Why in the News
- Recently, China completed construction of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) and released its initial analyses through preprint papers, marking a significant scientific achievement in neutrino physics.
- This development is rendered bittersweet by the fact that India’s proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) has remained stalled for years, representing a missed opportunity for India to contribute to resolving a fundamental scientific mystery regarding neutrino mass ordering.
Context and the Scientific Imperative
The drive behind both INO and JUNO lies in studying neutrinos, which are subatomic particles characterized by their extreme elusiveness due to their rare interaction with matter.
Observatory Requirements and Design Rationale
- Detection Principle: Effective detection necessitates enormous quantities of matter to increase the probability of interaction, thus requiring massive detector infrastructure. The INO detector was planned to weigh 50 kilotonnes.
- Location and Shielding: The INO collaboration planned to install the detector inside a mountain in Theni, Tamil Nadu. This was intended to utilize the natural rock formation as a shielding mechanism, thereby eliminating the need for expensive, separate structural construction and conventional laboratory settings.
| India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) | Planned 50 kilotonnes detector; planned for Theni, Tamil Nadu; designed as collaborative research facility. | Stalled for years. |
| Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) | Recently completed by China; international collaborative project; released initial analyses in November 2025; operational status achieved. | Operational. |
The INO Challenges: Factors Contributing to Stalling
The INO project was afflicted by a confluence of issues, escalating a technical challenge into a political and administrative crisis.
Socio-Political and Administrative Hindrances
- Public Apprehension: The magnitude of construction activity proposed in the Theni region, coupled with the involvement of the Department of Atomic Energy in funding, triggered deep concerns among local populations regarding potential environmental and social impacts.
- Political Exploitation: Political leaders capitalized on local concerns, drawing political advantage from the public anxiety surrounding the project.
- Procedural and Communication Failures: The INO collaboration is criticized for not following established procedures and for an inadequate estimation of potential controversy. This undermined the project’s preparedness to effectively address and manage public sentiment.
Competitive Disadvantage in Global Science
- Acute Competition: During the late 2010s, as INO delays compounded, China made rapid progress toward JUNO. The extension of the INO timeline made the competition for limited international grants and investments from foreign governments particularly acute.
- Missed Deadline: China’s initial target of completing JUNO by 2020 (subsequently revised to 2025) created pressure on INO’s competing timeline for securing international funding and support.
JUNO’s Success and Scientific Objectives
JUNO’s completion marks a major advance, with its initial results already clarifying the key scientific question both observatories were designed to address.
JUNO’s Initial Findings
- Performance Validation: The first of two preprint papers released on November 18, 2025, reported the “initial performance results of the JUNO detector,” confirming its functionality.
- Precise Measurement of Oscillation Parameter: The second preprint paper reported an extremely precise measurement of the theta-12 parameter.
The Central Scientific Question
- Neutrino Flavours and Oscillation: Physicists have identified three types or flavours of neutrinos, which exhibit neutrino oscillation—their capacity to transform between flavours while traversing space. This is described by parameters theta-12 (“theta one two”), theta -13, and theta-23.
- Neutrino Mass Ordering: The determination of how the three neutrino masses are hierarchically ordered constitutes an important open question in fundamental physics. Both INO and JUNO were conceived to utilize the previously established value of theta-13 to resolve this central mystery.
- Anticipated Breakthroughs: According to Yifang Wang, JUNO project manager, the achieved level of accuracy will enable JUNO to determine the neutrino mass ordering, test the three-flavour oscillation framework, and search for new physics beyond existing models.
Implications for India’s Scientific Competitiveness
The JUNO success highlights a critical gap between India’s scientific capacity and its institutional execution in the realm of Big Science.
Scientific Marginalisation
- Absence of Indian Researchers: The notable absence of Indian researchers from JUNO’s initial international author list is concerning, despite India’s long history in neutrino physics and possessing many excellent scholars.
- Wider Pattern: This exclusion parallels a similar issue documented following China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission (2020), where Indian researchers were absent from the initial applicant lists for accessing lunar rock samples, highlighting a risk of scientific isolation in frontier research.
The Rising Bar of Big Science
- Opportunity Cost: Missing the INO opportunity means that any future attempt by India to tackle the next significant scientific mystery in this domain will demand more sophisticated technology and specialization. India’s reduced capacity to undertake the next major project may diminish if the current window is entirely missed.
- Addressing Resource Constraints: “Resource constraints” are sometimes genuinely limiting but are also frequently invoked by administrators as justification for not funding research or for avoiding investment in skills development and materials management required to address local community impacts.
India’s Capacity for Big Science
- Demonstrated Readiness: India successfully operates and maintains multiple Big Science projects, such as large ground-based telescopes in astronomy and protected areas networks for conservation science, countering the notion that India is fundamentally unready for such endeavors.
- The Critical Lesson: The success of Big Science depends not merely on the scientific readiness of the scientists but equally on whether the conditions beyond pure science and on the ground are prepared. Comprehensive preparation, encompassing administrative frameworks, political support, and community impact management strategies, is the essential prerequisite.
Way Forward
- India must undertake a fundamental reassessment of mechanisms through which major scientific projects are conceptualized, planned, and implemented, ensuring that procedural compliance and community engagement are prioritized from project inception.
- Investment in nurturing young scientists and providing them with necessary resources, sophisticated technologies, and experimental infrastructure is imperative for maintaining competitive advantage in frontier research domains.
- Distinction must be made between genuine resource limitations and administrative hesitance to invest in research or address management of local impacts, with transparent evaluation of genuine capacity.
- Future Big Science projects must integrate scientific readiness with simultaneous preparation of ground-level conditions, encompassing stakeholder engagement, administrative frameworks, and community impact management strategies.
- India must actively seek participation in existing international scientific collaborations to maintain relevance in cutting-edge research and prevent knowledge and expertise gap from widening.
Conclusion
- India possessed requisite scientific expertise, institutional capacity, and technological capability in the previous decade to contribute meaningfully to solving neutrino mass ordering mystery through INO.
- However, through combination of procedural oversights, inadequate community engagement, political controversies, and administrative delays, this opportunity has been substantially diminished as China’s JUNO has now assumed leadership position in this crucial domain.
- Absence of Indian researchers from JUNO collaboration list underscores risk of further scientific marginalization in frontier research.
- Future trajectory of Indian science depends not merely on scientific excellence but on comprehensive approach integrating scientific preparation with ground-level institutional and social readiness. “Big Science” readiness in India requires holistic preparation extending beyond laboratory expertise.
