Fifty years of Science in Pakistan in Socio-Economic Contex

[Speech delivered on August 5, 1997, at a special function, presided
over by the President of Pakistan, arranged by International
Nathiagali Summer College on the Golden Jubilee Celebration of
Pakistan.]

Let me start by expressing our gratitude to Allah who has brought us
safely to a time when we are celebrating the Golden Jubilee of
Pakistan. We may celebrate this occasion for whatever success we have
achieved during the last 50 years. But it is also a time to reflect
and analyse our failures with a view to find solutions for them.

A society is judged by three indicators:

(1) Security (in particular internal security);

(2) Education (including science and technology);

(3) Health and Environment.

Though there is no doubt that we are very deficient as regards the
first point (as is shown by a glance at any newspaper), this College
is not the appropriate forum to analyse it. The other two points do
fall within its scope. We shall discuss them.

Pakistan is not a small nation -- one out of every 43 people in the
world is a Pakistani. However, Pakistan is 127th in the world in a
ranking of basic literacy. Though we are only an eighth of India's
population we have 8,500 research scientists to India's 120,000. Our
contribution to the world's scientific literature was 0.08% in
1994. As Professor Salam says "Science-based high-technology is a word
which has not yet entered into current usage in our country". One of
the many reasons for this dismal picture may be illustrated by the
fact that though we spend about $2000 per soldier in Pakistan, we
spend about $2 per student!

About 44 percent of Pakistan's population does not have access to
health facilities, 50% are without safe drinking water and 66% are
deprived of basic sanitation facilities. Put it another way, Pakistan
is 121st in the world on health expenditure per capita and 95th in
respect of percentage of population with access to safe drinking
water. Though 30% of its population lives in absolute poverty, its
markets are full of consumer goods that do not reflect the dismal
state of the social indicators mentioned above. This sharp contrast
between economic growth and the above social indicators proves that
there must have been something wrong with our priorities. "If our
national priorities are not re-arranged soon, the economic, social and
political fabric of Pakistan may degenerate to an unsustainable level.

As Prof. Abdus Salam has emphasized time and again: "The widening gap
in Economics and in Influence between the nations of the South and the
North is basically the science gap". It is thus important that we
examine the state of science in Pakistan, which I would like to do
with a reference to:

(a) Political committment
(b) Indigenization and self-reliance
(c) Manpower
(d) Internationalization


Political Committment

"It is a political decision on part of those (principally from the
South) who decide on the destiny of developing humanity if they will
take steps to let the deprived ones create, master and utilize Modern
science and technology" (Abdus Salam). India realized it almost 41
years ago when their Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru initiating the
debate in the Indian Parliament on India's second five-year plan made
the following statement:

"When we talk of planning, we have to think in technological terms,
because it is this growth of science and technology that has enabled
man to produce wealth which nobody could ever have dreamed of. It is
that which has made other countries wealthy and prosperous, and it is
only through the growth of the technological process that we shall
grow and become a prosperous and wealthy nation; there is no other
way. Therefore, if India is to advance, she must advance in science
and technology, and India must use the latest technologies. But the
fact is that our poverty is due to our backwardness in science and
technology, and by the measure that we remedy that backwardness, we
create not only wealth but employment."

With the political support of Nehru and
the vision and advice of first-rate working scientists, like
the late Dr. Homi Bhabha, India had the first nuclear reactor in Asia
outside of the Soviet Union. Not only that, India established four
first rate I.I.T's (Indian Institutes of Technology) to set up which
the U.S, the U.K, the former Soviet Union and German government
consortia competed for. These I.I.T's provided an indigenous base for
highly scientifically and technologically trained manpower. The result
is that, India is one of the advanced countries, not only in nuclear
technology but in other technological fields, particularly information
technology. In a recent visit to India, Microsoft Corporation chairman
Bill Gates said, "The importance of India as a software country, and a
place where we have decided to invest is greater than China. In 1996
the industry was worth US $1.2 billion with a compunded annual growth
rate of more than 50% which is unheard of elsewhere. In 2000 this
industry will be worth US $6 billion. Currently India has about 7000
computer software companies employing 160,000 software developers".

