Science in the secretariat

Until recently, very few high-ranking retired employees of the government wrote their memoirs. Now it has become far more common. This volume is a part of that welcome trend, which, I hope, will spread to middle-level officers also because everyone has a story to tell.

Few remember Ashok Parthasarathi today. But there was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when he had huge say in the science and technology policy of India. Not everyone thought he made a useful contribution, however.

Partly, the reason for this hostility was the manner in which he was inducted into government. Indira Gandhi had brought him into the prime minister's secretariat""as the PMO was known then""for reasons that were widely talked about then. Not to put too fine a point on it, he is the son of one of Indira Gandhi's closest advisors, the late G Parthasarathi.

The younger Parthasarathi was also widely seen as a brash young fellow who didn't know how to respect his seniors. The seniors in question were, of course, mostly members of the IAS but also a few scientists with whom Parthasarathi came into conflict. When he joined the prime minister's secretariat in 1970, P N Haksar, the highly influential secretary to the prime minister, asked Parthasarathi to send everything directly to her""except the important stuff, which needed to be routed through him!

There is chapter in this book (right at the end) on the role of the IAS in science and technology policy. It could have been far more informative, but even in its present form it serves the highly useful purpose of reminding us""once again""of how the IAS prevents specialists from joining policy-level posts.

Parthasarathi points out how Nehru failed to let economists float to the top, although he (Nehru) brought in lots of them into government. Indira Gandhi, however, was made of different stuff. She ""often on his advice, suggests Parthasarathi""let scientists occupy such posts. But within a couple of years of her passing, the IAS struck back and reclaimed lost territory.

The book's real value lies in the excellent descriptions of how some far-reaching decisions were taken in respect of atomic energy, electronics, space, ocean development, defence, etc.

But it is also interesting to see that it never entered the minds of the policymakers that the private sector could also play a role. Everything had to be done by the state, which sometimes delivered (space and atomic energy) but mostly didn't (the rest).

Of particular interest in this context is a controversy that developed in the mid-1980s. Mettur Chemicals, a private sector firm, had asked the Indian Institute of Science to develop the technology for making silicon. The government, however, was in favour of getting a foreign collaborator.

The subsequent wrangle became quite ugly, partly because it was a government team that decided whether or not the IISc effort was viable. Eventually the contract went to a US firm, Hemlock, but not before the US government had placed severe restrictions on the Indian government.

That, it might be recalled, was also the time when there was a thaw in Indo-US relations and there was much talk of co-operation, especially in science and technology. The book would have been richer had Parthasarathi discussed the foreign policy aspect of India's science and technology decisions, not least because he was widely perceived to be an anti-foreigner, pro-self-reliance man.

On balance, this failure is the book's main shortcoming. It tells only a part of the story and makes no attempt to discuss the larger issues and place some decisions at least in context. The next book should make amends.

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Technology at the Core
Science and Technology with Indira Gandhi

Ashok Parthasarathi
Pearson Longman
Price: Rs 695; Pages: 327