Century of Endeavour
Ch 5.4: The Third World
(c) Roy Johnston 1999
(comments to
rjtechne@iol.ie)
August 12 1970
Sir William Petty is sometimes regarded as the 'grandfather' of
classical political economy. He flourished in the mid-seventeenth
century and owned large tracts of land in Ireland. One of his
technical achievements was the surveying on Ireland, on the basis of
which the Cromwellian Plantation was carried out.....
Political economy became better-defined in the following century,
in the writings of Adam Smith and Ricardo, who could be regarded as
the continuation of the Petty tradition. It is not so widely known
that their contemporary, Bishop Berkeley, as well as being a
philosopher of note and a friend of Dean Swift, wrote with depth in
the field of political economy. Contemporary economists tend to
dismiss Berkeley; the latter however, with his 'Querist', deserves
recognition as the classical economist of the colonial world; the
analyst of the problems of the outer fringe of the English
metropolitan system, unseen by Smith and Ricardo......
To return to Sir William Petty: he produced a scheme for Ireland
whereby 200,000 Irish would be left to tend the cattle and sheep, and
the remaining 1,800,000 taken to England to work at trades, an
excellent politico-economic solution to the problems facing Cromwell's
government.
My excuse for this excursion into historical matters is an
article in the current 'New Scientist'....by Tony Greenfield, a
statistician in the service of the Iron and Steel Federation....
The article itself.....outlines a few schemes for solving the
world's nutritional and other problems, by making better use of
existing technology, giving a series of specific examples. The only
mention of Ireland is a positive reference to the Glenamoy work on
peat-land reclamation. The author is clearly not a Petty follower.
He concedes that the Irish, as a nation, can be creative.
What I wish to call attention to is the political economy
implicit in the illustrations. These are of the character of marginal
doodles by the staff artist.. Clearly this gentleman must have worked
in close collaboration with the ghost of Sir William Petty, who
apparently has taken up residence in the New Scientist office. There
are three marginal doodles. Each is in the form of a map of Britain,
criss-crossed by a symbolic Union Jack, with two of the radials
extending to form a loop enclosing an external source of wealth. In
one case the source of wealth is the North Sea fish; in both the
other cases the source is Ireland, symbolised once by a sheep and once
by a tree.
The author's points are (a)that the sheep is a very inefficient
animal capable of much improved performance (b)that pseudo-hardwoods
can be made by growing softwoods and impregnating them with
plastic.... In neither case is there an explicit reference to
Ireland.
I see in this tiny pin-prick a pointer to the subconscious mind
of British imperialism, reflected into techno-economics via an
artist's doodle, a distillation of years of impressions into the
collective mind of the staff of a journal with its finger on the pulse
of British technology. As a nation, we should be aware of this, and
reckon with it in our dealings. No doubt the Indians and Africans can
point to similar manifestations of the imperial tradition in their
dealings with British science and technology.
August 15 1973
In May of this year I went to a conference in Algeria arranged
jointly by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)
and the International federation of Operational Research Societies
(IFORS) under the title 'Systems Approaches to Problems of Developing
Countries'.
I went with in mind specifically the problem of the cultural gap
between the practitioners of advanced technology and the rest of the
human race. That which I have observed in Ireland in microcosm I
wanted to observe as a world-phenomenon. I found the effort
rewarding; I had ample opportunity to meet the extremes of the
spectrum among the participants; subsequently I met some leading
people in Algerian technological education.
The President of IFAC is John C Lozier, of Bell Telephone
Laboratories. He headed the Telestar project, which was the first
attempt, in the early sixties, to implement a satellite communication
system across the Atlantic.
This Algiers event clearly represented a new departure for IFAC
in the direction of social responsibility and away from its usual
preoccupation with rocketry and space technology, no doubt under the
pressure of the run-down of NASA and the ending of the Vietnam war.
Big-nation technology is looking for new markets and has discovered
that the developing world has problems.
