December 1,.
2006
Quantum Note
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
Out of all institutions of higher learning in Pakistan, the University of the Punjab was one of the best until 1970. Its historic campus on the Mall built with red bricks by the British still stands as reminder of colonial education. Tucked in the northern most corner of this sprawling campus was the Institute of Chemistry—a two story building with an old overgrown rubber tree in its front yard. Within that building is a room which used to be the laboratory of a famous British chemist.
By the time that room became my laboratory, there was nothing left of the British chemist’s instruments; only a plaque on the door stood as a reminder to his existence. I used the room for experiments which eventually produced a thesis, submitted to the University in 1976 in fulfillment of the partial requirement of my Master’s degree. I was one of several hundred Pakistani students following a career which in other parts of the world meant scientific research. In Pakistan it had a totally different meaning.
Our teachers belonged to the first generation of Pakistanis who had earned their Ph.D’s from British and American universities. They were among the top students of their generations. They were given scholarships to pursue what was called “higher education” under various programs which the Pakistani government ran in cooperation with the Western governments. Foreign exchange being in limited, these students lived hand to mouth in America or England, worked diligently and came back to their country with a Ph.D. degree and a lot of ideas and zeal for research.
Within a year of their return, however, their ideas, zeal, and enthusiasm vanished; the joke was that now were said to have been reintegrated. The reality was that they had fallen into a midst of a culture of docile existence, gossips, intrigues, and politics. What they had done in England and America then faded rapidly and became a memory they would cherish for the rest of their lives. This was the end of their potential as scientists. Now their interests were focused on promotions, raises in salaries and they worried not about science, but about building or buying a house, raising children, and all the other problems of respectable members of a middleclass struggling to survive the rapidly changing social and economic environment of the country.
This is, however, only one aspect of the issue. Stirred by the new social and political consciousness that was in the air in those defining years of 1970s, our batch of chemistry students wanted to do real research. We, therefore, formed a small group to study the matter further. We found out that scientific research in the West is deeply integrated with pharmaceutical and defense industries on the one hand, and market economy on the other. Other than a small percentage of scientists interested in basic research, the majority of scientific community is co-opted by the market quite early in their career. Industry supports research and receives its benefits in terms of solutions of existing real-life problems and new products.
Another aspect of the scientific research in the West is its rapid utilization in technologies. The time-gap between scientific discoveries and their utilization has been rapidly reducing over the last century and now the situation has changed so much that almost 80% of scientific research is driven by technological demands. But even in the 1970s, research in many branches of science was already linked to industry: a chemist invents a new chemical, or a new method of synthesizing an existing chemical, he publishes his research, applies for and receives a patent, then either he approaches industry or industry approaches him, and the process becomes commercial, providing financial benefits to the inventor.
With shocking disillusionment, our generation discovered that none of these mechanisms existed in Pakistan. That our professors were doing no more than duplicating their Ph.D thesis ad nauseam. That the infra and supra-structures necessary for scientific research simply did not exist in Pakistan. Yet, in order to award us degrees, we were given “a research problem”. We learned the use of some scientific instruments which were available in the Institute of Chemistry and after a year or so, wrote our thesis and received our degrees, only to discover that thereafter there was no place to go.
The industry did not need us; it ran on turn-key basis. It had no problems to be solved and whatever problems arose could be solved by technicians who were trained by those who sold these machines. The so-called research institutions of the country, like the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), had no new openings, and even if one were to find a job there, there was no scientific research in these institutions; merely a job. There were exceptions to this: the Atomic Energy Commission and the Kahuta Laboratories were pursuing specific problems, had better research facilities, and were better equipped. But these two islands of research could only absorb a small percentage of students emerging from universities and even the research being conducted there was for a specific purpose.
This description of some of the dilemmas of scientific research in Pakistan can be extended to the entire Muslim world, indeed to all countries which are consumers of Western science and technology. These countries do not have infra- and supra-structures required to produce scientific research. Yet, there is no official recognition of these subterranean problems which have prevented the emergence of scientific research in the Muslim world. There is only the vacuous discourse of the ministers of science, chairmen of higher education, and heads of OIC institutions for science and technology, always saying the same thing and always demanding billions of dollars with which they can produce the miraculous birth of science and scientists in the Muslim world. This situation has lingered on for more than it can be tolerated and if serious discussion and solutions are to be found, the very first step is to stop this nauseating unscientific rhetoric; mere availability of money cannot produce science and scientists, as has been amply demonstrated by the countries who have poured millions of dollars of oil revenues into their version of the enterprise of science.
(To be continued)
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