SCIENCE-INDIA: Scientists Follow Up Budapest Declaration of UNESCO

By Keya Acharya Reprint | | Print |

Keya Acharya

BANGALORE, India, Aug 9 1999 (IPS) - Despite India’s scientific leaps that are globally acknowledged, technology has not been able to meet the basic living needs of the vast majority of people, scientists attending the ‘National Science Summit’ here said.

Over the last 50 years, India has set up more than 3,000 research institutions, 9,000 colleges and 220 universities, both private and government-owned, that work in various levels of research in pure and applied sciences.

But “our successes seem to get limited to a technical front. They have nothing to do with the common man,” a concerned Prof C.N.R. Rao, president of the Bangalore-based Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research pointed out.

Rao who was speaking at the two-day meeting that concluded here Sunday and was attended by 150-odd participants said Indian science was ailing due to declining funds and “terrible” administrative controls.

Indian bureaucracy was accused of slowing down the percolation of inventions and technology to the grassroots with clearances from the many government departments overseeing agriculture, water and commerce proving cumbersome and taking years.

Brilliant young scientists struggle to get faculty positions in research institutions due to administrative constraints, said Prof Rao, while Prof. P. Balaram of the Indian Institute of Science(IISc), and editor of ‘Current Science’ journal, pointed out that scientists from all over the country have written to him of how frustrated they feel.

The Bangalore Summit was the outcome of the UNESCO World Conference on Science for the 21st Century, held last month in Budapest. The Declaration promised to promote application of science to ensure a better quality of life for all.

Scientists said they would like to see an overall restructuring of the present government institutions, the University education system as well as the setting up of a foundation for funding socially-relevant research technology.

In India the quality of basic research in the pure sciences has been declining at a time when scientists in Japan, the United States and countries in Europe have been increasing support in this area.

Also Indian industry and science have never collaborated. Dr M.A. Mashelkar, director-general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said Indian drug companies were now shifting their R&D centres abroad to a “hassle-free environment”, while paradoxically, foreign firms were setting up centres in India to tap the huge intellectual talent.

“We desperately need an ‘innovation’ and technology policy,” said Dr Mashelkar.

India’s very successful space-research programme has shown that a policy of self-reliance and indigenous technology- development coupled with visionary leadership can deliver, said Dr K. Kasturirangan, chairman of the pioneering Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

In the 30 years since Dr Vikram Sarabhai took the first step in applying research for self-reliance, India now has a constellation of 13 ‘INSAT’ satellites providing “the best method of data systems in the world”.

ISRO’s five ‘IRS’ remote-sensing satellites have been developed from technology that was initially bought from abroad, and now is being used for water zonation and mapping of natural resources.

Another growth area has been information technology, but its success has been due to the lack of government controls, said Prof Narasimhan, director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, in Bangalore which is called India’s Silicon Valley.

However Dr Narasimhan would like the government to produce a computer for India’s untapped rural market. The government should sponsor a competition that promises a large order to the designer of a model which would cost not more than 100 dollars, he said.

Small ‘technopreneurs’, in his opinion, could also develop software in regional languages, as part of information- technology’s agenda for the poor.

Similarly advances in biotechnology also offers great scope for health-care through vaccines and diagnostic kits, for alleviation of malnutrition through gene technology for strategic crops, as well as for bio fertilisers and pesticides.

Dr Manju Sharma, secretary to India’s Department of Biotechnology, sought to allay concerns on environmental and

ethical safety. “Can anyone give any instance of DNA harming one single individual, or the environment?”

Sharma said her department has worked out a comprehensive set of guidelines for biotechnology and safety, but awareness is needed for its implementation.

Meanwhile, India’s National Biodiversity Act and Plant Varieties Protection Act were yet to be enacted, even after years of discussion. Consensus eludes the final draft that must be presented to Parliament for legislating.

While Indian science has come to recognise that community- participation is necessary for ecological conservation and economic health of rural peoples, Dr M.S. Swaminathan, chairman of the Chennai-based Swaminathan Research Foundation believes that sustainable science will now have to look at “remunerative mployment” in rural areas, as a method of achievement.

Science will also need to make agricultural economy viable and intellectually satisfying to retain talent in the field, he said.

Swaminathan said his idea of scientific decentralisation could be implemented by setting up a Council, which could then co- ordinate with research institutions in “eco-regions” of the country, for which maps already exist.

These institutes can work through the existing ‘gram sabha’, or ‘panchayat’ system of rural administration that is in place. “We don’t need to worry about government controls for this to happen,” he said, holding out hope for people-centred science.