64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST much lower in the polytechnics. In higher institutes there are highly qualified, even imported3, teachers. In engineering colleges and polytechnics the teaching staff consists of many who failed to get employment elsewhere in the field. Until recently as many as forty per cent of the degree-holders from some of these higher institutes used to leave the country for USA or Europe. (Presently because of widespread unemployment it is difficult to get research grants and jobs in America). V V John4 pleads that most of those who have 'drained9 to foreign countries are not of a very high calibre. Merit of this argument apart, he ignores the fact that our national resources are wasted on their education in India. Parenthetically it should be remembered that a very large number of projects in all the disciplines in USA are financed by the US Armed Forces. Most of the research work being done in the higher institutes in our country is irrelevant to the needs of India. It is of use only to a very sophisticated technology. The motive of such research, more than any advancement of science, is personal aggrandisement through getting published in standard international journals. Obviously, this research is, if at all, made use of only by industrially advanced countries. Some professors in the higher institutes obtain research grants directly from the US Armed Forces. They are thus, in a way, helping the imperialists in their military ambitions. Surprisingly, the Kothari Commission paid no attention to the problem of foreign exploitation of our education. There is a clear break-up in the responsibilities of the higher institutes and other colleges. The former produce engineer scientists for highly paid research and development jobs and the latter turn out maintenance engineers. Engineers from higher institutes provide expertise for automation and sophistication in industry5, which result in large-scale retrenchment of staff and lower job-potentials. Thus technical education is being used to further strengthen the economic imbalances in the society. The following should, in my view, form the general perspective for planning in technical education, if it is to serve as an instrument of socio-economic change. First, the technical institutes should be freed from foreign imperialistic influence and made to serve the interests of our country. Secondly, planning for technical education must keep in view the specific conditions available in the country, particularly its industrial backwardness. Copying western models6 of education will not meet the requirements of rapid industrial progress in a predominantly backward country. Thirdly, availability of large manpower resources rules out the desirability of the type of technical education which leads to an expertise in automation and sophisticated technology, although such an education as a scientific discipline can be encouraged. Our technical education, to a very large extent, should confine itself to solutions of problems