Anindita Bhadra, Professor at the Behaviour and Ecology Lab, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, does not believe in glorifying women as multitaskers. A former PhD student at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Anindita studied hierarchy in social wasps and later shifted to researching the behaviour of stray dogs in India. She set up the first-ever dog laboratory at IISER Kolkata, where she observes dogs in their natural environment to understand their behaviour – such as awareness about territories, gender dynamics in a group, and dog-human interactions. Later, she launched India’s first citizen science programme to better understand stray dogs. Now, she is working to understand the impact of mass-feeding of dogs by humans in public places, among other things. She speaks to CONNECT about her journey and views on being a woman in science, and advises aspiring scientists to “ask more questions.” The text is edited for clarity and style.
Could you recall your first visit to IISc?
A very typical Bangalore day in November 1997. Early in the morning, we reached the campus around 8.30 am and we were asked to wait at the main security gate, which has changed now. Then, somebody came from CES (Centre for Ecological Sciences) to receive us. From there, we could see the avenues in the distance, and the back of the tower, the main tower. I was absolutely taken in by the sights and the light drizzle and cold wind.
What were your favourite spots on campus other than the lab?
Jubilee Garden, which no longer exists, unfortunately. From CES, we used to go there for some of our coursework projects and I did one of my projects there. Later, I found myself going back there on and off, just to sit in one place, read, and walk in the wilderness. Then, there’s the tea board and the coffee board, which again, unfortunately, no longer exist. We had a standard routine of post-lunch coffee at the coffee board and then a last one before the tea board shut down at 2 am. We had to run there and get a small snack if we were working late into the night.
The other place, again which no longer exists, was the path that goes towards the newer side of the campus. In fact, my would-be husband and I have spent a lot of time there. We would just walk down that path, stand in one spot, and talk. You could just go there and fall silent, with the crickets calling all around you and the trees rustling. During a sunny day, you could cycle down, make a round, and come back.
Sometimes, I don’t even feel like going back because that nostalgia has no connection now; all those places have become so transformed; some for the better, of course. The last time I went, I saw that what used to be Janta Bazaar is now a complete shopping complex. It has, of course, become much more expanded and posh. But I guess a lot of us older people don’t get the same vibes in IISc anymore. That is something we miss.
At CES, you were working with Raghavendra Gadagkar (RG), a behavioural biologist. How did working with him shape your philosophy of science?
He has been a profound influence on my life and my way of thinking. Because mostly, in our standard Indian system of education, science is taught and studied like any other subject. You don’t really go through this process of asking a lot of questions and exploring. The first thing that he told us was to never accept anything as given just because it’s in the textbook. And to always ask questions, and keep asking questions, which I think has been a really deep influence in my life. I keep saying that to all my students in class. I have also inculcated this in my life when bringing up my kids.
‘The first thing that RG told us was to never accept anything as given just because it’s in the textbook’
Rather than saying that this is not going to work, he would always say, “I’m sure we can find a solution to this problem. Let us not worry about it first.”
I really look up to him as a role model; nobody can be like him. I have high esteem for the way he does research, the way he teaches, and the way he looks at science, philosophy, and life in general.
You started your work by understanding the “Politics of the Social Wasp Ropalidia marginata”. How does someone study the politics of wasps?
I was trying to understand, when the queen wasp is removed or dies, how does another wasp take over as the new queen? We already knew that if you experimentally remove the queen, then one of the workers suddenly becomes very aggressive.
She will go around and beat up everyone in the nest. If you don’t put the queen back in five to seven days, this worker will become the queen.
We can only identify this “potential queen” once we remove the queen, but how do we know her in the queen’s presence? I was trying to add to that puzzle.
How did you crack the puzzle?
Several of my seniors concluded that there’s no way to tell the potential queen apart from other workers because they all look and behave the same. I turned the question around and said, “Well, we don’t know who the potential queen is. But do the wasps know?”
So I did a set of experiments to answer this question, and eventually what we showed is that the wasps actually know that there is an heir designate (potential queen). I called her a cryptic successor – cryptic to us but somehow known to the wasps. I also showed that the queen uses a pheromone to make her presence known to her workers.
Later, you shifted your research area from wasps to dogs. How and why?
After my PhD – I submitted my thesis on my son’s first birthday – there were other experiments on which I was working, which were not part of my thesis. RG told me, “Whenever you submit your thesis, you can join as a postdoc.”
The day after submitting my thesis, I joined as a postdoc. I was also thinking of the next steps. I was very sure that I would not be working on social insects because I told RG, “I keep looking at the literature and I keep finding faults with other people’s work. Now, if I have to go and apply to those labs, I cannot say I find their work fantastic because often I don’t.”
This was the time when the IISERs had started in 2006, and I submitted my thesis in November 2007. So RG said, “You could think of applying to the two IISERs (Kolkata and Pune) as they are also taking fresh PhDs in contractual positions.” That is what got me thinking, and I came up with proposals: One was on dogs, the second was on crows, and the third was on human babies and their cognition.
We had a lot of discussion and decided that finding enough students interested to work on crows would be difficult, and crows are difficult to access. In India, we will not easily get ethical clearance for working on infants, for those who don’t have a psychology or psychiatry background.
And anyway, dogs are my favourite animals, so we boiled down to dogs.
In a recent study (December 2024), your group has looked at understanding ways through which dogs mark their territory. How did the idea occur to you?
