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SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITIES
newly developing country, it could supply, an adequate number of technical men, material resources, etc to serve as 'seeding nuclei' for the operation of the exponential growth process in the recipient country, without sensibly affecting its own economy or rate of progress Of course, and is no substitute for local initiative and effort In a sense and is deserved only if one could do also without it, but the pace would be slower This is not the place to pursue the subject further, but it is apparent that the main obstacles to rapid progress are now largely social and psychological there is no lack of resources
A country which has newly 'taken-off' in science can with determination achieve a growth-rate higher than that achieved by the 'early starters' Some countries have done it It scems that the early starters and the late starters would, after time, join together and have a growth rate corresponding to the stage of saturation Science and Agriculture
In countries where agriculture has been modernised the output has increased rapidly Where agriculture has not been linked to science, the output has remained almost stationary Thus, as Lord Rutherford pointed out in bis Address to the Silver Jubilee Session of the Indian Science Congress in 1938, the annual production of wheat in India had risen since 1914 from 8 3 million tons to no more than 95 million tons, while the exposts in the same period had fallen from over a million tons to 10,000 tons The present yield of wheat is adout 11 million tons Rutherford said "In view of these facts, it would seem clear that in any national scheme of research, research on foodstuffs has a primary claim on India's attention Quite apart from improvements in the systems of agriculture used in India, there is a vast field of scientific knowledge to the improvement of crops, for example, by seeking for improved strains suitable for local conditions, by research on fertilizers an din many other directions". And all this is no less true today. R and D Expenditure and Scientific Manpower
Money spent on research and development is not an entirely satisfactory under of the development of science in a country Much would depend upon the cfficiency with which the resources are utilised All the same, within limits, this is an Index of considerable significance The USA Government currently spends somewhat more than 28 der cent of the Gross National Product (GNP) on research and development and testing of new defence equipment The amount 18 more than $ 15 billion, that is Rs 7,500 crores per year (Industry contributes an additional $ 5 billion or 50 ) More than three-fourths of the amount goeg to work related to defence The current level of research and development expenditure in our country Is some 02 per cent of the GNP In this context it is important to recognise that
