hopefully by the time of my next survey in a few years, the science graduates will find their skills in demand from the Indian GIS industry.

In the meantime, data conversion jobs will at least for the near to mid term will continue to be the main employer in the GIS business. I was struck by this job announcement

Wanted GIS Executive, New Delhi
Duties: Digitization:- Digitization of Raster Images to produce output in Vector format

Just a routine clerical job. But in this era of India Shining, GIS Executive sounds so much better.