The Hindu : The S&T policy

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Thursday, Mar 28, 2002

Opinion

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The S&T policy

By V.V. Krishna

The overarching science and technology policy statement needs to spell out a perspective to orchestrate the signals from the various sectors, conventional as well as newly emerging.

The MUCH-AWAITEd draft of a new science and technology (S&T) policy has been under revision for about six months now. Called the Draft Science and Technology Policy 2001 (STP2001), it was issued on websites for comment last October by a committee headed by Goverdhan Mehta, then president of the Indian National Science Academy. Eventually, the document was to be finalised and released by the Prime Minister in January 2002. This did not happen. As is well known, the Scientific Policy Resolution (1958) was followed by the Technology Policy Statement in 1983. While the former in many respects was legitimised from time to time as a "testament of faith" in science and as a vision of society, the latter reaffirmed the country's commitment to the "attainment of technological self-reliance". Given this lapse of 17 years, between 1983 and 2001, it was expected that the draft regime would systematically analyse why a new policy was needed in the first place. In last decade, research and development (R&D) funding as a per cent of GNP fell from 0.92 in 1990 to 0.70 in 2000. Considering that over 55 per cent of the R&D allocation is accounted for by atomic energy, space and defence research establishments, the actual sum available for civilian R&D is rather low and thinly spread over a wide spectrum of areas. Compared to the 2 to 3 per cent of GNP in industrially advanced countries; and 1.5 to 2.5 per cent in East Asia, India lags far behind. Unfortunately, STP2001 only `anticipates' that the Government may increase the figure to 2 per cent in the next five years but does not provide any road map for this.

The draft fails to specify what type of fiscal policies will "dramatically enhance" the contribution of the private sector to the overall R&D effort. The South Korean experience is a case in point. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, S&T policies through state mediation including fiscal measures and incentives reduced the Government's burden in the total R&D expenditure (about 2.4 per cent of GNP) from 75 to 25 per cent. South Korea promulgated at least 15 S&T laws. One of them related to punishing firms which drew R&D tax incentives but justified them against non-R&D activities. But in India, neither the Department of Science and Technology nor any other body has so far thought of underpinning the R&D tax incentives scheme with such penal laws.

On innovation, the draft still adheres to the now outmoded `pipeline' innovation model assuming that "innovations may be the consequence of traditional, scholarly research"; and that "mechanisms will be developed for channelling creative talent towards the process of invention and discovery". There is nothing wrong in this, but to legitimise the promotion of innovation in terms of discovery is to completely miss the empirical reality of the processes in national laboratories and enterprises underlying the innovation success. There is ample evidence to suggest that success in innovation is the outcome of a coupling between science and technology on the one hand, and the market and industry on the other, often in the mould of networks. R&D is important but is one amongst several other technical and non-technical factors crucial for innovation success. Amul in Gujarat and the success of chemical research-industry network around UDCT and NCL amply demonstrate this insight in our own county. One needs to have a much broader definition and thinking on innovation, wherein institutional and organisational innovations are as important as R&D per se. The draft neither assigns the space deserved to the crucial issue of building linkages between different actors (Government sectors, national laboratories, universities and industries) of the national system of innovation (NSI), nor does it address the crucial issue of in-house R&D in PSEs.

In the current phase of globalisation, STP2001 only makes a passing reference to the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). Industrial clusters are not mentioned at all. It is clear now that cheap labour and natural resource endowments, which in the past gave comparative economic advantage, are rapidly losing ground. If this sector has to even sustain its present levels of growth and employment in the globalised era, it will have to be essentially via value addition through technological change, skill upgradation and the role of knowledge. There is no short cut or alternative other than this route. It is here that the knowledge institutions (IITs, universities, CSIR laboratories, colleges, private actors etc) can play a significant role in meeting the current internal challenges through intermediary institutional mechanisms. We need to seriously explore how the "neighbourhood effect" of knowledge institutions in partnerships with decentralised public and private institutions can become effective through a `new perspective' or `model' of regional or rural innovation systems.

Two features uppermost in the STP2001 document are reconstruction of the academic science system and a new funding mechanism for basic science. In an era when students are losing interest in science, a plea for its revival in colleges is a positive feature of the document. It specifies special support for 25 universities and an equal number of technical institutions in raising the standards of science teaching and research. One would expect that the institutions selected would not be the ones such as JNU or IITs but those which have been at the receiving end as far as funding and support are concerned. There is, however, no reference to the X Plan Profile of Higher Education in India issued by the UGC, which also advocates the promotion of academic science. STP2001 does not give any clue but our aim should be to double the current level of academic science funding which is staggeringly low (7 to 10 per cent of the total R&D funding) compared to 25 to 30 per cent in industrially advanced countries.

There are three important features of human resource development that have been bypassed in the draft policy. The first is the organisational and institutional mechanisms to be put in place for fostering mobility of personnel between different segments of the NSI. Currently, there is very little or no mobility at all for example between the CSIR and the university system; and between these two and the industry. Second, the draft has not given any space to the idea of building a cadre of technicians and instrument professionals who will in future be the backbone of the knowledge-based economy and institutional setup. Third, in continuation of the earlier policies, the features of "brain drain and brain gain" and `brain circulation' do not find the space they deserve.

The overarching science and technology policy statement needs to spell out a perspective to orchestrate the signals from the various sectors, conventional as well as newly emerging. STP2001 does not give any indication as to how the existing policy statements (over a dozen issued by various Government sectors since 1991) have a bearing on it or its radiating effect on them in future. The draft mentions about S&T inputs in planning and governance but has not paid any attention to the widening gap between `theory' and `practice' of S&T policies. How to forge linkages between industrial and S&T policies; and what bearing these will have on the goal directions of national laboratories, on the one hand, and industrial actors, on the other are the core issues not addressed in the draft.

(The writer is Professor, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU. The views expressed are his alone.)

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