A Way Beyond Failed S&T Policies – By I. Daudpota

[The article reviews how national institutions have failed to present a viable vision for the country’s S&T sector. Conscientious professionals need to propound their ideas and reach out to the public. An increased role of expat. Pakistanis is suggested.]
Among teachers and science and technology workers, the nonchalant attitude of successive governments to knowledge acquisition and science and technology (S&T) is an accepted fact. The apathy is evident in the quality of the ministerial and top bureaucratic appointments in these areas. It is easy to fault the government, but what have these grudging workers done themselves? Haven’t they generally failed to provide innovative, practical ideas suitable for implementation, and lacked a commitment to engender a local change, well within their own domains? Blaming the government, instead of taking a personal initiative is where things invariably end. Public institutions have crumbled partly due to lack of funds; an important reason for their decline has been their listless, insipid leadership and workers, and the overall lack of internal and external monitoring, evaluation and accountability. These includes premier institutions such as PAEC, Kahuta Labs, PCSIR and the military.
With external pressure to reduce public expenditure, non- productive jobs are being reduced through golden handshakes. The fear is that many of the relatively useful workers will take the lucrative offer and depart, leaving their incompetent colleagues behind in their old jobs. The hastily formulated down-sizing scheme, like the successive education and S&T policies will fail to give new life to these institutions. Only a thorough analysis of the causes of past failures, their rectification through a swift accountability process, the formulation of realistic policy for the future bolstered by a new political will and the consensus of the major political parties, can lead to success. Massive down-sizing, long overdue, will no doubt be essential, but it cannot be an end in itself. The four examples below from different periods illustrate the failure to plan judiciously. There is a myth going around, perhaps propagated by the friends of our planners, that they make wonderful strategies, and it is only the implementation that lets us down. Hopefully these facts will put paid to these delusions.