NOTES 59
haps foreign meetings—then, why, they must of course work on soya-bean. Think, moreover, how this would solve the protein problem in the country and also lead to its prosperity through modern industry ! Groundnut? Well, yes—but it can wait ^ experts the world over are now talking of soyabean. If, in the event, soyabean led to more, not less, protein malnutrition, it is outside their science—they are strictly forbidden even to think of such non-scientific matters. If again, in the event, their research merely served to make soyabean respectable and paved the way for its final utilisation as usual through foreign technology—this too is outside their purview. How are they to know or even think of such things? Why should they even think of enquiring that if soyabean was at all that important, why, at the very least, was there no crash programme for developing soyabean technology indigenously? No, scientists must only do 'research' (on what the foreign experts say) and must never indulge in these 'politics9. Have not even the social scientists declared that they must bother only with the 'quality' of their research and leave 'relevance' to fools?6
Those scientists who see science and its application only as an instrument for development, and close their eyes to its use as an instrument of exploitation and imperialist enslavement, are either naive or do not want to see the truth.
K R BHATTACHARYA
1 Gunnar Myrdal, "Political, Social and Economic Aspects of the Food-production Problem", Introductory Address at the Plenary Session of the Third International Congress of Food, Science and Technology, Washington, August 1970. See also "Proceedings SOS/70", Institute of Food Technologists, USA, 1971, pp 7-11.
8 The Hindu, News item : "FCI to set up Soyabean Processing Plant at Fridabad", October 19, 1972.
3 Narendra Singh, "Vegetable Oil Need and Soyabean", Kurukshetra, Vol 19, No 19, July 1, 1971, p 6.
* Economic Survey, Government of India, 1971-72.
5 Gunnar Myrdal, The Challenge of World Poverty, Pelican Books, Penguin, 1971.
< "The Social Sciences", Seminar, No 157, September 1972.