Science in Newly Industrialized Countries - The Common Thread

The Common Thread

A common thread can indeed be discerned in the state of science in many NICs. Thus although, most of the science establishments in the major NICs can be said to be doing fairly well, none of them have been as successful as the developed countries. The genesis of this comparatively poor performance can in fact be traced to the history and culture of these countries. Although People's Republic of China as a nation has never produced a single native Nobel Prize recipient in science. This further reinforces the idea that cultural factors, political stability and wealth are significant factors. During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976), many academics and educated people were attacked, oppressed, humiliated and sent to the rural areas to do hard labour. The impact was severe and halted scientific progress in China.

Perhaps a possible hypothesis for this observation could be the political will of the industrialized countries, which may not be very comfortable with the challenge from NICs to their present dominant status in the world of science.

After the Second World War, a small technical elite arose in developing countries such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Iraq who had been educated as scientists in the industrialized world. They spearheaded the development of science in these countries, presuming that by pushing for Manhattan project-type enterprises in nuclear power, electronics, pharmaceuticals, or space exploration they could leapfrog the dismally low level of development of science establishments in their countries. India, for example, started a nuclear energy program that mobilized thousands of technicians and cost hundreds of millions of dollars but had limited success. Though China, North Korea, India and Pakistan have been successful in deploying nuclear weapons and some of them e.g. China and India have launched fairly successful space programs, (for example, Chandrayaan I (Sanskrit चंद्रयान-1), which literally means "Moon Craft," is an unmanned lunar mission by the Indian Space Research Organization and it hopes to land a motorised rover on the moon in 2010 or 2011 as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission; Chang'e I, China's moon probing project is proceeding in full swing in a well-organized way), the fact remains that most of the scientists responsible for these deeds had received their terminal education from some institution or university in US or Europe. In addition there have been hardly any Nobel laureates in science who have conducted the path-breaking research in a native science establishment.