Science, technology and the Third World
Riazuddin
Abdus Salam believed that the gap between rich and poor nations is one of science and technology. His former student Riazuddin describes efforts to bridge that gap.
Abdus Salam, who died on 21 November 2001, would have been
77 on 29 January 2003. In remembering him on such occasions, one misses his
sharp intellect and his passion for promoting science and technology in Third
World countries. Few have discovered a universal law of nature, and still fewer
have founded an Institute for the underprivileged. Salam accomplished both. In
addition to seeking "unity in seemingly disparate forces of nature",
he sought unity in mankind, and his crowning achievement was the creation in
1964 of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics at Trieste - now named
after him - which has touched the lives of physicists and other scientists the
world over.
Yet Salam failed in one of his lifelong goals, perhaps the one
closest to his heart. Near the end of his life, he lamented: "Countries
like Turkey, Egypt and my own country, Pakistan, have no science communities
geared to development because we do not want such communities. We suffer from a
lack of ambition towards acquiring science, a feeling of inferiority towards
it, bordering sometimes even on hostility."
Passive tolerance of poverty in the Third World was of deep
concern to Salam. The greatest failure of science and technology is their
failure to act as a social equalizer, and the gap between rich and poor has
increased, despite the fact that the wealth created by science and technology
is sufficient to alleviate poverty. "Predictions that the 'poor might not
always be with us' have not come true. In 1990, there were optimistic forecasts
that the percentage of absolute poor in the world (those with income below US$1
a day) would drop to 18% by 2000. By 1998, the figure was at 24% and the
trend-line had turned upward" (Mooney 1999).
This echoes what Salam said in 1988: "This globe of ours is
inhabited by two distinct types of humans. According to the UNDP count of 1983,
one-quarter of mankind - some 1.1 billion people - are developed. They inhabit
two-fifths of the land area of the Earth and control 80% of the world's natural
resources, while 3.6 billion developing humans - 'les miserables', the 'mustazeffin' - live on the remaining three-fifths of the globe. What
distinguishes one type of human from the other is the ambition, the power, the
elan which basically stems from their differing mastery and utilization of
present-day science and technology. It is a political decision on the part of
those (principally from the South) who decide on the destiny of developing
humanity if they will take steps to let the less miserable create, master and
utilize modern science and technology for their betterment."
Again he wrote: "Today the Third World is only slowly waking
up to the realization that in the final analysis, creation, mastery and
utilization of modern science and technology is basically what distinguishes
the South from the North. On science and technology depend the standards of
living of a nation. The widening gap in economics and influence between the
nations of the South and the North is essentially the science and technology
gap. Nothing else - neither differing cultural values, nor differing
perceptions or religious thoughts, nor differing systems of economics or of governance
- can explain why the North (to the exclusion of the South) can master this
globe of ours and beyond."
Indeed, scientific knowledge and innovation are becoming leading
factors of production and economic development around the world. There can be
no high technology without first-rate science. Science develops new tools in
laboratories for its progress, and trains students and technicians to build
them. These tools find users outside, and some young people become
entrepreneurs and launch their own companies, which then grow into large
enterprises. However, such companies grow around big centres of scientific
research, for example Silicon Valley around Stanford. But the Third World
countries do not have big centres of research. So do they have a chance, or
have they lost out for ever? I believe the answer lies in linkages with big
science centres in developed countries. A fine example is CERN, where high
technology and fundamental science reinforce each other.
Let me end by quoting from a paper by Salam, presented on 11 May
1983 in Bahrain: "We forget that an accelerator like the one at CERN
develops sophisticated modern technology at its furthest limit. I am not
advocating that we should build a CERN for Islamic countries. However, I cannot
but feel envious that a relatively poor country like Greece has joined CERN,
paying a subscription according to the standard GNP formula. I cannot rejoice
that Turkey, or the Gulf countries, or Iran, or Pakistan seems to show no
ambition to join this fount of science and get their men catapulted into the
forefront of the latest technological expertise. Working with CERN accelerators
brings at the least this reward to a nation, as Greece has had the perception
to realize."
Since then, Pakistan and Iran have joined CERN collaborations and,
if Salam were alive today, I am sure he would be delighted to see that aspects
of his vision are at last being transformed into reality.
(Published
in CERN Courrier, April 2003)