We know that dogs mark territories. In the case of stray dogs, there is a lot of noise in the environment because of humans. For example, when we park a car and leave it there, a dog might find shelter under our vehicle, near the tyres or something like that. Later, when we come back, kick or shoo the dog away, and take our car to go somewhere else, the dogs in the new area might sense the smell of a different dog in their territory. There are a lot of such disturbances. My student has observed that one dog will come and mark the territory, then another dog will come and mark over it. Then the first dog will come and mark again. We got interested in this behaviour and decided to collect data as it happens.
How was this experiment done on stray dogs?
My students would wait to see a dog urine-mark in its territory and collect the urine by soaking a clean white cloth with it. They would then introduce this cloth to either the dogs in the same territory, or a neighbouring one. We wanted to see – if the white cloth has marks from dogs from different territories, will the dogs behave differently?
And what did you find?
We found that male dogs have “more ego”; they are more active in their response towards other males from other territories. That is the hierarchy. Female dogs respond more to other females than males. So, we are saying that yes, the marking does have signatures of the group and of the gender.
Given the growing issue of stray dogs going violent and becoming a public menace, what can we do about this?
At the end of the day, if as a policy, we can prevent people from interfering too much with dogs’ lives, it’s going to solve a lot of problems. But people are going to kill me if I say that aloud. I get into fights all the time over this. In fact, right now, we are doing one study where we are trying to look at whether people mass-feeding dogs affects the animals’ social interactions. My feeling is that they do. I hope in another year or so we will have some results.
‘If, as a policy, we can prevent people from interfering too much with dogs’ lives, it’s going to solve a lot of problems’
How so?
Simple ecological perspective. If there is a lot of food, animals are going to come, and if you keep increasing the amount of food, then there are more animals to feed. They’ll never migrate. You’ll have a lot of dogs in one place, and the dogs have nothing to do. They don’t go out to the gym. They don’t have to look for food. They just sit and fight among themselves. What else do they do?
Let’s move away from research and onto another topic that has been in the spotlight: Women in Science. What are your views on the present situation in India when compared with the global scenario?
It is equally bad. In some cases, we are better in the sense that at least here we don’t have the problem of dealing with unequal pay for women in our sector.
Whereas, I know colleagues in other “developed” countries who do have this problem. We have an institution, Government of India regulations, then we have – I think – very good support in terms of maternity and childcare leave.
But when it comes to prejudice such as girls and women leaving science because of all kinds of societal pressures, we are in a bad position. If you look across the country, I think women professors in India are somewhere around 13%.
Whereas, if you look at school pass-outs, it is 50:50 for girls and boys; then, girls taking up science reduces in the 12th grade and falls further when you go to graduation. And I have heard over and over again that maths is something that girls are bad at, and biology is something that girls are good at, or girls cannot do physics.
These prejudices can tailor the girl’s mind to avoid certain subjects.
‘Girls taking up science reduces in the 12th grade and falls further when you go to graduation’
Next, when it comes to science, often families would say, “How can you now go off to do a PhD somewhere else? If you are doing a PhD, and you get married, what about your family, your husband’s family?” Sometimes, someone else puts pressure on you to have children, or women themselves want to have a child, and the biological peak age coincides with the peak age of the PhD, then often women make the sacrifice and drop out.
When you have female faculty chatting over tea, you will most often hear them talking about childcare and elderly care.
Whereas, with the male faculty, you will mostly hear them talking about cricket, politics or about their research, collaborations and grants. It is just that the social burden and responsibility falls more on the women in our country than on the men.
I feel really irritated by this praise that if we can manage everything, we are called “Super women”, “Super Moms”, “Durga”. I don’t want to be “Durga”. I want to be Anindita. I’m fine and I only have two hands. I will multitask if I want to, but I do not like it if I am made to.
What is the solution?
I always say that the solution is to catch the young and mould their thinking. That is why we need to do more and more outreach with school kids and influence them. Give them good role models to look up to.
At a policy level, institutions should have a much stricter policy on handling situations of discrimination or subtle creation of pressure by a supervisor saying: “You have to come on the weekends, I don’t care if you’re married.” Or a supervisor having a relationship with a student. I do not care if it is consensual; it is not allowed because there is an imbalance of power.
On a lighter note: To me it feels like (few would disagree) you are doing a lot. Still in your blog “KathayKathay,” you have mentioned that you have a “lazy mind.” Why do you think that? I am curious.
(Laughs) When I say lazy mind, it is more in a figurative way, where a mind is free to wander and do nothing. Even when actively doing something. My mind is free to do other things. Let me clarify, when I say lazy mind, I did not refer to my brain. Mind is something more abstract, right?
That’s another conversation altogether, we should talk about it some other time. For now, only a few scientists are comfortable talking about politics, especially in public. What are your views on the political responsibility of scientifically literate folks?
Yeah, we have a strong responsibility towards society. Just because I am a scientist, I am not secluded from society. You cannot take politics out of society, and often politics and policies influence the kind of research a country moves towards. I am not saying scientists should go into active politics, and if they want to, they are most welcome. Unfortunately, power, money, and everything is in the hands of politicians. You cannot just absolve yourself by saying that I am a scientist, so I don’t think about politics. We should think and talk about it more; speak our minds without fearing that action will be taken against us.
‘Just because I am a scientist, I am not secluded from society. You cannot take politics out of society, and often politics and policies influence the kind of research a country moves towards’
It might be a cliché question to end with, but still, what advice would you have for young people who aspire to be good scientists?
Never stop asking questions and never stop challenging beliefs.
Will that advice be any different to a female science aspirant?
No, no, no. I think females should ask more questions than males because they will be told: “You cannot do this, you cannot go there.” I think the main thing is to believe in yourself. Once you do that, you will go wherever you want to go.
(Edited by Rohini Subrahmanyam)