Even after 50 years, Pakistan has not made science and technology a
part of the planning process. In contrast when Prof. Salam suggested
to a past chairman of the Planning Commission that he should consult
scientists in the planning of science based industries, the Chairman
replied "Why should I consult the scientists? I do not consult my cook
to show me how to run my household?" "By what divine right he was
heading the Planning Commission", he did not tell me, Prof. Salam
adds. It is essential that it be realized that in the conditions of
today planning cannot be done in purely economic terms. After all the
modern world and its problems are a creation of modern science and
technology.

I do not want to sound totally negative. From two universities at the
time of partition, today there are 22 universities in Pakistan. From
almost zero science base it has now 8,500 science research
scientists. Pakistan's share of world research authorship and citation
of Pakistan papers show some growth, at least the slope is not
negative. Most of the progress Pakistan made in Science and Technology
has its origins during the tenure of President Ayub Khan who made the
first political committment to science and education. He gathered
around him some of Pakistan's prominent scientists and appointed a
working, young and brilliant theoretical physicist, Abdus Salam, as
his Science Advisor in 1961. During his period (1962-69) not only an
infrastructure for science was created but a massive effort for
manpower development was undertaken. The Pakistan Atomic Energy
Commission (P.A.E.C) was revitalized with the late Dr. I. H. Usmani as
its Chairman, (a bureaucrat with a PhD in Physics who had a passion
for science development) and Prof. Salam as its active member. During
the above period the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission
(SUPARCO), Pakistan Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology
(PINSTECH) with 5 MW research reactor, the Nuclear Power Plant near
Karachi (KANUPP), Agricultural research centers nears Faisalabad and
Tandojam, Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy centers at major
hospitals, The National Science Council and the Pakistan Science
Foundation were created. It is during this period that the PAEC
embarked on the programme of training more than 500 scientists in
areas of experimental and theoretical physics, nuclear chemistry,
health physics, engineering and agriculture. These men, by and large
constituted Pakistan's major stock of trained manpower in the relevant
disciplines. The subsequent Pakistani leaders allowed their support
for Nuclear Technology to flourish. Another example of President Ayub
Khan's patronage is Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. He had some
vision of creating a postgraduate university concentrating on research
and graduate programs in Science and Technology and hard social
sciences. He saw to it that the university is developed properly and
that it gets international support and collaboration. He used his
personal influence for getting two crucial grants for the university:
The Ford Foundation grant, which was effectively used for short term
international contacts, and the UNDP grant, which was mainly used for
the development of experimental facilities and for long term visitors
relevant to fields to be developed. The results were encouraging, and
according to our peers, the Institute of Physics at the University was
on the international map as an active center of research in the highly
competitive field of theoretical particle physics, on which we could
form a very viable group in the very beginning. For the first time in
the history of Pakistan, a graduate programme leading to PhD degree in
Physics was started on a regular basis. The PhD's produced were of the
highest international standards. The above examples forcefully bring
out the importance of Political Committment at the highest level for a
scientific enterprise to flourish.

Since the period 1962-1969 Pakistan has had several reviews of science
policy without making much impact. The main reason is that those
reviews were not performed by working scientists, but rather by people
"with no personal experience in developing science, with no perception
about the nature of science and its role in a country's development,
and with no vision and no elan" (M. J. Moravcscik). Moreover, those
policies lacked a built in implementation mechanism. Many research
councils that were created from such policy reviews failed to make any
impact. Apart from budget constraints, their is a basic reason for
their failure. They could not establish themselves as customers to
prospective contractors in industry, utilities, government departments
and defense. Unless a customer-contractor relationship, which has a
built-in accountability process and research support, is not
established, such establishments are not going to succeed. Contractual
research is an alien word in Pakistani science.

