Large public research systems: India's CSIR, the CNRS in France and the CSIRO.

SUMMARY

During the last decade and a half, the impact of globalisation and liberal economic policies has moved beyond the market and financial institutions to penetrate the social institution of science. In varying forms, these trends have led to new national science, technology and innovation policies, particularly influencing public research systems (government funded large science organisations and universities) towards commercialisation of scientific research. Public research systems the world over have recently created varying institutional forms to foster intellectual property regimes, efficient technology transfer offices, public -private partnerships and networks steering scientific research and innovation towards market-oriented goals. Scientific research is no longer legitimised merely as a consumption factor or 'public good' linked to attaining social and economic goals but is increasingly driven by market forces and international trade and is evaluated on the basis of 'science as a market good'. This article explores some of the changes experienced by public sector research bodies, focusing on the CSIR, India and drawing comparisons with CSIRO and the CNRS, France.

KEYWORDS

hybridisation; public sector research organisations; changing boundaries of research; co-production of knowledge; public sector research funding; science and innovation policies

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Over recent decades, the process of globalisation and the drive to generate wealth from knowledge across many institutions and economic sectors began to impact and transform national innovation systems (NIS). Public research systems (PRS), comprising both publicly supported science agencies (1) and universities, have begun major transformations. Many observers since the mid-1990s have drawn attention to the dynamics of change and implications underlying the transformation of PRS (eg Gibbons et al. 1994; Mustar & Laredo 2002; Nelson 2004) and the decade saw a radical departure from earlier science and technology policy perspectives and theoretical frameworks.

One can broadly distinguish two overlapping phases in the growth of PRS in the post-war period: the 1940s to 1980s and the beginning of 1990s to the contemporary period, although there have been variations across and within different national contexts. The first phase witnessed steady state support in the growth of publicly-funded national laboratories and universities, support greatly influenced by notions of the 'public good'. In India, as elsewhere, during this era, the linear model of innovation dominated models of technology transfer. This perspective emerged from the 'invention' and constitution of in-house R&D in Germany and the United States underpinned the chemical and electrical industries through basic and fundamental research processes in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries (see Freeman 1995) and spread elsewhere during the post-war period. Public sector research in France, India, South Africa, New Zealand, U.K and Australia established large national research organizations.

The second phase saw the gradual dilution of state or public support for PRS, fuelled by economic liberalisation and globalization. Wideranging social, economic and technological transformations, caused shifts in the government policies and principles governing large PRS and a drive towards encouraging them to earn their budgets from non-public sources through a variety of income-generating mechanisms.

The new S&T policy discourse in PRS reflected the beginning of a radical change in the organisation of research oriented towards corporatisation and commercialisation. From the 1990s, most PRS created institutional measures to foster internationally-driven intellectual property regimes, efficient technology transfer offices, public-private partnerships and other mechanisms and networks linking science with communities, industry and other social and environmental concerns. Scientific research was no longer legitimised merely as a consumption factor linked to attaining social and economic goals set by respective governments but was increasingly driven by market forces and international trade and evaluated on the basis of 'science as a market good'. This article explores some of these changes with reference to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India and draws some comparisons with CSIRO in Australia and the CNRS in France.

CHANGING CONTEXT OF INDIA'S CSIR: TRANSFORMATION TO THE 1990S

CSIR, created in 1942, is India's major civilian industrial research agency, with 38 national laboratories in 2007 spread over the country and engaged in physical, chemical, earth, engineering and biological scientific and industrial research activities. CSIR accounts for approximately 9.8% of total R&D funding by the government in 2000 and employs about 20,000 personnel, including 9000 scientific and technical personnel in 2007, a number relatively stable over the last five years.

Until the 1980s, CSIR's main objective remained establishing national scientific and technological capacities across a range of fields through its national laboratories. Scientific and industrial research was mainly influenced by national industry development policies to foster import-substitution and self reliance in science and technology areas and aid relevant industrial sectors. This 'paradigm' entailed mostly reverse engineering, adaptive research to indigenise imported technology and steering scientific and industrial research towards developing technology substitutes for industrial sectors where India was heavily dependent on imports--notably tractors, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, polymers, electronics and the manufacturing sectors.

Various influential writings since the 1970s (see for example Nayudamma 1977; Atama Ram 1983; Krishna 1987; Jolly 2001) support the view that CSIR has contributed effectively to scientific research training and to the nation's science base and technological capabilities in crucial sectors, such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and mechanical engineering in developing indigenous tractor. They also point out, however, that most of the technologies and research processes developed by the organisation (approximately 60-70%) remained unutilised or could not be commercialised.

The CSIR research vision current until the 1980s was somewhat 'inward looking', constrained by various macro-economic and industrial policies geared to import-substitution. There were, however, notable contributions within this period during the 1950s and 1970s, notably the contribution of process technology to the Amul cooperative milk industry by the Central Food Technological Research Institute and R&D at the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute which led to the most successful Indian-designed tractor 'Swaraj'. However, while CSIR laboratories were able to evolve some basic scientific research capacities, in many cases they failed to translate research results into viable technologies for industry and could not create adequate R&D down stream mechanisms such as pilot plants and provisions for development research facilities. As Ward Morehouse's (1978: 374) influential case study of a CSIR laboratory revealed, 'one of the major limitations affecting industrial research in India has been the lack of work after the laboratory stage, which is essential if laboratory know-how is to be translated into commercially usable form'.

This situation persisted into the 1980s. The former Chief of CSIR (Atma Ram 1983: 192) was concerned at the time that 'industrial exploitation of products and processes has been showing a gradual decline' in national laboratories. Further, the 1986 Review Committee on CSIR noted that, 'the major failure, perhaps, is its inability to transform scientific results in the laboratory into technologies for industrial production' (CSIR 1986:2, quoted Jolly 2001). This Committee underscored the fact that CSIR was still dominated by an 'academic culture' and that scientific investigation and research of a routine nature had become major activities.

CSIR had a hierarchical structure with incentive systems based on five year periods and promotion based on the 'publish or perish' maxim which did not encourage output such as patents, designs and commercialisation of research. In short, the organisation was dominated by science and scientific research rather than engineering, R&D downstream structures linked to technology development for industry and market were few, even after the first ever Technology Policy Statement (1983) issued by the government, which provided strong direction for Indian science and technology and specified a move to development and industrialisation programmes for the development of indigenous technology and efficient absorption of imported technology within the framework of self-reliance.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the new government, led by P.V. Narasimha Rao took over as Prime Minister with Manmohan Singh (2) as Finance Minister, lost little time in bringing in the New Economic Reforms and liberal economic policies. Singh's new economic reforms were endorsed by India's leading economists and science administrators such as Montek Singh Alhuwalia, Sam Pitroda, R.A.Mashelkar and CNR Rao. Singh's economic reform programme, largely taking an 'outward looking' perspective and export orientation, was based on the dynamic economies of East Asia and South East Asia. The government's liberalising economic reforms from 1991 implied a corresponding reform of the science and technology system, which in turn meant considerable re-organisation of scientific and industrial research at agencies such as CSIR.