IFORS was represented by Professor Arne Jensen, of Copenhagen,
who is known to us in Dublin from his participation in the 1972 IFORS
Conference, which took place in Trinity College. Very few of the
participants, however, were IFORS people; the majority were IFAC,
with roots in hardware and techniques. It was suggested that a
competing conference organised by the US IFORS affiliate in Israel the
following month might have had a divisive effect. Thus one is brought
up against the realities of Middle-Eastern politics, and the
consequent need for socially responsible scientists and technologists,
if they wish to contribute to the progress of the developing nations,
to make value-judgments.
Apart from the IFAC people, there were mostly people with
backgrounds in what the engineers tend to look down upon as the 'soft'
disciplines: economists and sociologists. These people were usually
working in developing countries on secondment; they were able to read
papers describing the problems, but were seldom if ever able to
formulate the problems in the manner to which the technique-orientated
IFAC people were accustomed.
The conference, as is customary, broke up into parallel sessions:
development policies, agriculture and food, power, water and
pollution, urban planning and transportation, methodology, education
and health, human resources, international co-operation. Thus is was
more like a trade fair; contacts were made which would lead to
subsequent more intensive meetings at which technology transfers might
take place.
Not all of the participants understood this; some seemed to
think that a polished academic presentation was desirable. Such
people rarely sparked off a good discussion.
The following statistical summary of the papers illustrates the
flavour of the conference:
1. Project work by consultants from developed countries in developing
countries: 17
2. Problems of training and technology transfer: 15
3. Theoretical papers from academics in developed countries: 14
4. Project work carried out in developed countries, having
theoretical basis and practical implementation: 9
5. Project work carried out in developing countries using local
talent: 8
6. Joint projects with teams drawn from developed and developing
countries: 8
It is possible to make some generalisations about the above
classes of papers.... the technology transfer group tended to be
dominated by problems of education, particularly in relation to the
computer....the 'foreign consultant' project work tended to be
concerned with infrastructure..... the academic end of the spectrum
was dominated by anthropologists and sociologists using native
populations as generators of thesis material with suitably exotic
flavour.....
Where the projects were jointly managed, there came across a
clear impression of viability, credibility and success. Projects
carried out in developed countries, included because considered
relevant, tended to be from medium-sized and usually socialist
countries such as Czechoslovakia, Finland or Hungary.
Projects carried out entirely within a developing country were
few in number; the countries were Algeria, Brazil, Cuba, Egypt,
India. There was none from black Africa, though many
foreign-dominated projects related to it.
The third group (theoretical academic work from developed
countries) could profitably have been kept out of the conference,
thereby releasing more time for genuine interaction. Those concerned
would have better occupied their time simply listening to the
problems. Some were so arrogant as to stay for one day only, to give
their paper.
Turning now to some specifics, there was a thoughtful paper by
Leon Rosenberg and Molly Hageboeck, international consultants from
Washington, which developed the concept of management as itself a
technology used to harness and control other technologies. This is a
problem area, in that the bright young students who go abroad to do a
higher degrees develop skills which turn out to be useless on their
return. Further, such people, although bright, are usually
technically incompetent, not having had the chance when young to serve
their time stripping old cars and radios for bits to put together and
modify, as is the norm in the US. They can blossom if assured of
technicianship as backup, such as they might get in MIT.
Decision-makers are beginning to question the utility of this
process......
The Jugoslavs reported on how they are introducing the computer
at post-primary school level, teaching the students how to programme
in Fortran, with the objective of producing a universally numerate
population, for whom quantitative methods will be as familiar as
reading and writing...... Professor Siklossy, of Texas, launched a
scathing criticism of the university curricula in the developed
countries, taking a position akin to that of the Washington group
above.. He developed a case for a specially tailored Masters thesis,
with a modest practical research on a problem relevant to the
developing country, but on the campus of the host university in the
developed country(1). He comes out against the PhD, on the grounds
that it tends to generate a hypercritical and somewhat 'prima donna'
mentality, which shows up in the approach to practical problems
subsequently. Implicitly he says 'come to Texas and do our MSc'.
There is no reason why we should not say 'come to Dublin' in the same
way. We would first, however, have to show that we were able to
generate a problem-orientated MSc tradition. Our problems would be
closer to theirs than would be the Texans.
