Friday, October 11, 2013

Open Source Drug Discovery: A Burning Illustration of Collective Endeavor at the Leading Height

Mamata Mishra

The story of OSDD is not less than that of any story of a successful family. Family is a simple term and easy to define concept. For anyone of us, I am sure; the term family gives the first visualization of parents, children, grand children and kith and kin. While talking about our own family to our friends or any other people, the discussion starts with number of family members, the members of family (right from the youngest one to the oldest one). Then gradually the talk takes account of the relationship among the members, the weak as well as the strong relations, the conflicts, the sweet as well as the bitter moments, the collectiveness to achieve certain goals, standing with each other for every weaker situation, and encourage for and to share every success. If we take an instance of a joint family, we find more than one generation, people of different mindsets, and different thoughts. In my opinion, the OSDD initiative even goes further this point in terms of collective goal attainment.

OSDD which started as a small project has taken a form of a unit. This statement sounds easy. In reality, it is not an easy task. Keeping in view the mission, vision and goals of the OSDD initiative, it is quite clear that lot of collective-minded efforts have gone into the making of the innovative way of doing science. With time, it keeps on proving its strength. It has got many helping hands, dedicated minds. It did not wait for the best to come; rather it tried its best to prepare even the average mind to be the best of all. OSDD gave a platform to all to think differently, to do things differently even sitting at one’s own space. It has completed five years of its journey and recently entered sixth year. This is a burning example of nothing is impossible. It has given opportunity to everyone who has an inner calling to do something for the society; for the nation. At the very beginning when I read that anybody can join and contribute to the project, I was wondering about this issue. As a social scientist I was quite clear that I can do a very good study of OSDD from sociological point of view, but was not clear as ‘how can I contribute’. Slowly I realized my study of OSDD itself makes me a part of the OSDD family. I felt good about it. This initiative has set an example for all of us who want to really work for our nation. In fact, latently, doing this, we not only contribute to our nation, but to those whose population is victim of such neglected-ignorable diseases. Such kind of initiatives must be encouraged by government, private bodies as well as the citizens of a nation.



Research Scholar;
Department of Sociology;
School of Social Sciences;
University of Hyderabad;
Gachibowli, Hyderabad-46;
Andhra Pradesh, India.