POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS, SCIENTISTS AND TECHNOLOGISTS

W.W.D. Modder

President

The National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka

  

“(A scientist) owes it to his profession not to acquiesce in or appear to endorse folly………. ”.  Sir Peter Medawar, F.R.S.

 My remit today is to consider the existing relationships in our country between politicians and bureaucrats on the one hand, and scientists and technologists on the other.

Attitudinal Errors

In surveying our national landscape, one is struck by the prominence of attitudinal misconceptions and aberrations affecting all sectors of society.  It seems to me, as it must seem to many, that skewed attitudes are a major cause of a generalised malaise affecting the country.

For the purposes of this workshop, I shall limit my remarks to what I see as the attitudinal errors of those categories forming the title of this presentation, namely politicians and bureaucrats, and scientists and technologists, or science professionals.

Epistemology

How do we get a reasonably reliable picture of the contemporary scene, and of categories of people in it?

Generalisations concerning a group of people could well be unfair by many individuals in that group.  On the other hand, plenary discussions such as ours today have necessarily to be based on generalities, and not on special cases.  It is important that we make the distinction between generalisations and generalities. 

Personal experience or observation (which can sometimes be unique to the observer) can lead to a generalisation, can lead to the drawing of a general, perhaps unfair, inference if that personal experience is limited to one, or a few, extreme cases.  For that reason anecdotal evidence is best avoided.  However, this places us in a bind.  We need personal knowledge and anecdotes, in fact as many as possible, regarding the categories we are interested in, and the interrelations and interactions between these categories, to enable us to image statistical entities, the modal persons, the modal functionaries. 

Thus, we proceed on the premise that we can construct acceptable stereotypical descriptions of classes of people from our own experiences and from that of others, that we can arrive at generalities which have an overarching validity, without doing damage to the integrity of a minority within those classes.

To avoid giving credence to anecdotes which are in fact canards, we must bring our own intelligence and fair-mindedness to bear in examining collateral evidence, which may be contrasting anecdotes, or other knowledge.  Of course, in the end, the best evidence is what we can vouch for ourselves.

Without appearing unduly pretentious, I think I can draw on my own experience of men and matters during many years in scientific research, teaching and administration, and in more than one country, in assessing and getting the measure of politicians and bureaucrats, and science professionals, I have encountered. 

My most recent experience is as Director, Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka (1996 – 2002).  During this time I was allowed into the corridors of power, sat in innumerable committees and meetings, met and spoke in person and on the ‘phone, and exchanged letters and e-mails, with a range of people, government and corporate.  This activity was frenetic, but enlarging to me personally.

The Politico-Bureaucratic Nexus

The majority of our countrymen have an obsessive, almost morbid, interest in politicians and their doings, which is fed by the press, the television and the radio.  For their own part, many politicians carry around with them an aura of entitlement.  Everything is owed to them; nothing is owed from them.  This arises from the illusion that being voted into power magically invests them, literally overnight, with wonderful new insights and instant expertise in all fields of human endeavour.  They become all-knowing, all-wise. 

This Olympian demi-god status strips away when they are voted out of power, and are replaced by another pantheon of demi-gods.

As a result of this unbroken succession of pseudo-deities with their pretentions, every onward movement in the country is bogged down in a political slush, none more so than the movement of the scientific and technological enterprise. 

What of the bureaucrats?  Certainly not all government bureaucrats enter into a nexus with politicians, but many do.  This invests them with the same pretentions, the same hubris, the same aura of entitlement found in their masters.  

Bureaucrats pander upwards to their political patrons (witness the incessant interposition of the word “honourable” into all their spoken references to Ministers), and they tend to look dismissively downwards at everyone else. 

Politicians and bureaucrats make decisions on the hoof, with no attempts being made to first fill lacunae in their knowledge of technical subjects coming within their purview.  As I know well, peremptory demands, which are both unreasonable and illegitimate, are made to institutional heads.  (This is particularly so, before or just after elections.)  I am aware that naked, self-serving onslaughts have led to unbearable injustice to science professionals trying to do their job, many of whom have therefore joined the brain drain, resulting in hindrance and damage to national research.

It is evident that, with a few exceptions, there has been a precipitous falling away of present-day politicians from the standards set by statesmen and -women of which this country had an impressive number.  There has been a similar falling away of government administrators and bureaucrats from the pristine standards of the former Ceylon Civil Service.

Scientists and Technologists

Galileo, as long ago as 1632, laid the principle that science starts from “demonstrations and experiments” (what we would call empiricism), and not from points of authority like the will of rulers and governments. 

The scientific method is an ethical construct; if it were not, it would not be effective in finding scientific and technological solutions to the problems facing the world, because solutions have to be sought, and proffered, honestly and with a high sense of moral responsibility.  Therefore, the practice of science is ethical per se, and the practitioner of science, the scientist, if he is to succeed, even marginally, in his profession has to be a moral animal, adhering to ethical and moral norms.  Scientists must recognise that they cannot opt, or be forced, to tread the path of the oldest profession; there can be no such thing as a kept scientist.  And yet many in high places know they can, and therefore do, divert scientists to their own ends, to serve their personal and partisan interests in institutions and on boards, in direct opposition to the larger national good.