....I must also mention a paper by A Remili, who is responsible
to the Algerian Government for the co-ordination of the Institutes of
Technology. Speaking in French, he outlined how they had overcome the
problems posed by the withdrawal (practically overnight) of some
50,000 key technological workers, which took place in 1962. These
people had taken an elitist position and were not prepared to take out
Algerian citizenship, which of course they could have done.
In the colonial environment, technological education was looked
down upon by those Algerians who were in a position to get education;
this compounded the problem. The response of the revolutionary
government was to set up immediately something like our Regional
Colleges, and to ensure that they interacted closely with industry,
using the 'sandwich course' concept, with the industrial stage under
the supervision of college staff, who also acted as consultants to the
industry.
This paper was supplemented by one from M Bourras, who heads the
computer institute at Oued-Smar, near Algiers..... developing an
education philosophy with drop-out possible after one, two or three
years, and with the possibility of return after a period of industrial
experience (recycling). Like the Jugoslavs, they are aiming at
universal familiarity with computing, via the secondary schools.
Professor M A Cuenod, of Geneva, one of the conference
organisers, and a world-figure in the field, was generous in his
praise of the Algerian approach, suggesting that the developing
countries should use it as a model. (We should note, in passing, that
this educational philosophy is being developed in the NIHE in
Limerick..... why I wonder did it take us so long after 1921 to
realise this need?)
August 22 1973
Continuing the saga of the Algiers IFAC/IFORS conference..... I
consider now the eight papers by natives of developing countries: two
from Cuba, one from Algeria, three from India, one from Egypt and one
from Brazil.
The Cubans were, as might be expected, young, enthusiastic and
totally dedicated to the Revolution which had given them their chance
of getting educated. Their problem was how to improve the harvest of
sugar-cane, using the computer as a planning-device. They had access
to a tiny machine (4086 12-bit words, developed in Havana University)
which required programming in low-level language....
Firstly Rene Martinez produced a mathematical model which made
use of the known agrotechnical properties of the sugar-cane to plan a
five-year cropping cycle by a 'dynamic programming' technique. In
this he ran into the usual difficulties: lack of records, suspicion
from sugar-mill managements etc. Then Martinez together with Antonio
Diaz produced a computer model of the rail system used to transport
the sugar to the mill, with a view to working out an optimal strategy
taking into account the transport constraints.
This, while seeming 'old hat' or even primitive to operations
researchers in the developed countries as regards the techniques used,
was done infinitely more competently than an external consultant would
have done it. The latter would have scorned the potential of the
Havana computer, and would have been unable to identify the local
management problems, becuase of the language/culture gap.
Thus the merit of the Cuban work was that the problem, technique
and resources available were well matched. Instead of screaming for a
larger computer, they got on with the job, cutting it into digestible
pieces.
This cannot be said of the paper by Alessandro Polistina, who is
Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique d'Architecture et d'Urbanism at
el Harrach, Algiers. This consisted of a sophisticated mathematical
formulation of the urban planning problem, leaning heavily on
'gravitational' ideas currently fashionable among US and British
academics, and on the classical techniques of linear programming. It
is likely that the more sophisticated the theory, the more remote it
is from application. Urban planners in developing countries would do
better if they avoided the high fashion in academic planning models
and simply looked to their home ground, which is full of relatively
small problems, demanding quick solutions. The search for a
mathematical optimum is a waste of time.
For example, a partial solution to the urban traffic problem in
the Eastern part of Algiers city would be simply to use the railway in
suburban mode. This isn't done because Algiers is the capital, and
all long-distance trains, whether to the East or West, by tradition
start and end there. Yet Algiers is at the northern end of a
north-south spur, some way from the main-stream of the railway system,
which is basically east-west along the coast, but passing inland
behind the city due to high ground. It would cost relatively little
to put in a mainline 'Algiers Junction' and have a frequent
shuttle-service along the spur. You don't need a computer to see
this, stuck in a traffic jam in a sweltering bus on the road to el
Harrach, counting the hours between the trains on the grossly
under-used railway which runs parallel to the blocked highway.
Similarly, P P Subherwal, from India, produced a mathematical
manpower planning model for the whole of India, based on the census....
