The danger of worshipping tradition lies in institutionalizing intolerance of creativity and original thought. If no two living beings are alike, how can one expect two people to have identical perspective? In scientific endeavours, it spells the death knell for advancement. There is an open debate whether the scientific bureaucracy has been good for the nation or an impediment in development of scientific thought, capacity and capability.
Scientific bureaucracy often espouses a certain technology vision and then finds itself unable to achieve it in the useful timeframe. When the vision, if achieved, materializes, it is good only as an academic exercise as the world has already moved on. In short, the taxpayers money gets wasted on useless pursuits. But the establishment stoutly defends it’s actions and talks of it as a continuation of our glorious scientific tradition which can be traced to, perhaps, the invention of ‘zero’. And then it asks for more funds. That is when the citizen asks whether we should throw more good money after an obviously bad proposition.
Nowhere are these issues more manifest than in strategic projects, be it related to Energy, National Defence or Electronics. As an economic power we haven’t created capabilities to make our own microprocessors of the kind we use in millions of devices, we don’t have indigenous sensor technologies for our commercial and military use, we don’t make indigenous weapon systems which we can sell in international market, our ship and submarine building skills are dependent on foreign help and our aerospace manufacturing capabilities are not commensurate to the time and resources devoted to it. Also, we have a seriously limited capability in commercial nuclear power generation. In the nation of telecom revolution, almost the entire supply of components and designs are imported.
More amazing is the lack of adequate institutionalized check on which commercial technologies are being procured by various wings of the Government. For example, an industry veteran shared with glee that obsolete SDH technology was being procured for Government IT and telecom projects when the world had moved on to packet networks, giving his company a new lease of life. To be fair, the same Government had directed that future IT procurement should be IPv6 compliant instead of existing IPv4. But somewhere it forgot to tell people to buy only packet technology for present and future networks.
The commercialization of indigenous technologies is nothing to write home about. In most cases it is a face saver dependent on Government patronage so that the effort and resource invested is not perceived as a waste. To overcome the issues of an obviously below par scientific bureaucracy, there is a pressing need for reforms which will expectedly be opposed by the ‘holy cows’. What we get is a direct function of what we are willing to accept. If we don’t accept pedestrian standards, we will get better value for our tax money. For example, doing away with reservation in Government employment in scientific positions could be a good start. We could have contractual employment terms with compensation on par with the commercial world, giving us the ability to engage only the desirable elements and holding on to the performers. Holding the establishment accountable to a parliamentary panel for the program results in desired timeframe could be another useful measure. Government investment in private sector industry R&D could also speed up innovation and industrial capacity creation to meet strategic objectives. We should not invest in reinventing the wheel but in developing vital future technologies and a dynamic scientific human resource base.
The research done in academic institutions has traditionally delivered tangible results on shoestring budgets. Why it cannot be replicated in the scientific establishment is food for thought and agenda for action. Intellectual and creative abilities are not the preserve of the chosen few who once gave an entrance exam. A person who can mug up a dictionary is not Shakespeare or comes close to him, if the essential creativity is missing. Talent is constantly evolving and is available at all ages and skill levels, independent of geography. This implies that option of lateral entries in scientific bodies may generate better hiring choices compared to the traditional ‘entrance test’ approach.
In the coming year and times ahead, let us champion meritocracy in scientific thought, clarity in scientific vision, essential needs of the population in scientific endeavours and sustainable self reliance in technological enterprise. Because, in the final analysis, one has to work to achieve his or her destiny – and nations are no exception.
