000 01840pab a2200181 454500
008 180718b2001 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100 _aAnderson, Robert S.
245 _aEmpire's setting sun?: Patrick Blackett and military and scientific development of India
260 _c2001
300 _ap.3703-720
362 _a29 Sep
520 _aIt is difficult to give a measure of Patrick Blackett's wide-ranging influence in India. He had no official status in defence matters except as an advisor to Nehru. Since his consultations were not widely known, his public reputation, nor surprisingly, was largely in the field of scientific research institution building. In this capacity he advocated a realistic appraisal of the relations between the state and the military, and limitations on the military's growth and influence. It is not as a military consultant, however, but as an intervenor in scientific affairs and advisor to the research system that Blackett was and is best known in India. He came to understand its political-economy, specifically the political limits of the influence of the scientific community and the way in which very scarce economic resources were (or were not) mobilised within it. Blackett's objectives in India are enduring: to improve the working conditions of people doing research; to cut away the bureaucratic brambles which grow around the practice of research; to think carefully about the things which can be developed locally instead of being imported, to balance the state's insatiable desire for technical prestige with enhancing ordinary peoples' abilities to provide a better life for themselves. - Reproduced
650 _aBlackett, Patrick
650 _aScientific development - India
650 _aScientific development
773 _aEconomic and Political Weekly
909 _a50174
999 _c50174
_d50174