I now turn to the category of papers which describe work done in
a developed country, such that the authors deemed it to be of interest
to the developing country market. We might hope to find here examples
of unity of theory and practice, close interactions with
decision-making processes, such as was beginning to be displayed in
the Cuban example, but in a more evolved manner. We would,
unfortunately, be disappointed.
The Hungarian economic planners had a rather verbal description
of their system, which, on the face of it, looked interesting, in that
there was explicit allowance for uncertainty; there were control
loops; the unit was the single enterprise; there were regional and
national co-ordinating centres. Despite this, there were illuminating
admissions; even though they had been at it for years, with State
support, they still have the problem that the statisticians' view of
the world is different from that of the planners. Those whose job it
is to collect data seldom supply it in a form suitable for use. Much
of the lag-time in planning is due to the need to re-structure data,
or to go to get it specially.
The Czechs contributed a dynamic computer model for production
scheduling. This was quite abstract and academic; I doubt if it had
ever touched a factory in reality..... There was a French/US
contribution on power network planning, with a random element in it.
_
The Finns contributed a description of a computerised
control-systeem for a paper-mill.....a good ad-hoc industrial on-line
computer application, rather similar in philosophy to the system
developed by M J Walsh for the Irish Sugar Co and reported at the 1970
IFIP conference (International Federation of Information Processing:
there are, I feel, too many of these over-specialised international
federations, all independently 'rediscovering the wheel'. Developing
countries should, I feel, try to pool their knowledge in these related
fields, and be prepared to organise to pick the brains of the
international specialists, instead of establishing national specialist
coteries to affiliate to each of them separately)...
A further Hungarian paper formulated some differential equations
for a pipeline network and discussed the problems connected with
solving them in real planning situations on the computer. I again got
the impression that this was an academic study; phrases like 'the
programmes described here may be used indirectly for planning pipeline
networks' suggest to me that in Hungary there exists the same
situation with which we are familiar here: an academic theoretical
elite away out ahead of reality. I got the same impression from two
further papers from Poland and the USSR, both on hierarchical,
multi-level, multi-horizon systems of industrial control. Plenty of
elegant formal mathematics, but no evidence of implementation.
This happens to be the field that I currently know best; I am
sceptical because I know that the variables associated with real
problems can only rarely be forced into neat, generalised categories.
Each problem defines its own set of hierarchical variables, in a
peculiar structure, which then proceeds to dominate the analysis of
the problem.
A further paper from the USSR by N S Rajbraun on industrial
quality control in mechanical engineering showed some signs of
implementation, though again the mathematical formalism tended to
dominate the argument.....
I preferred the ideas in a paper from the US by Stephen Kahne of
Minnesota (one of the conference organisers). Although the problem
treated was not in itself relevant to the developing countries (the
location of a zoo in a US city), the methodology he used for dealing
with 'fuzzy' variables, which did not lend themselves to neat
mathematical modelling, had considerable relevance.
To summarise the didactic element of the conference: the
examples used by the teachers showed evidence of a lack of awareness
of the existence of a cultural gap; the key effect of the conference,
had it been confined to this didactic mode, would have been to
strengthen the isolation of the technological elite of the developing
nations from the problems of their own people, and to enfold them in a
cosy, cosmopolitan ivory tower, where a theoretical solution, if
correctly formulated, is the end of the matter.
August 29 1973
..I now come to the largest class of projects: those carried out
by citizens of developed countries in developing countries, without
participation of any citizens of the latter, except possibly in a
low-grade role, or as information-source. These were mostly what
economists call 'infra-structural': transportation(4), water
resources(3), electricity(2). There were also four agricultural, one
nutrition, and one each on engineering maintenance, health and
community behaviour.
A University of Oregon group had developed a simulation model of
the Venezuelan cattle industry, with which the effects of policy
changes directed at improving productivity could be predicted. The
principal new factor was the introduction of cultivated pasture.
Traditional and modern herd statistics could be predicted convincingly
for a 25-year period.
This is important work; these techniques are currently being
explored in our own Agricultural Institute, which has been engaged in
export consultancy work in developing countries (eg Libya).
