Then there is the important area of energy from non-conventional sources, like wind energy, where our proven potential is large — 45,000 to 50,000 MW —but where our national R&D effort is pitifully inadequate. The potential of solar energy has hardly been tapped. Even in our “core of core economic activity” — agriculture — the financial outlay on ICAR and the state agricultural universities is only 10 per cent of our total S&T budget.

Much has been said, particularly during the recent visit of US President Bush, about possible India-US collaboration in the key area of clean coal technology, leading finally to what Bush called zero greenhouse gas emitting coal-fired thermal power stations. Fed up with losing a whole decade in trying to get the ministry of power and the department of science and technology to financially support them, our two leading public sector companies, BHEL and NTPC, have fortunately had the foresight to raise the money themselves for designing, engineering, constructing and operating a 100 MW clean coal thermal power plant based on the integrated gassification combined cycle (IGCC) technology at Dadri near Delhi. What is the financial outlay involved in such a plant? A piffling Rs 600 crore over a five-year period. Should such projects not be the first priority when it comes to our scarce R&D resources?

Taking a somewhat broader view, it is not widely known that taken together the R&D budgets of the Defence R&D Organisation, ISRO and the Department of Atomic Energy constitute as much as 40 per cent of total R&D investment. Again this percentage has remained practically constant for almost a decade. Many of the programmes in these three agencies have long merited a national re-appraisal. For instance, what national priority should be accorded to the Rs 350 crore Chandrayan project involving a PSLV rocket of ISRO carrying an instrumented payload to study the reverse side of the moon? It was never considered by the Planning Commission, or various scientific advisory committees, from an inter se priority perspective, which is what policy making and planning is all about.

... contd.