KARACHI: The government in Pakistan needs to learn lessons from the progress of countries like China, Malaysia and Singapore that show sustainable progress lies in giving top priority to education, scientific research and technology and keeping socio-economic policies consistent.

This was the gist of a lecture delivered by Mohammad Iqbal Chaudhary, professor of organic chemistry and director of Karachi University’s International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences, on the KU campus on Thursday.

Titled How Pakistan can promote scientific research for human development, the lecture was organised by the faculty of social sciences under its distinguished lecture series.

‘Pakistan currently invests zero in research and development’

Starting off his presentation with examples showing how science has transformed the world, Prof Chaudhary termed the invention of the internet and new biology as a revolutionary and the most important events that happened in human history in decades.

“Progress is no more considered development of concrete infrastructures but rather development of human resources that can do wonders. It is ironic that over 80pc of humanity has no input in modern innovation and knowledge and most of us are just users of products manufactured by the developed world,” he said, adding that the difference between the developed and low-income countries was 40 times in terms of per capita income.

That disparity, he pointed out, had developed mainly because countries regarded developed today made huge investments in education, science and technology; the yearly research expenditure of developed states was 220 times greater than developing countries. Giving an example as to how lack of development in science and technology was harming poor nations, he said that of the 1,400 new medicines introduced in the past 25 years, only 14 were for tropical diseases (afflicting poorest of the poor).

According to him, the current gap between haves and have-nots will become wider, perhaps, unbridgeable in coming years, due to fast-paced development in science.

Technologies, he said, had been developed that could enable someone sitting in a developed world to take control of affairs in another state and create a conflict or paralyse critical functions.

“The best asset of a nation is knowledge and its capacity to use,” he said while quoting his mentor former federal minister of science and technology Prof Atta-ur-Rehman.

He referred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US to tell students how a single institution could make a difference in society. The MIT graduates, he said, had founded 4,000 companies and had a total workforce of 1.1 million people. Coming to Pakistan, he said it was unfortunate that despite having huge potential in terms of human and natural resource, the country lagged far behind in development. “Presently, there is zero investment in research and development. As a first step, we need to have people at the helm of affairs that understand the importance of education and science.”

Dean of the faculty of social science Prof Moonis Ahmer also spoke.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2015

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