Shri Bhuvnesh Chaturvedi, Vice‑President of CSIR and Minister of State for Science and Technology, Shri Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, Dr.Joshi, Dr. Ramachandran and distinguished friends,   

This is a very delightful occasion for me to release this book by my dear friend, Shri Rangarajan Kumaramangalam.  I think he has done something which I have been wanting to do much ahead of me.  I have thought of compiling my speeches.  But I have not succeeded so far and I doubt very much that I will succeed because it is almost time‑barred now!  It is very interesting that we have three Vice‑Presidents of CSIR, one current and two Ex‑Vice‑Presidents of CSIR sitting here today. 

I am also Vice‑President now in another sense!  So there is a formidable combination of four cardinal vices and I think it is a very potent combination.  I myself had one of my most, shall I say, critical experiences, critical in the sense of criticality in nuclear science, when I spent nearly three years, I think, in Science and Technology.  For me it was one of the most challenging assignments in my life because having been a student of literature and then of politics and economics, science and technology was far far away from my education and experience. 

Therefore, it was a challenge and it was a new sort of education for me and I imbibed this education from the foremost scientists of India. Almost every department of that vast empire which is known as Ministry of Science and Technology was headed by one of our most distinguished scientists. It was indeed a dialectical process for me asking the questions and getting the answers from these great scientists.  Of course heading it all was CSIR itself.  As Mr.  Kumaramangalam said CSIR is almost a miracle.  It is a miracle in another sense also. 

I just do not know how the CSIR which spends less than that 1% of GNP for itself could produce such remarkable results in research and development in this country.  I think that is really a great miracle.  On this occasion I must emphasise the fact that whatever be the greatness, ingenuity and innovativeness in of our scientists unless we spend a more sizeable portion of our GNP on research and development we are not only unlikely we not going to get the results from science and technology which we expect and which we ought to get.  This is something we have been seeing all the time. 

But for some reason or another, with the Minister sitting here, he is not only Minister of Science and Technology but in the Prime Minister's Office, I must emphasise it that unless this percentage of expenditure on R & D increases substantially, I think all that you have been talking about and bringing about of a new industrial revolution and a new revolution in agriculture is unlikely to take place.  I think this must been understood.

There is no short cut in getting results from science and technology in a basic sense and also in an applied sense unless this is done.  Dr.  Joshi and his large number of laboratories and magnificent group of researchers and scientists have done wonderful work with what they have.  But that by itself is not enough.  When I was there we had been talking about interaction between industry and CSIR, interaction between academics, universities and industries. All these have gathered more momentum then say even more than five or four years ago. 

But I think it is only scratching the surface of our needs and our problems.  Both in basic sciences and in applied sciences we have to go very far in order to cope up with this modern globalisation, the world markets and the intense competition we are facing in these markets.  In basic sciences, we have produced brilliant scientists.  But after Sh.  C.V.  Raman, after Shri Khurana, after Shri Chandrasekhar, somehow we have not been able to produce scientists of that calibre but scientists of that potential are there with us today.  May be greater potential, but somehow they are not getting opportunities or sometimes they are not getting recognition. 

So in basic and theoretical sciences, we have to do much more than we had been doing in last 40 years.  May be the teaching and study of sciences in the universities also I think have declined to some extent.  But if you take another side not so creative but the applied science the application of science to our daily economic and social problems, for example, the development of agriculture, rural economy, the development of small scale industries, I think, in all these fields technology has to be applied much more systematically and creatively than we are able to do today.  We all know that our small scale sector contributes to about 30 to 35% of our exports. 

So we can imagine that if a little bit of applied technology, appropriate technology to this vast variety of small scale industries we have in this country, I think, very easily, within a few years we can increase our exports from this sector at least 5 to 10%.  But that is a vast, not only scientific but organisational work where science and technology have to be supported by politics and by economics and also by grass‑roots organisations.  I think, we have just not managed.  We are still using the same implements, same methods and the same traditional skills in the major part of our cottage and small scale sector.  I know that this is something that CSIR cannot do it by itself but it has potential and the capability to do so provided we have the realisation of the importance of this and we are prepared to go about it. 

Going through Shri Kumaramangalam's speeches; he has highlighted some of these issues very briefly but very vividly.  The range of subjects he has dealt with in this small volume is really amazing.  His young enthusiastic mind has been at work. I knew that he was a distinguished lawyer and a distinguished politician.  But I never knew untill I had confrontation with him in the Ministry that he is an electronic expert and he has done remarkable work in the application field also in electronics.  I believe that the publication of the speeches would help in our academics and our general public understanding some of the important scientific issues we have to deal with in our policies and in our programmes.   

I want to congratulate Shri Kumaramangalam.  He was very modest to say that it is a collective work and he has been even generous enough to give credit to his private secretary.  I know private secretaries are very important people in the Government.  But I know by reading and the kind of language he has used that his mind has worked on it in a very original way in most of these speeches.  I want to congratulate him for this contribution he has made and also congratulate CSIR for bringing out his book so attractively. May I end by saying how delighted I am to have had the oportunity of releasing this very useful and very enlightening book.

Thank you