2012-11-10 06:11:42
Syed Galib
Assistant Professor, www.pstu.ac.bd/
We know that our Bangladesh is a pretty small country with a large population of 160 million. So, we are lacking in development in every sector which includes science and technology too, not to mention Research and Development in these areas. But if we just look at our neighbour India who has 1.2 Billion people, we can see that India is rising, particularly in the field of scientific research and technology development.
India has well-established world-class research institutions and dynamic government R&D agencies. It has built and currently operates a significant number of world-class scientific facilities,
A synchrotron radiation facility.
The world’s largest constellation of remote sensing satellites used for Earth observations.
It has assembled and operates an impressive array of supercomputers, and it is emerging as a major global player in computer software design.
It boasts a prominent industry noted for the production of generic drugs and low-cost vaccines.
It participates in such mega-science projects as the International Rice Genome Project, Large Hadron Collider and ITER.
700 multinational corporations have established R&D field offices in India seeing India’s growing capabilities in science and technology that attracted the attention of these international corporations. Intel’s latest computer chip is being developed at its R&D centre in India. So too is the prototype for General Electric’s latest aeroplane engine.
When we look at where India has been and where it is going, we can observe a fast growing economic and scientific powerhouse which is expanding its capabilities to build a prosperous and confident society. Over the past 60 years, India achieved self-sufficiency at food production and enacted policies regarding the citizen’s basic needs such as safe drinking water and sanitation, health-care and housing etc. Based on these successes, it subsequently developed high-level capabilities in information technology, software development, pharmaceuticals and a number of manufacturing sectors. But we cannot tell this about our beloved Bangladesh that over the last 40 years after independence. We may take some lessons from India in the following areas to get ourselves on the roll for the development in science and technology.
Indian government invested a large amount of money in the national space programme which was intended to help India develop state-of-the-art capabilities in both satellite communications and the monitoring of natural resources. Also, they invested in nuclear R&D. These may sound a very expensive idea for Bangladesh, but we need a little bit of monitoring over our own natural resources which may not require the space programme like India but the investment for high-tech communication is needed. And as we have a power problem in our country, we really can look in the area of nuclear science along with sustainable energy. The good sign is that the present government is taking steps in this regard and a bill has been passed in the parliament very recently.
The defence was another major sector for investment in R& D. Actually initially India invested in three areas of researches, defence, space and nuclear R& D, about three-quarters of the government’s total investment in R&D.
Over time India has become giant t in other fields such as information technology and Pharmaceuticals and Automobile engineering.
In the IT sector, they started with call centres and helpline services. But now they are major software designer and e-health service delivery provider. They have the world’s foremost IT firms like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro.
Bangladesh has started the business of call centres and helpline services. We have to improve our services so that we can compete in this sector with India, Philippines. The software companies of Bangladesh are doing some good work by bringing outsourced works. Though, we need more advancement in these sectors. The government should encourage people to invest in IT firms by providing more security to them.
India is regarded as “the pharmacy of the developing the world”, has a world-class pharmaceutical industry. It is the fourth largest producer of pharmaceuticals, accounting for 5% of the world’s exports in this sector of the global economy. In 1990, the Hepatitis-B vaccine became cheaper (from $15 to $1) because of an Indian pharmaceutical company Shantha Biotechnics. The Serum Institute of India is one of the major suppliers of vaccine distributed by UNICEF. This was possible because of their cheap labour which is also the case for Bangladesh. Like India, Bangladesh also has many pharmaceutical industries which are quite good at producing the drug. Now time to focus on developing drug and vaccines by our own research. The government can give some incentive to those pharmaceutical companies in terms of tax exemption or other facilities who will invest in research.
Another strongest industry of India is an automobile. And again, this is possible because of the cheap labour and low cost of other things. Half of the automobile components manufactured in India are exported to Europe and the United States. The Nano, $2500 priced automobile manufactured by Tata Motors another milestone of India’s progress in Automobile Industries.
In Bangladesh, there are many vocational institutes who are producing good automobile mechanics. So, Bangladesh can step further by introducing automobile industries in the country so that people do not need to go for the cars imported from Japan.
India also investing hugely in Science education and training of her researchers. In 2007, India launched an inspiring programme for the students who enrol in science. It awards 5000 Rupees to 1 million students between the ages of 10 to 15 as an enticement to study sciences; 10,000 scholarships worth 100,000 Rupees a year, over a five year period, to both university undergraduate and masters’ degree students, who major in Science; and 1,000 full fellowships for PhD and postdoctoral students, ages 22 to 27, in science, engineering and medicine. Not only are those, after their successful completion of the fellowship, recipients are also guaranteed five years of employments in their field of study. Bangladesh can take this lesson from India and try to introduce some scholarship for the science students only. Also, there can be an arrangement of scholarship for students who can contribute to some kind of development in scientific areas.
Bangladesh can try to learn some lessons from India and use the concepts to build the country’s science and technology foundation.
Like India, Bangladesh should also first focus on existing knowledge to re-engineer products and services that were first developed elsewhere. Not only India, but other countries have also developed in this way in science and technology such as the USA, which has imitated Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries when it “borrowed” European technology. South Korea and China are two other examples who are moving from the phase of imitation to innovation.
Thus from different angles, Bangladesh can learn much from her neighbour India for development in the sector of Science and Technology.
