HEIRARCHY, BUREAUCRACY AND RESEARCH-THE ABSURD 'COMBINATION'

Research is nothing but pursuit of truth and vision and creativity and honesty are at the core of success of any research endeavor. Research followed by development is supposed to lead to innovations of practical significance. While basic research establishes new principles and theoretic foundations, applied research is the route to commercial development and industrial technologies. In India R & D activities are more or less confined to 8400 universities and a dozen GOI Departments. There are hundreds of universities spanning the country but very few have sufficient reputation to stand tall in the world of science while a large number of them are suffering from low quality infrastructure, manpower and grossly inadequate resources.GOI funded R & D in CSIR Labs, DBT institutions, BARC, ISRO, ICAR group, ICMR group, DRDO group and others are specific task oriented with links to end users. Private sector research is largely profit oriented ending up in the patent office for protection under intellectual property rights.

Since public funds for R & D are provided in GOI budgetary plans, the agencies, organizations, institutions and projects receiving financial support have to conform to the hierarchical and bureaucratic procedures being followed by GOI ministries with minor changes. The characteristic features of GOI working method are based on rigid bureaucracy and tight hierarchy amongst the administrative personnel. Each cog in the GOI wheel has definite designations, power and responsibility. Time is not the essence of working in GOI establishments. Unfortunately by adopting such a system by research agencies, most of them claiming to be autonomous (on paper?), creativity and innovation potential amongst scientists are severely curbed as governance is invariably based on the surmise that "every body is dishonest unless proved otherwise". Proving to be honest is like the proverbial chastity belt and to prevent misuse of government funds, elaborate rules and regulations have been put in place with a heavy administrative machinery vested with overseeing the spending by the scientists. As time is not as important to the administrative personnel as much as the procedure to be followed, stifling of the enthusiasm and initiatives amongst the scientific community lead to mediocre research of little significance.

Hear what Mr Ratan J Tata, the senior member of Tata family which founded the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore 100 years ago and the living Titan in the industrial landscape of the country, has to say about the crisis in India vis-a-vis scientific research, spoken at the centenary celebrations of this premier scientific and training organization. According to him "the IISc must seek to cover new grounds instead of building a fortress around us. IISc has to change and the hierarchy has to be demolished. Money, quality life, opportunities and facilities including the freedom to work are the primary reasons for the brain drain. We need to equip our institutions in a way where all the facilities are available". Well said but is there any body in Delhi taking seriously what Mr Tata had to say? Unlikely!

The archaic procedures, cumbersome purchase mechanisms, delays in releasing funds for required expenditure, compelling scientists to bow before administrative and accounts staff, hierarchical power structure that gives very little power of spending to working scientists and exploitation of credits due to the less powerful working scientists by more powerful 'bosses' up in the hierarchy have made the S&T sector almost moribund during the last 2-3 decades. Paying high salaries to scientists without providing them with the tools and motivation to perform cannot be expected to enrich our scientific temper by any stretch of imagination.


V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

A CESS ON INDUSTRY FOR FOOD SAFETY & R & D-NEED OF THE HOUR

The reported move by the new US Government to impose a $ 500 annual fee on food processors and growers is based on the perception that FDA and USDA, the two regulatory arms of the government are handicapped by resource crunch and consequent restraints on mobilizing the required infrastructure to safeguard the food supply chain. Food safety concerns became serious after a spate of cases involving salmonella contamination of foods like tomato, jalapeno, peanuts, etc during the last 2-3 years affecting thousands of consumers across that nation. Though the processing industry and the farming community have not taken to this new imposition kindly, eventually they will see the relevance of such a move in the interests of all. Unfortunately in India, GOI is more concerned with imposing taxes and duties on the industry which flow into the general coffers for budget support for various programs including loan waivers, subsidized grain supply and export subsidization. There has never been any serious attempt in the past to assess the need of the processing industry in terms of quality control, safety assurance and technology development.

ICAR is the prime agency that gets financial inputs from GOI for farm related development works but it is largely involved in increasing agricultural production with no portfolio as far as safety of the crops produced is concerned. To add to this confusion, there are no earmarked agencies of GOI vested with the responsibility of overseeing crop safety before leaving the farms and safety and quality issues are left to the buyers to resolve. Only when there are alarm signals from the farm sector when confronted with large scale infestation or drought or floods, GOI wakes up to address the consequences. It is left to the extension workers belonging to the state and central governments to help the growers with their problems and they are also more tuned to farm production increase rather than quality or safety of the crops raised. It is time this anomaly is addressed and an overseeing organization is evolved to monitor the farm practices and ensure the safety of the crops before leaving the farms for the market.

As for the processed foods, agencies like FPO, AGMARK, ISI, MFPO, FSSTA, MMPO, etc have scattered authority to monitor food quality and safety. Though these are administered by GOI, the execution of monitoring responsibility is left to the states and local civic bodies which never take them seriously. The quality of personnel manning these activities is abysmally low and it is too much to expect that they will have the necessary expetise, wisdom and perspectives to tackle safety related issues. If consumer has to place confidence on any safety assurance system, it must be a unitary body with well defined hierarchical command structure that can work cohesively and with determination. It is time FSSTA is given the necessary infrastructure to do this job effectively on its own, in stead of depending on the mostly non-functional state machinery. Most important pre-requisite for a sound implementation mechanism is availability of well equipped food laboratories in all districts of the country manned by qualified and trained food chemists. Why not bring all the existing analysis labs under the FSSTA, modernize their facilities, re-train the personnel and recruit new personnel with experience. A training school for the food chemists is a must similar to what DFRL, Mysore has but with much larger intake capacity and in association with the user industry.

Food industry in India is starved of appropriate technologies affordable to self-employed entrepreneurs, micro enterprises and small scale sector processing units. Existing players in the government funded R & D system have miserably failed the industry and has caused more harm than good during the last one and half decade by their blind pursuit of useless patents and income generation by any means. Probably GOI can do amends to its past negligence of technology development by forcing these R & D organizations to focus on industry relevant R & D projects through closer linkage with the users. Pure science research and academic programs are better left to the Universities. Probably large scale spring cleaning is called for with ruthless elimination of non-performers and inducting leaders with vision and far-sight.

Dedicated funds are critical to reorganize the food safety regime on above lines and proposals have been made from time to time to involve the industry as well as large farmers who will be willing to bear some financial burden on a credible system. Unfortunately GOI chose to ignore such eminently sound suggestions and the cursed consumers of this country are at the receiving end, forced to feed on foods that are sub-standard, adulterated, contaminated and unpredictable in quality. An yearly cess like what US Government is considering on large farms and organized sector of food processing can raise sufficient resources to support above proposals. One may call it a "technology cess" and even Rs 1000 per year from the stake holders will generate large sums which should be earmarked for spending only on the programs beneficial to the consumers. There must be a transparent system for technology development and delivery to the users, either free or at nominal cost by the public funded technology development agencies. A cry in the wilderness? Let us hope not!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/