In an ideal world, a scientist would have a fierce individualism in squaring up to the politico-bureaucratic nexus, not a spinal incapacity.  He would not allow himself to be cajoled into acquiescence for the sake of personal or institutional expediency.  However, the common experience is that too many scientists are supplicatory when faced with political or administrative authority; they fall to their knees. 

Many of us, I am afraid, simply cannot muster up the emotional energy, or do not have the strength of purpose to get up, and get on with what we are meant and trained to do.  At best we might opt out (‘seeking greener pastures’ is the famous phrase), or at worst we might climb up, or be helped up, on board the bandwagon, and become lackeys to those who are taking the country down to perdition.

One understands of course that for the vast majority of scientists the practice of science is a livelihood, and that in the present ambience of slush and hubris they cannot afford to do anything else but genuflect to authority.  That is why the Academy has recently been concerned with examining whether we might try to institute mechanisms for protecting whistle-blowers and science professionals who are becoming victims and scapegoats.  However, the remedy is not that simple because some of the putative victims themselves seek out patrons in, what I might call, a curious and comic pas de deux of shame.

Our country can be saved by nothing short of a mass realisation by science professionals that they must join the thin red line of intellectuals, who take a stand and face up to the evils of greed and self-interest. 

What is an Intellectual?

The question can be asked: what is an intellectual?  Are we not all intellectuals, all highly qualified in our various fields?  Actually, although qualified we do not, all of us, it might be argued, fit the description of ‘intellectual’.  An intellectual is one who makes cerebral responses to situations, with the prefrontal cortex (the ‘civilising’ part of the brain) always in control.  Unless we become intellectuals in that true sense, become civilised, patriotic, we labour in vain.

It would be a salutary exercise in self-examination, if we looked first of all at ourselves, the science professionals of this country, and then at our relationships with our compatriots in the larger Sri Lankan society, and lastly with a prudent eye at benefactors out there in the globalised world.

Demons in ministries?

Despite what I have said apropos the politico-bureaucratic nexus, I do not for a moment suggest that the widespread lack of success in applying science to the problems of Sri Lanka has been only due to the machinations, stupidities or ignorance of politicians and bureaucrats.  I do not believe that there are only demons dwelling in ministries and corporate offices. 

In fairness it has to be said that, in more than a few instances, elements in the politico-bureaucratic nexus have made some efforts, over the years, to get the science and technology bandwagon rolling, and, if it has not rolled on to better effect, we must also look elsewhere for the causes of failure. 

I do not believe all is lost.  At the present time, we have one of our Fellows as Minister of Science and Technology, and he has come out fighting, so to speak.  He is already pressing that a much larger share of the Gross Domestic Product, from 0.13 per cent to something over 2 per cent, be set aside for science and technology, that science professionals be given much better living and working conditions, and that society and government appreciate their efforts.

You might think this is old hat, that we have heard this before.  However, unless there is repetition and reiteration, truisms do not sink in. 

Emoluments

One factor that could be counter-productive, in our litany of truisms, is the tendency of many of us (although this has not been too noticeable in the recent past) is the tendency to show that we are excessively preoccupied with our emoluments.  While science professionals are underpaid, even in the context of the Sri Lanka of today, bringing this difficulty to the fore all the time might be one reason why we find ourselves diminished in the eyes of society.  Preoccupation with emoluments could be a red herring, leading everyone away from the central issues militating against the enthronement of science and technology in the centre of national development.   However, of course, emoluments must be factored into any strategy for that enthronement.  Scientific professionals deserve adequate recompense for their work.

A Few Swallows

Happily, there is evidence that at least some politicians are capable of straight thinking.  A politician, in an interview published in the newspapers in April 2004 (I do not know if that date is significant), said: ”Everything should not be politicised and most things should be handled out of politics.”  He is not alone in saying things like this.  From at least some of the hugely variegated sets, and sub-sets, of the polity of our country come similar expressions, similar sparks of reason that could give at least some little hope for a flame of sanity in our governance. 

Another politician of a contrasting hue was quoted as saying, in June of this year: “We cannot measure the progress of research institutes on a profit and loss basis.  For that, we must develop qualitative indicators.”  I have been plugging the same line for all of the time I was Director of the Tea Research Institute.

These are a couple of swallows, but quite clearly there are more, and I believe that summer can be around the corner if we wish it.  Our winter of discontent could be at an end, but it depends on us.

Correcting the Incorrigible

How do we correct a situation that seems incorrigible?

First, as citizens in a republican democracy we have to insist on co-equal status with politicians and government bureaucrats, whether we are employed in their sphere of influence in government, universities or corporations, or not. 

Second, we have to demonstrate, both by expressions of our professional organisations and in our individual right, that we are vastly more effective than anyone else in national development within our specialised fields of knowledge and expertise, and that we have a special and unique hinterland in the global scientific community. 

Finally, we must cease to be in thrall to the politico-bureaucratic nexus, and ensure, for the sake of our country, that the scientific caravan moves steadily on despite the yapping at our heels.