A paper by Dr F Taylor of Ottawa described verbally the impact of
British-inspired policies on Kenya.. A devastating picture emerged of
decline of nutritional standards, modified by unco-ordinated policies
of which the consequences were usually unrelated to the intentions of
their formulators. Here was a commendable attempt to be self-critical
by a someone with British roots; the discussion however shrank from
the basic question of land tenure. This paper constituted a clear
case for the development of valid economic models to predict the
complex effects of policy changes, but made no explicit move in that
direction, as the Venezuelan study noted above had done.
Dr Taylor is a geographer who is conscious of the need for
quantification. He deserves credit for coming and stating the problem
in the way he did. Perhaps Raymond Crotty's 'Irish Agricultural
Production' is the best Irish analogy to what Dr Taylor attempted to
do for Kenya....
A paper by Jaques Verceuil, of the FAO in Rome, described an
application of linear programming to the optimal allocation of
resources in the development of the 'new lands' in Egypt (ie those
reclaimed as a result of the Aswan High Dam project). In this the
resources allocated to the 'old lands' are taken into account.
Although the basic formulation is linear, any type of non-linear
demand curve can be used. (There is a similar 'new lands' problem on
the horizon in Ireland: the cutaway bog, which will end up as large
holdings of State-owned land, with considerable productive
potential....)
A paper by Dr Ian Carruthers, of Wye College, outlined the
problem of rural water in Kenya. Surprisingly, capital shortage is
not the problem; the difficulties are human and administrative....
Much of the difficulty appears to arise from dependence on relatively
large contractors and on the State machinery(2). The possibility of
'do-it-yourself' schemes does not appear to have been considered.
This seems to reflect the way in which colonial administration
continues with metropolitan thinking, practice, standards etc, despite
the possibilities presented for independent thought and action. I
have referred previously to the slow development of group water
schemes in Ireland because of the imposition of urban standards;
group schemes could have been established in the 20s and 30s making
use of the same technology as was available to the ascendancy to
service the big-houses. Once you adopt the convention that you don't
drink the water, and train the children accordingly, it all follows
easily. Less than 1% of water used is actually drunk directly by
humans. This quantity could easily be either boiled or carried from a
well.
The Kikiyu, incidentally, used to brew beer. This both
sterilised the water and provided vitamins. One of the sad stories in
Dr Taylor's paper is the suppression of this by State and Church, with
consequent adverse effects on nutrition standards.
A transportation study of the whole Algerian road and rail
network by E C Emerson and others, from a British consultancy group,
was apparently a competent piece of work.....I understand that some
Government ministers were present and participated heatedly in the
discussion.... a further study by Yves Monnantreuil, of the Lyons
applied science institute in France, involved a simulation model of
the harbour at Annaba, with associated rail siding system and rail
link to the metallurgical complex at el Hadjar. This had been used to
explore bottleneck conditions under various planning assumptions.
Most of this work was competent and well adapted to the problem
avoiding unnecessary complexity. The missing link however is the
hand-over procedure; because there is no native participation the
option does not exist of handing over to the client an on-going
analytical system, or a project with development potential......
September 5 1973
It is appropriate that this final section of the Algiers
conference report should coincide with the above(3) critique of the
new National Scince Council scheme..... I can see many parallels
between the policy which I have been promoting for the
university-industry link and the structure of some of the more
successful co-operative projects reported at the conference...
There were eight projects involving personnel from both developed
and developing countries, which I now summarise briefly.
A survey of management and technological problems in Egypt by K H
Hamza (Cairo) and M H Hamza (Canada) (brothers?) came up with
recommendations for plugging the technicianship gap, improving
university-industry contacts etc..
Kan Chen (Michigan) and Harold Hoelscher (Bangkok) called for the
construction of approximate economic models to illustrate the Rostow
'economic take-off' process; models that they had constructed were
able to predict the existence of a 5-6 year 'lag-phase' during which
growth processes were getting ready but no visible growth was
occurring. Bacteriologists should appreciate the analogy. Aid
programme administrators should therefore be able to look beyond this
horizon. This generated some critical comment; many questioned the
standing of US conventional wisdom, and Rostow in particular, in this
matter.
