80 SOCIAL SCIENTIST examine the constraints on the efficient use of computers itself for the above tasks. Can a very advanced technology be introduced in a country where the basic technical infrastructure is very weak ? The earlier Indian experience with steel plants, refineries etc. show that it can be done provided all the necessary infrastructure can be concentrated at one place and an island of high technology be built there. In NTPC's power plants, even the coal mines have been made a part of the power plant complex. However, if the attempt i'' made to introduce an element of very advanced technology spread thinly over the entire country, the consequences can be quite different. Let us examine some of the basic characteristics of the information processing technologies. They require (a) clean power sources (b) air conditioned environment (c) good telecommunication system for interchange of large volumes of data. In India, power available is such that for large number crunching jobs or large data processing jobs, special power conditioning equipment costing anything between 5 to 50 lakh is required. Further, the manufacturers of such equipment have yet to develop quality products. The cost of computerisation would increase steeply, if all the computer systems had to be supplied with such power sources. The problem of data transfer across the telecommunication network is even more serious. In a country where telephoning in the same town is a nightmare, and getting a good connection even more so, networking of computers is proving to be extremely difficult Without large exchange of information from computers to computers via a network, the entire purpose of computerisation is going to be defeated. If a computing node is connected through telephones to a number of users, it is possible to use the power of the node fully. If such connection is not possible, the computing power available will be utilised only fractionally. Even a cursory examination of the Indian computer scene, shows that most computers are utilised only marginally and that also for extremely low level tasks. Further, unless the large volume of data being processed can be transferred from a point to another point, the bottlenecks of information flows, still remain. An example will make this point clear. A supercomputer can be connected via a network to a large number of universities. Research in all the universities can therefore be done on the super computer, if required. To provide such computing facilities without a corresponding investment in telecommunications, will mean an astronominal amount t^be spent by installing a number of supercomputers, all of which would then be underutilised. The second constraint regarding computerisation lies in the nature of the manpower. To overcome this and support a two sector computerisation policy, a two sector education policy is being put forward. The New Education Policy document of the Government seeks precisely such a segmenu tion. Just as the boutgeoisie is prepared to give up the major pan of the administrative apparatus to preserve an efficient core, in education also, the formal adherence to imiversalisation of education is being given up An