Science Policies and Changing Culture of R&D in India

The Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR), 1958 was a culmination of the debates on the need for achieving such rapid socio-economic development. The SPR of 1958 of the Government of India illuminated clearly and concisely the relationship of science to national goals. To achieve the national goals, India had to leap-frog from a state of economic backwardness and social disabilities – attempting to achieve in a few decades a change, which has historically taken centuries in other lands, which involved innovation at all levels. There was a need for a constant interplay between the basic sciences, technology and industrial practice, if economic progress was to result from the activity undertaken.

The SPR, 1958 emphasized that the key to national prosperity lay in the effective combination of three factors, viz., technology, raw materials and capital, of which the first is perhaps the most important, since the creation and adoption of new scientific techniques can, in fact, make up for a deficiency in natural resources, and reduce the demands on capital. But, technology can only grow out of the study of science and its applications. The main objectives enshrined in the SPR, 1958 were (a) to foster, promote, and sustain, by all appropriate means, the cultivation of science, and scientific research in all its aspects – pure, applied, and educational; (b) to ensure an adequate supply, within the country, of research scientists of the highest quality, and to recognize their work as an important component of the strength of the nation; (c) to encourage, and initiate, with all possible speed, programmes for the training of scientific and technical personnel, on a scale adequate to fulfil the country's needs in science and education, agriculture and industry, and defense; (d) to ensure that the creative talent of men and women is encouraged and finds full scope in scientific activity; (e) to encourage individual initiative for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, and for the discovery of new knowledge, in an atmosphere of academic freedom; (f) to secure for the people of the country all the benefits that can accrue from the acquisition and application of scientific knowledge.