Belshaw, Bjorlo and Shah (Nairobi) developed a hierarchical model
for planning rural development. They are a mixed team of geographers
and electrical engineers, none with roots in Kenya, but considerable
field experience. They did little more than state the problem; they
pinpointed the main problem area as 'local participation at community
level'. The missing link in the system is a regional management under
the control of a co-operative producers' committee, but they did not
seem to be aware of this as a possibility, being in the British
paternalist tradition.
Biesel, Hoelscher and Shah described a model of a soybean oil
extraction system which used theoretical principles borrowed from the
chemical engineers, but in a pragmatic manner, with technical details
of processes played down and the basic economic characteristics of the
process-elements highlighted. Specific plant investment projects
could thus be analysed. This is a useful approach; I know it works,
having used it myself. However in this case there is no evidence of
any interaction with the local soybean plant managers, although they
acknowledge that they got help from the Indiana soybean people.
Contrast this with Martinez and his Cuban experience, where a
communication problem with the local plant managers existed even
within a single national culture. I suspect that the Pittsburgh
people when in Siam seldom moved far from the Bangkok campus.
Dr Major of MIT described a regional planning scheme for water in
Argentina.. Although he alone had his name on the paper, I include it
in the 'co-operative' group because it was associated with a stay at
MIT by six young Argentine professionals, who take back with them the
ability to run the planning model on computers available in Argentina.
There was considerable joint field work by MIT staff with Argentine
professionals.
It looks to me that this might be a nearly successful example of
technology transfer. I have however some doubts, on the grounds that
the Argentine participants might develop into a local elite aspiring
to an MIT standard of technical sophistication, way out in advance of
the immediate local needs. I think if this bridge were to be built
with an intermediate type of country, like Ireland for example, the
transfer might occur more effectively, and with less danger of
elitism.
A further Bangkok paper described an approach to.....solid waste
management in Asian cities. Rural dwellers have long-established
habits of scattering rubbish and expecting the environment to absorb
it. Such habits in an urbanising environment are catastrophic. The
authors (Frankel and Ouano) developed a simulation model for
predicting costs of various truck, crew and route systems. Raja Rao
and Dr M G Nair presented an approach to air pollution in urban
planning appropriate to the Indian environment.....
An intensive and competent study was reported by a joint
Swiss-Algerian team (Benkhelifa, Coidan, Cuenod, Scharlig) on the
location of cement factories in Algeria. In this case there is little
doubt that the analytical techniques used will remain effectively in
Algeria in the person of Benkhalifa.....
Some studies by academics from developed countries.....which use
macro-economic statistics and expect the multivariate analysis package
to do the thinking should be dismissed as rubbish....
To summarise: I think it should be feasible for us in Ireland to
develop schemes in the Major/Cuenod tradition. When in Algiers I
discussed this intensively with some key people in government,
education and industry. I found a very positive response, thanks to
the legacy of the Swiss collaboration, which appears to be in the lead
for this mode. However on return to Ireland I ran into the cold blast
of the local environment. We haven't yet demonstrated our expertise
in technology transfer on our own home market.. Who are we to be
purporting to be helping others?
In straight consultancy and in technology-based hardware, our
State companies are very much alive. I have already mentioned AFT and
the Libya project. Austin Bourke of the Meteorological Service has
considerable international standing, for decades, as a consultant on
potato blight. The Bord no Mona people have been selling expertise
abroad to Pakistan, Finland and the USSR on peat technology.. The
Sugar Co has been pioneering beet harvesters. Aer Lingus has had
know-how export contracts with Algeria, Malta and elsewhere. Cara,
their computing subsidiary, is also in the export market to Europe and
Africa.... Private firms such as System Dynamics are exporting
software consultancy.
The weakness in this process however is in the field of personnel
in the client country. To fill this last and most important link in
the technology transfer chain we need a scheme which pulls in the
academic system, linked with a problem-orientated MSc programme.
The graduate taking such an MSc programme should be from the
client country, where the MSc project problem should originate and be
specified. There could usefully be a parallel problem in the host
country, with the MSc supervisor involved in a consultancy capacity.
There should be money in the budget for some field work in the client
country.
