Needed Indian institutes of social sciences

In the knowledge economy that the world economy is fast turning into, the importance of high quality training and research is increasing. Economic growth is driven by technological progress. India has gained enormously from the investment that the Nehru government made in scientific and technological capability building.

The Indian institutes of technology (IITs), the national laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the expansion of agricultural research under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have all contributed substantially to our development. Empirical estimates of returns to R&D at the economy level are quite high.

One recent estimate puts it at 78 per cent in terms of GDP for R&D expenditure. The estimates of internal rates of return on agricultural research in different countries range from 19 per cent to over 100 per cent.

Return to R&D declines with per capita GDP as the relatively poor countries have greater margins of improvement and catching up. Even for catching up, the poorer countries need research and innovation. We have a long way to go.

The development strategy followed by a country affects the demand for and supply of research. After Independence we sought industrialisation and self-reliance and pursued import substitution based industrialisation (ISI).

The ISI called for import of technology, learning, assimilation and reverse engineering requiring imitative innovation. Because domestic industry had high protection in India, the cost effectiveness of newly developed technology took second place.

In countries where export was emphasised, the demand was for innovations that lead to industrial competitiveness for cost and quality. The Asian tigers focused their research accordingly. The Koreans today have many world class hi-tech products.

In terms of researchers per million population in the mid 1990s, India had 150, Japan 4,900, Singapore 2,300, Korea 2,200 and Taiwan 2,100. Compared with that Mongolia had 900, China 450, Vietnam 255, and other countries ranged from between 90 to 200. The highest spenders on R&D are Japan and Korea who spend 2.8 per cent of their GNP on R&D, followed by Taiwan (1.79 per cent) and Singapore (1.13 per cent).

Pakistan at 0.92 per cent is a relatively high spender followed by India (0.73 per cent) and China (0.61per cent). We need to invest more in research and engage more researchers.

We have tremendous potential for research, particularly if we recognise the wasted potential of women. On the educational front, women have lagged behind men in India and other South Asian countries. The gap at the tertiary level is high. Even then women often do better than men at the M.Sc. examinations, securing top ranks and medals.

Still, however, their role in research remains limited. Women researchers suffer from all kinds of prejudices. For example it is believed that married women pay less attention to their work. The reality is different.

For example, in the Philippines where there is equal gender participation in research, the publication rate of women exceeds that of men and that is true even for married women. Yet women with M.Sc. degrees take longer to get promotion.

Equity at tertiary level education and in promotion etc needs to be realised. Women also occupy very few decision-making posts. In all our CSIR laboratories and other research institutions, we have hardly had a woman director.

We have had strong political support for science and technology. A strong case can be made for government support for research, for basic research, for crop variety research, for birth control or for environmental research, for defence or research related to critical so called dual-use products and research in special areas that require the concerted efforts of many institutions.

However, government funding comes with many strings. It imposes a large measure of uniformity and mediocrity. Public sector dominance in policy research might discourage unpleasant conclusions. This is critical for social science research. Till recently, research, including policy research, was supported mainly by the government.

Even when funding from multilateral agencies or donors is obtained, the government often clears projects. The role of private research has been growing in recent times. In the 1990s, the role of business enterprises has grown dramatically in Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.

In Japan business had a dominant position even in the 1980s. Indian industry is beginning to realise the importance of in-house research for global competitiveness.

Today, India reaps the benefits of our investments in IITs as we are an important global force in the information technology (IT) sector. If we have not reaped the full benefit of all our investments in R&D and our efforts at development, it is for want of good governance. The importance of sound policies and effective implementation in promoting development is well recognised.

Good governance involves setting appropriate goals, choosing efficient policies and effectively implementing them with consensus, with freedom and with respect for human rights. We need social science research to promote good governance. Economic and policy research can help identify policy options and alternatives.

It can also assess the costs and benefits of alternatives that help in selection of policies. But selection needs to be made with an understanding of its implications for different groups and considering its acceptability by the people. For that we need sociological research.

We need political science research to identify what is politically acceptable and how we can design institutional structures for effectively executing policies. Thus, social science research is as important for development as scientific and technological research. Our technologists may invent new technologies. We need to assess them for their cost effectiveness, for their sociological desirability and their impact on human well-being.

Compared to our emphasis on S&T we have put much less emphasis on developing high quality social science capabilities. We have a number of research institutions, some of which do excellent work. However, in terms of teaching and high quality education we have done very little particularly at the under graduate level.

The social science teaching in universities is by and large far below the world standard. This is largely due to lack of meritocracy in our universities (and for that matter in our research institutions as well).

What we need is the kind of bold vision that established the IITs. We need to set up a number of Indian institutes of social sciences (IISS) to cover economics, sociology, political science, etc. These should be on the lines of IITs but devoted to social science education and research.

We should give them the resources and the freedom to be world class. They should be so good that students from all over the world would want to study there. It can be done.

kirit@igidr.ac.in

(The writer is Chairman, Integrated Research and Action for Development Professor Emeritus, Indira Gandhi Institute of Research and Development)