I.
"To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe,
struggling to break the bonds ofmass misery, we pledge our best
efforts to help them help themselves for whatever period is
required, ...not because we seek their votes, but because it is
right. ..
"To
that World Assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations,
...
we renew our pledge of support. ..to strengthen its shield of the
new and the weak and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
..
"Now
the trumpet summons us again, ...(to) ...a struggle against the
common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty
,
disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand
and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure
a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic
effort?"
These
are quotes from President John Kennedy's inauguration address on 20
January 1961. A quarter of a century later, these sound like a voice
from another planet.
In his
global concern with mass misery and poverty (both in the developed
and the developing countries) as well as in assigning a role to a
cooperative approach through the United Nations for the resolution
of these problems, John Kennedy was giving an expression to
mankind's moral ideals.
2. The
diminution in the concern for the Third World on the part of the
leaders of major industrialised powers contrasts sharply with the
genuine anxiety over and active sympathy for hunger and poverty
among the peoples of their countries. This was demonstrated
by the generous response in Europe and North America to Geldof's
appeal for funds to alleviate famine in Africa. And it was touching
to note that during this Christmas, school children in Great Britain
raised over one million for African children. There is no doubt that
the peoples in the Western world are willing to respond to the Third
World causes. The global vision and concern evinced by President
Kennedy may not be on the agenda of the present generation of our
leaders, but the compassion among their peoples is undiminished.
3. Among the casualties
of the dimming of the global vision have been Third World science and
education. Although bilateral programmes exist for help, there is yet no
visible dent in the basic areas of education, of technology training, of
science transfer or of scientific research.
The tasks which could be
undertaken are well known, e.g. the building up of literacy, the
building up of infrastructure for science teaching as well as for
scientific research, the need for building up of libraries as well as of
laboratories and, above all, of building up indigenous scientific
communities. So far as the aid agencies of developed countries are
concerned, such tasks are new. It is now abundantly clear that there is
no real substitute for international action and international
modalities.
4. However, given the
world as it is today, we need to combine the best of bilateral help with
the multinational approaches. One proposal which may be considered in
this context is that of specialisation. Could, for example, a consortium
of universities in the US and UK be helped by their Governments and
encouraged to take care of University science in all those developing
countries which desire this? Could one envisage the USSR taking care of
primary , secondary and vocational education? Could the Netherlands and
Belgium look after the building up of libraries and laboratories? Could
Germany and Japan look after technical education at all levels? Could
Scandinavia look after the scientific aspects of ecology? Could
Switzerland and Austria (with their well-known pharmaceutical expertise)
look after medical education? Could Italy with its experience of setting
up international centres in physics and biotechnology, look after the
creation of similar institutions in all disciplines of science in
concert with developing countries? Could the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand look after education for agriculture and education for
prospecting? Could France and Spain translate these actions for the
French and Spanish speaking developing countries if desired by them?
This is merely an illustration of what a possible division of the
relevant tasks could be. Eventually, of course, these suggestions would
have to be tailored and modified when detailed projects are elaborated.
What I have in mind is
something patterned along the lines of the success which India achieved
in the decade of the sixties when it created four Indian institutes of
technology. The one in Kanpur was created by a US consortium of
universities which helped to raise and furnish it, besides supplying the
higher cadres of teaching staff for a number of years. The one in Delhi
was helped by a consortium of British universities; the one in Bombay by
the USSR and the one in Madras by the Federal Republic of Germany. Each
nation helped to build up the institute under Indian auspices,
contributed staff and left behind a tradition in teaching and research
which has continued even after the original contracts have expired.
There was a healthy rivalry between the donor nations vying with each
other; this guaranteed the excellence and standards of quality. What I
envisage in the proposal above is something like this except that it is
to be carried out on a much wider canvas. One would hope that by the
year 2000, if the plans are drawn up now, many of the objectives I have
mentioned will have been achieved.
5. I have spoken of a
subject-wise specialisation. Take education as an example; a plan of
this type will reduce costs in the standardised building of schools, in
equipping them, in teacher training and in providing texbooks for
schools. Carrying out the projects for the entire developing world will
mean that this will be done less expensively than tailoring a system to
a single nation.
But in all these
proposals it is essential that the relevant educational or scientific
communities of the developed countries should be involved through a
system of consortia, through a direct twinning of scientific and
research institutes or through similar modalities.
In this context, forgive
me for thinking along the following terms: In addition to funds made
available through the official aid agencies, the educational and
scientific institutions in developed countries may consider contributing
in kind in their own ways, according to the norms of the well-known
United Nations formula, whereby most developed countries have pledged to
donate. 7 to 1% of their GNP resources for world development. In the
end, it is a moral issue whether the better off segments of the
educational and scientific communities should be willing to look after
their own deserving but deprived colleagues, helping them with a similar
formula from their own resources -not only materially, but also joining
them in their battle to secure recognition within their own countries,
as valid professionals who are important to development.
6. Where, in all this,
do the multinational aspects come in? They come in the following way:
UNESCO, the Third World Academy of Sciences, ICSU and similar bodies
-could be asked to take care that this scheme works with requisite
quality and non-politically. This last is crucial if we are to
achieve an acceptance by the developing countries of the help received.
7. I sometimes wonder if
the diminution of multinational help has come about principally because
of escalating defence expenditures? In this context, the following quote
from another great visionary , President Dwight Eisenhower, may be
relevant. Addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors on 16
April 1953, President Eisenhower spoke against the "military industrial
complex". He said: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from
those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed.
"This world in arms is
not spending money alone.
"It is spending the
sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children.
"The cost of one modem
heavy bomber is this: a modem brick school in more than 30 cities.
"It is two electric
power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
"It is two fine, fully
equipped hospitals.
"It is some 50 miles of
concrete highway.
"We pay for a single
fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. "We pay for a single
destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8000 people.
..
"This is not a way of
life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it
is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
8. "Cross of Iron!"
Unfortunately, his words went unheeded both in the West and in the East,
as well as by the (warring) nations of the Third World. Personally, I am
a firm believer in man's moral state and I shall conclude with the words
of a mystic who expressed the international ideal of the Family of Man
in the 17th century. "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed
away by the sea. Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell; it tolls for thee". - John Donne
