The big picture

For Kris, the research conducted by the six chairs he’s funded at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and IISc, CBR, the Kolar project, and the Genome India initiative are all part of a bigger game plan. Each of them will form building blocks for understanding ageing-related disorders in India and over the next few decades, hopefully, help develop solutions to manage them better, delay the onset of dementia.

While CBR and the Genome India project will ensure there’s India specific big data available for advanced research, the six chairs – three each at IISc and IIT Madras – will run deep research projects, participate in shaping global understanding, and come up with potential solutions and products. Most importantly, the chairs will help develop a specialised pool of local talent in the areas of brain research in India.

“In my lifetime if we create a large, world class research facility, that’s a first step. Nobody has found a cure for Alzheimer’s for the past 100 years, right? I don’t want to say that we are going to find it in the next five years, but I don’t know…,” he says. “This is a long shot.”

Is there a personal reason that drives Kris so much into brain research that he’s signed out some Rs 300 crore (this includes the Rs 10-crore each research chairs)? For instance, Google co-founder Sergery Brin had donated $50 million in 2009 to find a cure for Parkinson’s after discovering that he carried a genetic mutation that sharply increased his risk of developing the neurological disease.

There’s nothing personal in this for Kris, say people who have spent time with him. His passion is brain science and possibilities research around it throws up.

Biocon’s Mazumdar-Shaw says her home city Bengaluru’s “fusion approach to Bio-IT will make this study path-breaking”. Bio-IT, as in biology-information technology. She adds: “Moreover, knowing Kris’s attention to detail, he will drive digital discipline in this study to make it as significant as the Framingham Heart Study. The fact that this study is being designed very thoughtfully to leverage digital devices at an individual level makes it that more comprehensive and more sophisticated.”

Mazumdar-Shaw has been an independent director on the Infosys board since January 2014. Kris stepped down as executive vice-chairman of the company that October.

B N Gangadhar, the director of NIMHANS, India’s premier neurosciences education, research and medical institute, has realistic expectations with regard to outcomes and the time it will take. He believes while the first decade will deliver only optimal results, the real definitive answers will take much longer to come by.

“The richness of data will keep getting better,” says Dr Gangadhar, whose doctorate is in yoga and mental health.

PHFI’s Dr Reddy says the biggest challenge before the Srinivasapura project is to ensure that those recruited as part of the cohort stay and stay till they die. "It will affect the ongoing study otherwise. Repeat visits, year after year is going to be crucial," he says.

At Dalasanur, for now, Seethamma and others are oblivious to the project’s grand, world changing ambitions. What’s attracting them now is a host of benefits, including the cash reward. “Free health checkup and money sounds good,” she says through a translator.

(A version of this story ran in the print edition of Mint newspaper on November 27.)