70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST to either take up a survey (study habits, student problems or attitudes) or to adapt a test. At the end of the course, these students hurriedly completed a thick volume (which was scarcely worth even a research note)* This volume was sent to the guideWa^oufAe examiners who would not be reluctant to recommend the awarding of a degree. Phase Three was marked by the advent of foreign foundations, cheap editions of second-rate American books and above all, PL-480. Cheap American books were detrimental to independent thinking and writing inside the country.2 American money was easily on tap for such studies as an attitudinal survey on a railway shed but not for serious theoretical research. Plenty of finance was also forthcoming for Indian professors to go on lecture tours, some of them clandestinely sponsored by the GIA, in US universities. ICSSR Overviews the Scene The Indian Council of Social Science Research on the recommendation of an advisory committee commissioned ten psychologists to make a review of the research done in specific arei&s of study. Within six months or so they were ready with the 'overviews9 (as Mitra prefers to call them) and within one year more than forty psychologists were discussing these drafts. As the results clearly indicate, the overviewers never seemed to have bothered to read all the relevant material. Sufficient for them were their own writings or those of their friends and whatever was ready at hand.8 After all there is a limit to the amount of material which can be located and documented within a short span of one year. Being associated with the editing of the Indian Psychological Abstracts which is entrusted with the publication of complete abstracts of the researches, I am in a position to estimate that not even 50 per cent of the papers listed by the over-viewers were available to them. The total number of write-ups listed is less than 3000 which is far short of the actual number4. The overviewers have hardly seen a quarter of the total write-ups and they must have read through less than ten per cent. I have been told that a hundred thousand rupees were spent upto the discussion stage. Surely this money could have been put to better use for acquiring the documents for a project on the history of Indian psychology by one or two psychologists. But in a faction-ridden profession, such a thing would not have been so easy. Moreover, this would have called for reserves of patience, energy and brains. ICSSR was perhaps in a hurry. In fact a number of reviews similar to what we find in the Survey were already available. The question arises: was this Survey at all necessary The basic drawback lies in the very approach. It appears to be lacking in purpose since no attempt has been made to assert or construct the image and personality of Indian psychology. Rather, it is a crude exercise to review Indian studies on the lines of the American Psychological Association. When we use the outlines of the American Pywhologicqi Abstracts to fit into our studies, one cannot help being sceptical about such