Opinion India needs swadeshi S&T

The PM voiced the valid concern that publicly funded R&D in India is skewed in favour of fundamental rather than applied research. “Research,” he said,“should be directed to providing ‘frugal’ solutions to our chronic problems of providing food,energy and water security to our people. Science should help us understand how to give practical meaning to the concept of sustainable development and green growth. Science should help us shift our mindsets from the allocation of resources to their more efficient use. Technology should help us reach the benefits of development to those who need it most.”

Meaningful words. But the moot question is: what is being done by Dr Singh’s own government to decisively shift the priorities of Indian science to India’s inclusive,integral and accelerated development? Commendable exceptions apart,our S&T establishment continues to be divorced from the real and most pressing challenges in our national development. Its concerns,priorities and deliverables are still,by and large,seen in terms of buildings built and renovated,papers published and presented,seminars organised and attended. Yes,its demand that India should increase its S&T spending from 1 per cent to 2 per cent of GDP is legitimate. But is enhanced spending alone going to address the fundamental question raised by the PM? How is the current allocation on S&T being spent? What are its outcomes? How much are these outcomes in line with the most urgent needs of our poor and suffering millions?

These questions have arisen in my mind yet again because I am writing this column in Lucknow. I have come to Uttar Pradesh to study its development scene in the context of the next month’s assembly elections. All of us know that the real game-changer in India’s inclusive development will be the socio-economic transformation of big and backward states like UP,whose population now stands at 20 crore. Sadly,our S&T establishment’s focus on UP’s critical problems and needs is very weak. After agriculture,the bulk of UP’s impoverished population is engaged in various crafts and cottage industries—weavers in Banaras; carpet makers in Bhadohi; metalware of Moradabad; lock industry in Aligarh; zari work in Bareilly; perfumes of Kannauj; leather craft of Kanpur; glass works of Ferozabad; ceramics of Khurja; wooden products of Saharanpur; and so on. The skills,aesthetic sense and the traditional scientific and technological knowledge of UP’s semi-literate artisans are incredible. Yet,while reading the Planning Commission’s own bulky Uttar Pradesh Development Report,the one recurrent lament I found was this: the inputs of modern S&T for improving the productivity of agriculture,agro-processing and the broad spectrum of arts and crafts are woefully inadequate.

No doubt,UP’s present plight is more due to corruption and criminalisation of governance. However,if we look at our nation as a whole,we clearly see the same distressing disconnect between Bharat’s needs,knowledge resources and productive capabilities on the one hand,and the working of India’s S&T elite on the other. It is not enough for India to build ‘Centres of Excellence’. Of course,we need them. But what Bharat needs even more urgently are ‘Centres of Relevance’. As Dr Singh rightly said,“We need to give practical meaning to innovation so that it does not end up being just a buzz word.”

Now that the bankruptcy of the crisis-ridden western model of development has become evident,our country needs even more urgently a basic swadeshi reorientation to its S&T vision and mission. Even though our economic-intellectual elite have made swadeshi a much-maligned word,it has now become absolutely clear that inclusive development will remain an empty phrase unless our entire mindset—in S&T as also in economics,politics,governance,education,etc—is re-anchored in India’s own real needs,strengths,resources and life goals. Some westernised minds will surely protest: “Swadeshi is obscurantist,isolationist and irrelevant in the age of globalisation.” They need to be reminded about what Mahatma Gandhi,whose tireless efforts to revive India’s indigenous scientific and technological traditions are sadly forgotten today,said about swadeshi: “Interdependence is and ought be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.”

One last point. The PM stated at the ISC that China has overtaken India in science. How did it achieve this feat? Because China is more wedded to swadeshi than India is.

sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com