Indigenization and self-reliance

None of our governments has ever made it a national goal to acquire
self-reliance -even for defense technology. In fact the attitiude of
our planners for most of the time is well illustrated by the following
quotation from the Adventures of Haji Baba of Isphahan (1824): James
Morier quoted in the book "Among the Believers". "But it was not alone
in poetry that I excelled. I had a great turn for mechanics, and
several of my inventions were much admired at court ... I made
different sort of colored papers, I invented a new sort of ink-stand,
and was on the high road to making cloth, when I was stopped by His
Majesty, who said to me, 'Asker, stick to your poetry: whenever I want
cloth, my merchants bring it from Europe.' " Why develop or transfer a
technology when we can import finished products? The result is that
Pakistani markets are full of imported finished goods, which is not
indicative of our level of technological development. And we have paid
a scant heed to the scientific base of technology. Indigenization is a
slow process by its nature but it pays in the end. The establishment
of an indigenous scientific capacity for research and development is
essential since it produces not only an awareness of significant
developments of world science and technology and their potentialities,
but also enables a country to make autonomous technical decisions in
negotiating, purchasing and assimilation of technology according to
its economic and social needs.

Manpower

Let me quote Prof. Moravscik, who visited Pakistan several times and
wrote to the then President of Pakistan after his last visit in 1987:
"In surveying Pakistani scientific manpower, one is struck by its
being overwhelmed by older people. In 1962, (this was the time when
PAEC undertook the massive training programme I mentioned earlier),
when I first came in contact with Pakistani science, there was a large
group of bright young men in the sciences, many still in the process
of being educated at an advanced level, but most already showing
talent and achievement. Many of them contributed to science
significantly in the following years. Members of that generation today
are in their mid-forties or mid-fifties, some still productive, but
the group, on the whole, is declining in its contribution to research,
perhaps because of administrative preoccupations, perhaps just out of
general tiredness". To alleviate this problem, in 1985 1500 overseas
scholarships for Ph.D in newly emerging fields were reserved over 10
years by the Ministry of Science and Technology. This scheme,
commendable as it was, did not make as much difference as one would
have liked. One of the reasons appears to be that the S&T scholars
could not get absorbed into the Pakistani Science and Education
sectors due to lack of appropriate research centers.

We do not have an equivalent of IIT's in Pakistan (with the possible
exception of the Quaid-e-Azam University) to take care of manpower
development. Perhaps we can strengthen the science departments in the
existing universities for indigenous Ph.D programs. The National
Center for Physics, which, Mr. President, was established at your
initiative, was supposed to do that for physics. It was also supposed
to involve expatriate physicists in the process. Unfortunately this
center has yet to take off the ground. The reason is simple. Science
centers are built around towering individuals to flourish and
succeed. ICTP was built around Prof. Abdus Salam, Tata Insititute at
Bombay around Dr. Homi Bhabha. HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry in
Karachi was built around Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui and is one of
Pakistan's designated centers of excellence by the Third World Academy
of Sciences. It is now being headed by an active working chemist and
is spearheading research and postgraduate education in chemistry. The
same cannot be said about the Physics Center, which has still to find
a whole time director of stature.

To promote high technology, we could create a National Center for
Information Technology which assesses future scientific and
technological trends and sets about bringing scientists and
technologists together with economists, investors, industrialists and
government funding agencies. There is another reason for such a
center. Three ingredients are essential for the development of
technology:

i) recognition for need of it
ii) expertise to make it work
iii) affordability and market


