Every scientist in India can provide a view of why research and development in our country are not what they should be.   Some claim that the widespread emphasis on theory and the avoidance of the practical is a result of our long, brahminical traditions. This may be so, but the insight can hardly help us find immediate, operational solutions.    Others cite the hierarchical and autocratic structures of our scientific institutions which prevent younger and more creative scientists from actualizing their potential. Many suggest that the poor infrastructure and the bureaucratic redtape which prevents scientists and engineers from working efficiently is the main handicap of Indian science. This is also true, but it is the scientists who have chosen to pursue their narrow interests and to leave the control over decisions crucial to their enterprise to other people, most of whom do not even understand the needs of creative technologists.

Science and Technology in the service of the poor?

Yet others mention the lack of job opportunities. But who will create these opportunities, for themselves and for the rest of society, if not technically qualified professionals?
  
Criticisms of Indian science such as these are frequently heard at the numerous symposia on subjects like "what ails Indian science" and "why have Indian scientists not been able to make a contribution to national development?" Almost all of them address the superficial symptoms and rarely tackle the root causes.
  
The younger scientists can not look beyond their salaries, promotions and trips abroad. The older ones spend their time climbing the professional ladder, preparing their post-retirement pastures and keeping the younger ones in their place. All of them believe that society owes them a living, very few of them are prepared to place their science at the service of society. How many scientists ask the questions "Why are there so many poor people in our country, and why are their numbers growing?" or "Why is the loss of the resources of our land — the forests, soils, waters — accelerating so rapidly, and why can it not be reversed?"
  
This situation can not be brushed off as a kind of societal malaise. Let’s be blunt: it is more a symptom of systemic rot. Even the root causes are so numerous that a short list of the more important ones can only be arbitrary.
  
While there is unquestionably room for research of a much higher order and in many more fields than exist today, the quality and mix of R&D efforts must now be radically changed. The change must be in favour of endogenously designed programmes based on indigenously defined goals. Apart from the relatively successful (though often shortsighted) research efforts in the field of agriculture, virtually no scientific institutional framework is at present designed or geared to address the problems of sustainable national development. The host of evaluations and Review Committee reports commissioned over the past four decades have, by and large, addressed minor, peripheral and irrelevant issues. They generally come up with fine-tuning proposals of an administrative nature rather than suggestions for the kind of deep structural changes needed.
   
The nation must now address the need to invest in and establish solid institutional capability to undertake innovative work on relevant science and technology. In this respect, we need not only totally new institutions to produce innovations relevant to the masses, we also need to introduce fundamental changes in the structure and functions of existing ones.
   
If our country were to spend on ("relevant science and technology") research aimed at the problems of our 650-700 million poor, even one-tenth of all the money it now spends on the ("high science") research pertaining to the problems of about 250 million middle class, a ten-fold increase would be needed in the allocations for relevant science and technology. Even this amount, approximately Rs.250-300 crores, is less than the annual fluctuations in the plan budgets!
   
Science in our country continues to be too far removed, indeed divorced, from the realities of social needs and resource availabilities on the one hand and from the imperatives of the production systems and the market on the other. Unless scientific innovation is much more directly linked to the realities of the economy, it can not but continue to perpetuate its path of irrelevance and peripherality. And if the scientific community wishes to play a more central role in society, it can no longer afford to ignore its responsibility in social and political decision making.
   
One set of decisions that have fundamental impact on our lives are the (largely implicit) technological choices we make. These determine not only the way we manage resources and impact the environment, but also the way we distribute the fruits of progress to different members of society. Given the differences in factor endowments (land, labour, capital, etc.), in culture and in social expectations, the choices in any case should be endogenous. In India, we have tended largely to adopt solutions which were evolved earlier elsewhere, usually in the West, where the shortcomings of many of these solutions are beginning to be apparent. As in adoption, however, India lags behind in rejection.
   
No less important than technology selection and design is the process by which we design and run our institutions. For a variety of reasons, our choices of organisational frameworks for science invariably betray deep cultural prejudices. The existing and unquestioned assumption that the only possible way to make progress is to deliver the job into the hands of the public sector, (whether it is to innovate, teach, produce or distribute), is a fallacy which this country is paying dearly for. Government policy on science and technology appears to be blind to virtually any possibility for innovation or R&D outside government or publicly controlled institutions. The fact that these public institutions have tremendous inefficiencies and inherent losses, and that other mechanisms may be far superior for producing effective and timely results is lost in worries about audit objections, Parliament questions, and the general untrustworthiness of fellow citizens.
   
The problems of national, academic and industrial research laboratories can only be addressed by fundamental changes in their mandates, stated objectives, personnel policies, infrastructural endowments and result orientation. The evaluation of their performance also needs radical change in thinking, to allow for the lead time any scientific discovery must have before becoming successful in the market. It is for this reason that 40 years of public R&D costing several tens of crores and nation-wide efforts have not been able to produce improvements in handloom technology which were recently achieved by a small "corporate R&D" effort involving a tiny team of young technologists with a budget of Rs.8 lakhs and a time scale of two years.
   
An important issue confronting the scientific community in India, is its responsibility in view of its knowledge and expertise to identify emerging issues and alternative approaches for sustainable development. The community as a whole has to play a much stronger role in this respect and the institutional frameworks needed must be strongly supported by Government, even though they might appear to be inconvenient.
   
While export orientation and internationalism are extremely important to maintain the quality of science and technology in the country, they have little to offer for determining development objectives or for the choice of scientific thrust areas. These must be endogenously chosen by science and geared to the indigenous needs for development. Self-reliance must not be simply a planning shibboleth but a fundamental movement for grassroots involvement in the identification and solution of people’s material problems.
   
The allocations for science relating to the problems of development and poverty must now be expanded manifold. The question of absorptive capacity, often raised by "decision-makers," has to be solved by setting up totally new kinds of institutions.
   
At the national level, we propose that a completely autonomous institution, akin to the Atomic Energy Commission, be established which will comprise a network of local units throughout the country capable of dealing with geographically or topically relevant societal problems. The network should comprise independent national and regional research laboratories with adequate funds and mandate to develop and deliver innovative technology packages for the decentralized production of goods and services needed by the poor. The scope of work of this network, its mode of operation and linkages with the economic sectors it deals with, and its structure and functions will have to be substantially more pragmatic than any scientific institution that exists today. In particular, it will have to employ a "corporate R&D" approach to identifying and solving basic societal development problems. Its capacity to attract the best scientists and strong financial support will be maximized by establishing the right mix of basic and applied research, by freezing the organisation from unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, and by putting in place effective reward systems designed to attract the best talent.