The tragedy of failure in India is compounded by the very manner in which failure is officially understood. Failure, especially in science, is seen in formal definitional terms, where numbers define the line of success. Official definitions capture very little beyond the current understandings of success, progress, and innovation. Failure is not so much a property or an index but an ecological relation. Failure in India needs to be understood linguistically. The meaning of the word lies not in the dictionary definition but varies in terms of meaning in use, which alters with context. Understanding failure in science needs a sense of context, whether of history, political economy, or culture.