It is gratifying that the Pakistan Government has recognized the need
for information technology, it is affordable as it does not require
much capital investment like nuclear technology and it has a world
wide market, as shown by the example of India mentioned earlier. It is
the expertise which we lack, particularly at the higher level. The
proposed center will provide the highest level of technical expertise
and knowledge in the field of Information Technology. It would provide
a platform for communication among the government, private sector, the
customer and more importantly the expatriate Pakistanis working in
this field. It would provide intellectual backing to the Software
Export Board. Without such a backing it will be difficult to compete
and ultimately the Pakistan Computer Industry will have to create its
own software instead of developing packaged products. We originally
proposed that such a center be established by a consortium of
industrialists in Pakistan, as ultimately it would benefit them. No
success so far. Anyway, whosoever establishes it, Industrialists or
Government, it should be at the same place as the Physics Center
i.e. at the campus of the Quaid-e-Azam University. It would avoid
duplication of infrastructure; besides physicists are very good in
developing large databases and complicated softwares. It will not be
out of place to quote John V. Astanosaff, one of the inventors of the
electronic digital computer: "Physics is a uniquely effective
discipline for training inventors", and that the World Wide Web was
developed at CERN, a physics center. The Pakistan Institute of
Development Economics is already at the Quaid-e-Azam University campus
and the National Centers for Physics and Information Technology at the
same campus can bring together scientists, economists, investors,
entrepreneurs and government finance agencies to better prepare
Pakistan to enter the 21st century. I have not mentioned Chemistry and
Biology since an excellent center, HEJ Institute of Chemistry, already
exists in Karachi, while for biology a center for Advanced Molecular
Biology at the campus of the Punjab University is joined by the
National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at
Faisalabad.


Internationalization

Internationalization of scientific endeavour is one of the important
conditions for science to flourish in any country. This requires
mobility for Pakistani scientists living and working in their own
country. They should be able to travel freely to scientific
institutions and meetings abroad, to migrate temporarily to anywhere
in the world where their work will flourish while their positions are
kept open at home and to collaborate with their colleagues at active
centers of research abroad. Some opportunities for international
contacts are provided by the International Center for Theoretical
Physics (Trieste, Italy), but many more are needed. One is potentially
provided by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva,
Switzerland). With a rather small financial contribution, young
Pakistani physicists can participate in research and development which
are at the very frontiers of not only physics, but also technology and
computer software development. It requires a committment of two
million Swiss Francs (about US$1.4 million) over a period of 10
years. Out of this, half can be paid in kind, so a cash payment of
US$100,000 per year will be needed for travel and maintenence of
physicists, computer software experts and engineers involved in the
collaboration. Is it too much to expect from the seventh largest
nation in the world, a meagre contribution of US$100,000 per year for
ten years to enable its young scientists and engineers to contribute
to Man's stock of knowledge?

Conclusion

The state of science, technology and education in Pakistan, apart from
a few bright spots here and there, is not much cause for
celebration. In spite of this prognosis, there is no reason to be
pessimistic. Growth of science and technology at the highest level
requires no more than one or two generations, as exemplified by new
industrial countries of East Asia, South Korea and Singapore. All that
is needed is a firm political committment, patronage and dedication of
scientists, technologists and educationists. I appeal to my fellow
scientists, particularly the expatriates to participate in the
betterment of our society by engaging in education, scientific
research and by becoming entrepreneurs.

I appeal to the rich that instead of leaving money to their children
to let them squander away, they should use it by investing their
savings (not bank loans) in high technology and education. They must
fulfill their obligation to the poor and the society by building
hospitals, investing in the education of the under-previleged and by
patronizing science. If our businessmen only follow Adam Smith's
dictum: "maximize the profit" without discharging their obligations to
society, then the State will have to intervene. If the State does not
intervene, then the man in the street will intervene since he can
suffer only up to a limit. In that case everyone will lose.

If we take steps to create, master and utilize modern science and
technology for betterment of our society, we will be able to say with
Jamal Nassir "Raise your head in pride and self-esteem, my
brother". Otherwise there is a warning in the words of
A. N. Whitehead, "In the conditions of modern life, the rule is
absolute: the race which does not value trained intelligence is
doomed. Today we maintain ourselves, tomorrow science will have moved
yet one more step and there will be no appeal from the judgement which
will be pronounced on the uneducated." Many centuries before
Whitehead, the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) said: "God has created nothing
more noble than intelligence and His wrath is on him who despises
it" . I leave it to this august audience to ponder over the
implications of this saying of the Prophet.