SCIENCE TEACHING AND RESEARCH 51 big craving to imitate US science: imitate by telling oneself that this is the only science which is meaningful. In this way there is a tremendous pre-occupation with measuring oneself according to international (primarily US) standards. The upshot is that we, as Indian scientists, do not even attempt to set the fashion. We keep ourselves busy being followers. Unfortunately this is true by and large, even of our very competent scientists. This tendency to be imitative, it is worth adding, is more true of post-independence India. The remedy suggested by the New Education Policy will only aggravate the problem. It is very likely that 'thrust areas' will be defined by looking at fashions in the West. Our real needs, social as well as extra social, will suffer by default. Equally crucial will be the debilitating effect on the Basic Sciences. Resources will be diverted to the frontier areas of technology. What the policy makers forget however is that innovative technology is an offspring of creativity in the Basic Sciences. A body of scientists and technologists, whose understanding of abilities in the Basic Sciences is minimal, cannot produce high quality innovative technology. So even the relatively narrow objective of producing technology relevant to our needs will remain unfulfilled in the absence of sufficient attention to the Basic Sciences. The second problem of de-emphasizing Basic Sciences is related to the creation of good teachers. Universities and colleges must regard it as one of their primary functions to produce competent teachers for both universities/colleges as well as schools. Where else are teachers going to come form? Now it is a fact that in schools—even at its upper levels—nothing more sensible than an introduction to certain limited areas of Basic Sciences can be achieved. The student at that level does not have enough exposure to be talking of technological complications. It would be a h^ppy situation if school leaving students are well-versed in some relatively narrow area of the Basic Sciences. But their understanding of these have to be good enough for them to move on to a career in science and technology. But by de-emphasizing Basic Sciences, students will be produced whose grasp over these branches of science would be limited. The result will be school teachers who are incapable of enthusing students in the basic areas of science, who are unable to give students an understanding of what the word 'understanding* means. We now have a large majority of science teachers in schools who explicitly tell the students : 'Look, don't waste time understanding these concepts, you will never get them. Memorise them and you'll do well in the examinations. If you come to the stage where you have to think in the examination hall, then you are doomed.' Such advice is doled out by teachers in part because it succeeds (within narrow examination based objectives), but also because they are unable to communicate to the students basic principles in a comprehensible fashion. In this respect some of the major public schools in big cities are tW biggest defaulters : they are precisely the ones which collect good