"Empires of Future will be Empires of Mind"

Before we take a careful look at the subtle shifts in Indian Science Policy framework in last fifty years let us go five decades back and recall one of the very very significant clauses of Science Policy Resolution 1958, Para 3:
It is only through the scientific approach and method and the use of scientific knowledge that reasonable material and culturtal amenities and services can be provided for every member of the community, and it is out if a recognition of this possibility that the idea of a welfare state has grown.
It is charateristic of present world that the progress towards the practical realisation of a welfare state difefrs widely from country in diret relation to the extent of industrialisation and the effort and resources applied in the pursuit of science.


Then Technology Policy Statement, 1983 recognised that key to successfully develop indigenous capability in technology demands a conscious integrated approach covering technology assessment, development,, acquisition, absorption, utilization and diffusion and connected aspects of financing, based on overall national interests, priorities and the attainment of the most challenging technological goals.


Further, in recent years Science and Technology Policy, 2003 this shift becomes more visible... To ensure that message of science reaches every citizen of India, man and woman, young and old, so that we advance scientific temper, emerge as a progressive and enlightened society, and make it possible for all our people to participate fully in the development of science and technology and its application for human welfare. Indeed science and technology will be fully integrated with all spheres of national activity.

Going ahead adding the emphasis in another clause S& T Policy says;
There is growing need to enhance public awareness of the importance of science and technology in everyday life, and the directions where science and technology is taking us. People must be able to consider the implications of emerging science and technology options in areas which impinge directly upon their lives, including the ethical and moral, legal, social and economic aspects. In recent years, advances in biotechnology and information technology have dramatically increased public interest in technology options in wide ranging areas. Scientific work and policies arising from these have to be highly transparent and widely understood.
Support for wide dissemination of scientific knowledge, through the support of science museums, planetaria, botanical gardens and the like, will be enhanced. Every effort will be made to convey to the young the excitement in scientific and technological advances and to instill scientific temper in the population at large. Special support will be provided for programmes that seek to popularize and promote science and technology in all parts of the country. Programmes will also be developed o promote learning and dissemination of science through the various national languages, to enable effective science communication at all levels. A closer interaction of those involved in the natural sciences and technology, social sciences, humanities and other scholarly pursuits will be facilitated to bring about mutual reinforcement, added value and impact.


I consider above listed three beliefs and policy objectives have consistent flow in itslef. In 1958 we recognised power of scientific approach and believed that it is capable to make us realise the idea of welfare state. Again in 1983 we underlined the might of technology competence and self reliance in technological capabilities which can reduce vulnerability, perticularly in strategic and critical areas. The year 2003 marks the necessity of public understanding of science and value of participation in the stream of scientific and technological progress of the country. In this context I share with you about the workshop "CREATION AND DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE" sponsored by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Ministry of Science and Technology during New Delhi 27-29 July 09.


Inugerating the workshop Dr. Jyoti Bhat who is technical adviser in DSIR tried to ignite the minds about the need of communication. She said, "People always feel need of new knowledge. This new knowledge always leads to development of new capabilties by inspring the younger generation to move towards careers in science and technology. This emotional transition which is marked by urge to have new, sophisticated, state of the art knowledge is hallmark of this emerging society. When people crave for accurate, relevant and structural knowledge it shapes Human Capital Transformation in a sense it directs the efforts of communicator in developing Intellectual assests for organisations. This knowledge creation and transfer happens in three stages:
a) From scarce capabilties to knowledge transfer
b) Knowledge adaptation and dissemination
c) Cross border knowledge creation and transfer
Here she laid emphasises on need of collaboration being the urgent strategy of the organisations, departments, industries and a nation as a whole. She stressed that for effective knowledge utilisation, strengthening economic and institutional regime, developing educated and skilled workers, creating efficient innovation system and building dynamic information infrastructure are the strict imperatives.

To move in this direction bearing strategic perspective one needs to visualise the urgent and pressing need of : enhancement of knowledge base, awareness building about science-technology issues, building of more Technology Management Resource Centres, Curriculum Development about Innovation, recognising the role of teachers in inspiring new generation towards science and technology, more imaginative and modern media for information dissemination. setting up of the academic chairs promoting research environment !!!


Prof. Ashok Chandra who is Director of Centre for Managing of Innovation and Technology, IMI shared his experiences of formulating the National Education Policy, 1986. He said, "We must treat process of policy formulation as utmost importan rather than result of policy formulation. The identification of the numerous stakeholders and timely participation of the all people will certainly give birth to mature consultation and the draft coming out of the deliberations will be of immense acceptance value and reach due to prior interaction. He advocated that we should use the process of policy formulation for effective communication and thus to educate about ingredients of the technical issues involved in the subject of debate. Any policy is reflection of agenda of diverse interest groups involved in that process. Thus differing viewpoints must be reconciled and thus harmonisation in Policy Objectives can be achieved. All social, cultural and economic spheres in that specific context must be considered for that matter. Thus likewise policy always respond to the external changes and the revised and reviewed policy must have some tangible committment in terms of deadline and quantitative targets in terms of performance-productivity index.


