The Revenge of Athena Science, Exploitation and the Third World The Revenge of Athena

Appropriate Technology and Industrialization

Appropriate technology and industrialization is that which advances develop­ment, where development is looked upon as a process which leads to a life with dignity through satisfaction of basic needs, starting with the needs of the neediest; self reliance; and non destructive harmony with the environment.

There are three aspects of appropriate technology: its selection; generation and dissemination. Selection is from the available pool of technologies covering the whole spectrum from the technologies of the industrialized countries (which should be scrutinized with utmost care regarding their tendencies to amplify inequalities, undermine self reliance, destroy the environment and promote

violence) to traditional technologies (either in their pristine form or after trans­formation). In all these three aspects of selection, generation and dissemination Third World networking has a crucial role to play. Co operative selection of appropriate technologies is essential, particularly when the Third World is confronted with the technologies of the industrialized countries.

The scope of appropriate technology should cover small scale, decentralized and large scale, centralized technologies. Attention should be focused both on hardware and software, and on all sectors (not only industry, but also agricul­ture, health, transport etc). However, there should be a specific emphasis on appropriate technologies that satisfy (in a self reliant, ecologically sound way) the basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, health, education, particularly of the neediest sections.

Proposals

1. Developing countries should evolve their own appropriate technologies and their own techniques in various areas   agriculture, industry, health, care, housing, water management, transport, energy and so on. It is recognized that the appropriateness of a particular technology or product would also partly depend on the conditions of a particular country. Such appropriate techno­logies should as far as possible make use of local resources. They should be relatively simple to operate with skills which can be passed on, based on sound ecological principles and of a small scale suitable for family or community use.

2. Appropriate technology should be a policy not only for the Third World but also and especially for the industrialized countries. These rich countries should not continue to operate capital intensive technologies, producing relatively luxurious or superfluous products, which use up the world's resources. If the Third World adopts resource efficient appropriate technologies but the rich countries continue to use resource wasting industrial technology, then the pre­sent unequal distribution of resources and power will be perpetuated. Thus concerned individuals and groups in the industrialized countries should make efforts to convince their people and governments of the necessity to change their technologies and techniques of production and reorientate their approach to science accordingly.

Science Education

Science education in the Third World is a colonial legacy, rooted in the western system of education and has no relevance to our societies. It was designed to create a cadre of workers whose job was to carry out programmes planned and designed in the West. The result of this unfortunate legacy, which has not been completely abandoned in a majority of the Third World countries, is that the efforts of Third World scientists and technologists are merely extensions of the programmes of their western mentors.

This situation has been worsened by the exodus of a large number of scientists and technologists from the Third World. Those going to the so called advanced western societies have returned home with reinforced western ideas, exacer­bating the problem of indigenous science rather than alleviating them. A majority of these students and researchers, of course, never return at all and this contributes heavily to the depletion of the poorer countries' resources in the form of the brain drain. Even those who do manage to come back to their home countries usually continue their scientific research along lines established in their doctoral theses carried out under the tutorship of a foreign scientist. in other words, foreign trained scientists are the greatest germ carriers of the western virus against which our societies are seeking immunity.

In order to remedy this situation, it is essential that the education of scientists and technologists in the Third World takes place in such a way as to ensure that they not only retain their cultural and social moorings, but that their scientific interest is maintained in solving problems pertinent to their indigenous environ­ment. Clearly such a system needs to be based on a system of education which appreciates the value of indigenous scientific and technological culture.

The realization of this goal necessitates re shaping the science syllabus at school and university level as well as dictating a conceptual change in the framework of science teaching itself. The goal of scientific education is to produce an imaginative and dedicated personality, of creating an individual who is both resourceful and responsible. The teaching of science therefore should never be divorced from the value system of the indigenous civilization. The students should also develop a critical faculty so that they may judge the cultural and ieological bias of western science and technology.

Proposals

1. Science students should learn social realities   economics, politics, culture   particularly about the domination of the Third World in the world system.

2. Science students should be given a thorough exposure to the relations between science and its effects on society, including its potentially harmful effect. Ethics of science, especially the social responsibility of scientists, should be central to the education of the scientist.

3. Science students should be made aware of indigenous science and its roots   to study the elements of indigenous medicine, shelter, food, industry, transport.

4. Science should not be for the elites but directed towards farmers, fishermen, workers, etc. to help them improve the livelihood of the people. Science education should be spread to the masses.

5. The ecological and environmental aspects must be central in science education, especially the interrelatedness of various natural elements. Students and researchers should focus attention on the destructive nature of man's

activities on the environment and the ways of avoiding these and they should seek to rehabilitate nature whenever possible.

6. Science research priorities should be given to the identification of positive indigenous technologies, scientific values and systems, knowledge and pro­cesses on various spheres like agriculture, industry, medicine, shelter, etc. These systems should be defended and improved.

Science Policy and Management

Only a handful of developing countries have explicit science policies geared towards the creation of a scientific and technological infrastructure in the country. Often this infrastructure has been developed at the expense of national independence with the new science and technology institutions in the Third World becoming an extension of scientific establishment of the industrialized countries. Moreover, countries with explicit science policies have tended to focus on prestige areas of science and high technology projects. Much of the established infrastructure has thus tended to be irrelevant to the needs and requirements of the country.

The majority of the Third World countries do not have a declared science policy, However, an implicit science policy is in operation everywhere. The overall emphasis is on the transfer of technology, establishment of fashionable research centres through technical and financial aid, and the use of foreign consultants in solving local problems. Within this framework of explicit and implicit science policies, a management structure that relies on hierarchy and one directional, top to bottom, communication, and a suffocating bureaucracy has been adopted. This management structure has isolated the decision makers from the rank and file scientists and technologists as well as from the local working conditions and work environment.

Proposals

1. Governments and scientists in the Third World should review their present bias towards modern, capital intensive technology, mainly imported or imi­tated from the West. A profound understanding of the inappropriateness and destructive nature of these technologies should be fostered in Third World national science policies.

2. Science policies in the Third World should focus on establishing an indig­enous base for the generation, utilization and diffusion of science and technol­ogy. They should not promote the transfer of technology or a reliance on scientific research done in the industrialized countries, or on technical assis­tance or on foreign consultants. They should aim to promote and upgrade traditional and modern indigenous sources of knowledge and know how. Our cultural environment, from the tribal to the civilizational level, is suffused with potential technologies, scientific insights and methodologies that could and

should be used to provide a necessary organic linkage with our own roots. New management structures that take into account that science is a political and social process should be encouraged, initiated and institutionalized.

3. Today's science and technology are closely interlinked and the new technol­ogy is almost directly science based. In order that Third World countries break out of their dependent condition they should seek out and establish cross­ linkages with each other. Such cross linked groups would in partnership gener­ate a science and technology which is self reliant, basic needs oriented and ecologically sound.

4. The new search for science and technology should be pursued by encourag­ing viable groups which are both socially conscious as well as aware of their own discipline. Mechanisms should also be evolved to generate critical masses around such groups so that a creative and society oriented science and techno­logy is produced. Mechanisms should also be evolved to insulate such socially aware, creative groups from the pressures of various vested groups, while they are encouraged to develop linkages with the mass of their people.