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                of the Line
                      ___DIPANKAR GUPTA

Sign For Science
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College admissions are over. Once again the best have gone to Commerce and Arts, the not so good go to Science. B. Com (Hons) is still the most prized subject and at the top of the heap. Shri Ram College of Commerce is where many of our brightest kids want to be. In the Arts, Economics has easily worsted Physics. As one national daily put it: ‘‘Science is being mauled by Commerce in Delhi University.’’ According to figures available from University of Delhi’s admission records even the cut off marks for entry to Political Science (Hons) was higher this year for some colleges than it was for Chemistry (Hons).

This preference for Commerce and Economics among the young people of today is explained in terms of globalisation and the new consumerism. Of this I have no doubt. It is quite natural that young people should gravitate towards professions that receive higher remuneration. According to reliable sources there is a marked trend towards business studies among the young super-achievers in America too.

The fact that such a comparison is possible at this level is itself very disquieting. India clearly is not America. After climbing to the peak of consumerism it is almost in the fitness of things that in the U.S.A. the service sector should expand. With the growth of this sector the need for business school graduates, corporate lawyers, economists, etc., is also bound to grow. But is India ready for this?
For India to be strong and self-reliant nation it must have an army of highly qualified scientists. Even pro-market advocates will agree that the rate at which we are forced to borrow technology from elsewhere costs this country dearly. We are not world leaders in anything, and if current college admission statistics are anything to go by, we will lose basic assembly skills as well.

It is not as if everybody who enrolls for B. Sc. Physics (Hons) must end up being a Nobel laureate. In science more than in the field of arts and humanities a country needs a steady supply of good minds who are dedicated to being just ‘‘normal’’ scientists. They need not all be path breakers, but should be competent professionals who have the necessary mental equipment to take science forward, even if that be in microscopic doses.

The translation from a genuine scientific breakthrough to everyday application requires strenuous and dedicated efforts from a wide array of people who are skilled in the subject. Nor is it that science once applied to one set of social conditions can be calmly transplanted to other parts of the world. For appropriate integration of scientific knowledge into the lives of people every country needs its own complement of professional scientists. Otherwise, we will not only pay others for all major inventions, but also for their applications as well. In fact, this is still the plight of India today.

The humanities, on the other hand, can continue quite happily so long as once a generation someone like Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes makes an appearance. They give us ideas with which we can keep ourselves busy for roughly a hundred years. No significant addition to knowledge is required once these great prophets of the arts and humanities have made their pronouncements. Without doing any great damage to our lives we can easily wait for the next messiah to drop by in another generation or two.

With a subject like Commerce we can be more complacent. In this case we are not talking so much about knowledge as about a craft. In fact till about twenty years ago a degree in Commerce was way down in the pecking order. Today with the brightest signing up for B.Com. we have a strange situation where the students are intellectually way superior to their teachers who graduated some two decades ago.

A similar unlearning process is taking place with engineers too. After slogging for five years in the various IIT’s they breeze through management schools and subsequently forget all about engineering. This is an internal brain drain that is as serious as the external one. When engineers switch professions in this fashion it is a waste of national resources even if they stay on in the country. Engineers find little financial reward and job satisfaction as scientific professionals and are therefore more than willing to become business executives. This is why it is imperative that the government should make learning and practising science much more attractive than what it is today. To leave everything to market forces is a clear abdication of responsibility.

The breakthroughs in scientific knowledge require careful nurturing over many generations to realise their potentials. This is why the development of scientific knowledge should be a social responsibility. It needed diligent toil and dedicated labour at various levels for generations to move from Einstein to rocket technology, from Pasteur and Koch to antibiotics, or from Madame Curie to radiotherapy. Great scientific discoveries do not become facts of everyday life instantaneously.

The term ‘‘normal’’ science is often used pejoratively to describe the works of the thousands of such nameless people who bring the benefits of scientific revolutions to our doorsteps. But without their efforts our lives today would be very, very different. Nobody need die today of tuberculosis, typhoid or pneumonia. Leprosy is now fully curable. With a little luck perhaps there will be a cure for cancer and AIDS in the not too distant future.

For thousands of years, people could move only as fast as their horses could. The armies of Hannibal, Rana Pratap and Napoleon all marched at roughly the same speed. Today, even the lowliest pen pusher travels at 10 times the speed in a city bus. What a vast difference normal scientists have made in the last century and some.

Even those who see only the downside of science and and not its positive contributions to human development must admit that short of en masse renunciation, there is no way one can halt the work of normal science from affecting our lives. If that is the logic of contemporary history, then it is wise not to turn our backs on science but to embrace it with greater vigour. This is where an enlightened national policy for education and employment is required.

Responsible governments cannot leave everything to market forces. Market forces should operate but there should be national priorities as well. Given the backward, even primitive, conditions in which the majority live in our country, hard sciences should continue to play a leading role. According to the National Council for Applied Economic Reasearch, the super rich in our country are those who earn over Rs 2,15,000 per year. This converts to only about US $ 5,000. This is way below the American average income of approximately $ 24,000 per year. What makes this picture truly pathetic is that a measly 1.2 million households in India fall in this ‘‘super rich category’’, according to the estimates of 1995-96. The current figure, when computed, will not be all that different. How can a country with such a miserable economic profile afford to ignore science? It is high time that something is done to attract the best and the brightest to science and to scientific professions.

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