The Hindu : `Further slide in scientific capacity in developing countries'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 08, 2004

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`Further slide in scientific capacity in developing countries'

By N. Gopal Raj

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, FEB. 7. The world is experiencing "a vicious cycle" in which developing countries that lag in scientific capacity are falling further behind, as industrialised nations with financial resources and a trained scientific work force exploit new knowledge and technologies more quickly and intensively, warns a report by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC), an organisation created by 90 of the world's science academies.

Stronger S&T capacity in the developing nations is not a luxury but an absolute necessity if these nations were to participate as full partners in the world's fast-forming, knowledge-based economy, says the report titled "Inventing a Better Future". Developing countries ought to be spending at least one per cent, preferably closer to 1.5 per cent, of their GDP on S&T development. Each nation also requires a "coherent national framework for actions" for the promotion of science and technology.

Investments in science and technology are increasingly important for economic growth, the report says. High-income industrialised nations such as Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United States, and northern and western Europe spend between 1.5 per cent and 3.8 per cent of their GDP on research and development.

While India allocates 1.2 per cent, Brazil 0.91 per cent and China 0.69 per cent, most developing nations devote less than 0.5 per cent of their GDP to R&D.

Similarly, in high-income nations, the number of scientists and engineers average 3,281 per million population.

In middle-income nations, there is an average of 788 scientists and engineers per million. But the number is too small to be reliably calculated in many developing countries.

"Every nation should develop an S&T strategy that specifies the national priorities for research and development and spells out national funding commitments," the report says.

The Government should develop such a national strategy in consultation with scientific, engineering, and medical academies. The strategy should also spell out the Government's commitments to funding, standards of excellence, openness to innovation, dissemination of knowledge, regional consortia and networks, private-public interactions, and entry into partnerships with others - locally, regionally, and globally, it adds.

The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a member of IAC and Goverdhan Mehta, Director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, is a co-chair of the Council.

P.N. Tandon, neuroscientist, is a member of the panel which prepared the report.

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