The graduate on completion should return to his country with the
embryo of a solution to his problem with him, for subsequent
independent development in the problem environment, close to the
decision-process concerned.
We could do this in Ireland as an export trade, if we were to
structure our own academic-industrial links appropriately(4). I have
already suggested how this might be done. With a quick decision from
the NSC to clear the field for 1973-74, we could be giving
problem-orientated training to young African technologists by 1974-75.
Instead of exporting our own brains, we could be keeping ours and
developing other peoples'. Over now to the NSC!
November 21 1973
I attended the World Peace Conference in Moscow (October 25-31)
along with various Irish journalists, trade unionists and people from
political and cultural groups. Various aspects of the conference have
been ably treated elsewhere by Donal Foley, John Mulcahy, Proinnsias
Mac Aonghusa and others. The central theme as I saw it was an
excercise in diplomatic initiative on the part of Brezhnev, whereby he
attempted to convey to the peoples of the world a simple message,
without garbling by the type of diplomatic code that is in use among
governments.
The simple message was: let us try to transfer resources from
the arms race into technological and economic aid to the development
of the Third World. The basis for this transfer of resources has been
laid in the Soviet-US strategic arms limitation agreement, the
treaties between the USSR and the German Federal Republic, etc. In a
sense, the 'cold war' can be said to be formally at an end; the need
for peaceful co-existence between States with differing social systems
is being universally recognised.
Against this background it was particularly interesting to
participate in the work of the conference commission on 'economic,
scientific and technical co-operation'. This was one of 14 different
commissions into which the 3000 delegates split.
I noted particularly the contribution of Professor Robert
Heffner, who is Director of a Peace Research Project in the Department
of Psychology, University of Michigan. He suggested that the time was
now ripe for the academics who are engaged in research on the question
of peaceful resolution of conflict to start interacting creatively
with the activists who are working politically for peace(5). The
narrow ideological boundaries which had in the past made the former
dismiss the latter as 'lefties' were now in process of demolition.
Likewise, peace activists should be prepared to admit that research
programmes in an academic environment had a positive role to play, and
should be encouraged by finance and co-operation.
'Peace' in the Heffner sense means peace between the Great
Powers, in such a way as to allow normal politics to develop. This,
in the third world, sometimes inevitably involves armed resistance, as
indeed emerged elsewhere in the conference, notably in the commission
on national liberation. The attention of peace researchers in the US
has also been drawn to Vietnam, so that modes of scientific thinking
(eg theory of non-zero-sum games), applied originally in an East-West
context, are being seen to be relevant in the third world.
Another American at Moscow was Winston Riley, who was at Dublin
last year for the IFORS conference(6). Now at Geneva with the ILO, he
was at Moscow with the Swiss group, representing the Quaker interest.
He had previously been chairman of the Washington DC chapter of the
Operations Research Society of America. There was also Professor
Davidson of MIT, who is currently a long-term resident in Moscow as a
guest of the Academy of Sciences; this is one of the fruits of
US-Soviet 'detente'. So altogether there was heavyweight US
participation, both in the conference as a whole and in the particular
commission in which the writer was involved, matched by equally
heavyweight Soviet participation....
Turning now to the discussions in the Commission on Economic,
Scientific and Technical Co-operation, there were about 50
participants.....
A Bangla-Desh delegate castigated the irrelevance of fashionable
academic science for developing countries; a Chile delegate called
for a ban on all technical support for the junta(7). A Portugese
delegate made a similar call(8), with reference to the repression in
Angola and Mozambique. He faces jail on his return, if caught.
The Finns were critical of what they called 'discriminatory
economic integration of certain capitalist countries', meaning the
EEC. The Indians were critical of the type of third-level education
that they had inherited, with its academic and Western bias. Various
Africans were looking for means of adapting scientific discoveries to
the needs of developing countries.
The writer's contribution was to identify a possible path or
mechanism for technology transfer...involving internediate nations as
brokers. Readers of this column will recall that when I discussed
this problem in the context of the Algiers conference last May, I
remarked that the best contributions, in practical terms, came from
small developed nations, like Finland or Switzerland.