Dr. Vinay Kumar, former Adviser to MoST stressed upon "Freedom of Expression" in the organisation leading to innovation. He emphasised on Management support to new ideas, motivation-award policy, toleration of failure, positive outlook and exposing employees to new experiences and directions.


Dr. Naresh Kumar, Head, R&D Planning Division, CSIR described in detail about the emerging platform of Open Source Drug Discovery(OSDD- OSDD is a CSIR-led Team India consortium with a global partnership. It's vision is to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, etc. It is a concept to collaboratively aggregate the biological and genetic information available to scientists in order to use it to hasten the discovery of drugs. This will provide a unique opportunity for scientists, doctors, technocrats, students and others with diverse expertise to work for a common cause.) His focus was "Information in Open Source Domain: A Tool for Knowledge Creation and Dissemination for new drug of TB". He emhaised again and again that the wisdom does not lie only in the four walls of the organisation, it is always scattered outside. Our challenge is to get , organise and disseminate that information for betterment of the initiative for which organisation is striving.

He said that present IT infrastructure, connectivity and high throughput analysis capability makes OSDD possible. Going ahead he threw light on the shifting paradigms of Computational Biology. In traditional biology where things were shaped by classical, basic experimentation in low throughput where animal studies were having prominence in this new OSDD knowledge sharing model, research in Combinaitonal Chemistry, Genomics, Proteonomics, Metabolomics, Biotechnology is enhanced by high throughput analysis and molecular imaging. To support this massive initiative to discover new drud for T.B. due to which one person per minute is being killed in India and there has been no credible drug discovered uptill now after 1966 marks the strategic significance. While explaining this "Open Model of Knowledge Access", he laid immense stress on OPEN SYNTHESIS while organising knowledge addressing TARGET MOLECULE which in turn will pass through SCREENING to finally move towards DRUG DEVELOPMENT before we allow PRE-CLINICAL AND CLINICAL TRIALS by Contract Research Organisations.


P. Banerjee, Director, NISTADS spoke about Organising Scholarly Community while realisng the responsibilities of proffessional occupation like to create knowledge, to develope the skills and to nurture the attitudes of proffessionals. He said that dynamism of organisation depends not on devising new produciton function but to devise new channels by which continous learning and regeneration of ideas is possible. In a hierarchic organisaion it is always possible that bundling and unbundling of the information may be done by the seniors or established people while if given chance juniors may come out with wondeful ideas. While it should be remembered that traditional approaches of creativity based on the diktat and authority are collapsing the proffessional standards and disciplinary boundaries are new masters of the innovation.


He further said that proffessional spirit is weakest in India compared to best practises in the world. He cited his study about mindset of Indian Research Laboratories in forging active collaboration for research inside city, outside city and across the national borders. He consistently pointed out with proven facts that Indian Researchers are not even willing to share information (let alone knowledge ?) across the walls in the same research organisaitons as Science Citation Index and other Indexes indicate toward reluctance of Indian researchers in citing fellow scientists compared to enthusiasm of Chinese in doing so about their fellow Chinese scholars. This in comparison with China, he said, is also sadly true about degree of investment per scientific Human Resource, number of conferences being held, ability to spend the allocated money, number of scientific instruments being purchased, number of guest faculties being invited to Indian Universities and Research Institutes, growth of proffessional bodies in the country and most importantly REALISING THE COLLABORATION POSSIBILTIES.
Eventually to highlight the features of robust research system which India needs to develop, he stressed upon a) Improvement of research performance, b) Improvement of research quality and c) Improvement of Innovation Performance.


To leave all of you lingering in spiral of thoughts:
It was 50 years ago this May that Snow, an English physicist, civil servant and novelist, delivered a lecture at Cambridge called “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” which was later published in book form. Snow’s famous lament was that “the intellectual life of the whole of Western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups,” consisting of scientists on the one hand and literary scholars on the other. So why did Snow think the supposed gulf between the two cultures was such a problem? Because, he argues in the latter half of his essay, it leads many capable minds to ignore science as a vocation, which prevents us from solving the world’s “main issue,” the wealth gap caused by industrialization, which threatens global stability. "

Ultimately one can`t help but recall the verbatim of Winston Churchil that "Empires of the future will be certainly empires of the mind...!!!"


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# Questioning old beliefs and realising that nothing is absolute and certain in life compells us to communicate perspectives we have reposited on the mind being nourished everyday by infinite data, innumerous information, questionable knowledge and doubtful wisdom.

# Ability to cope up with the uncertainty and lateral thinking is another powerful tool which is symbol of efficient thinking ability of the persons to take first decisive steps to convey their point of view about the state of affiars he/she is interested in.

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