I now take up this idea in the context of one of the
recommendations of the Commission which emerged from our discussions
at the Moscow conference: the 'Centre for Technical Co-operation'
under UN auspices. The basic elements of the concept which the writer
promoted, and got support for, are these:
1. Choose an intermediate nation on the periphery of the
advanced-technology world which suffers from 'brain-drain' and has
pockets of economic underdevelopment. Suitable candidates are
Ireland, Canada, Scotland etc.
2. Establish, in close contact with a university or college of
technology, a Third World Institute which would act as a
training-ground for young graduates in the scientific approach to
third-world problems.
3. Develop a system of training through problem-orientated MSc
projects, with socio-techno-economic content, backed by formal
lectures and seminars to fill gaps left by specialist primary-degree
backgrounds.
4. Take in a mixture of graduates from home and third-world,
developing a team approach to project work.
5. While using problems in the local 'pockets of underdevelopment' as
'laboratory material', the prime attention should be to problems from
the home-countries of the guest-students, sponsored by an enterprise
or organisation. There should be a job awaiting the guest-student on
his/her return, in the environment where the problem has been defined;
their project work should be a step towards the solution, so that the
momentum of the work should continue on the home ground.
6. Develop a stong language-teaching facility, so that the people in
the 'intermediate country' would get an appropriate third-world
language, as well as the guest-students getting English.
Is it too visionary to expect our Government to look for UN money
to set up such a centre here(9)? Could we not, instead of exporting
our graduates, export training and technology?
July 17 1974
I have in the past stressed the potential positive role which can
be played by Irish scientists and technologists in the solution of
third-world problems.....(and proposed) a theoretical formula whereby
Irish universities and colleges of technology might combine graduate
training programmes in relevant skills with export consultancy by
graduate staff in appropriate problem-areas.
This type of export activity would be equalitarian and
democratic, rather than elitist in the imperial tradition. We would
not be selling hardware and keeping control by building the
maintenance-work into a mystery; we would instead be selling the
training of third-world personnel in problem-solving. We would be
countering the unhealthy 'brain-drain' tradition whereby the
third-world elite aspires to specialist academic distinction in Europe
or the US; we would try to teach them to invent their own jobs and
break through their native bureaucracies. The latter sometimes fear
the development of a native corps of competent technologists who know
their jobs.
This view, I believe, is shared by the United Nations, a body
which has ceased to make headlines in Ireland, though its positive
activities continue.
The Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly is taking
place this week. On the agenda is a 'Declaration on the Establishment
of a New International Economic Order' and associated 'Programme of
Action'.
This seeks to support the actions of the raw-material producing
nations in establishing policies independent of the multinational
corporations, and recognises that the key resource necessary to the
developing nations, for the establishment of this independence, is
trained personnel of native origin.
The World Peace Council(10), which has its headquarters in
Helsinki, has taken on the task of popularising UN initiatives, by
spreading knowledge of them internationally through non-governmental
organisations. The Irish Peace Group, which is their local
communication centre, drew this UN session and its significance to my
attention.
July 31 1974
...I return to the question of the role of the scientist in
relation to third-world problems. The stimulus this time is an
article by Professor K R Bhattacharva, of India, in 'New Perspectives'
( an international publication of the World Peace Council) which
raises a number of interesting dilemmas for scientists and
technologists in the developed countries. Basically, his message
is....'don't waste your time attempting to develop 'aid' programmes,
even 'genuine aid' programmes.....the social and economic forces in
the world are such that (you) have absolutely no way of providing
genuine aid to the underdeveloped countries. Development of the
latter must be carried out, however hard and harsh the road, by the
natives by their own efforts....(you must) unmask the true face of
'aid'....fight the basic philosophy in (your) own society which
sanctifies the exploitation of man by man....'
To back up his point he illustrated the working of the present
system in India, which is characterised by the following features:
1. Research in Western-style institutes grafted into India is
completely isolated from the production system.
2. The production system, which is largely foreign owned, takes its
technology from the parent organisation abroad..
3. While the lack of skilled manpower is officially lamented,
engineers and scientists who are produced remain unemployed or else
emigrate.
4. Higher education, secondary education and primary education get
priority in that order, despite 71% illiteracy.
5. India, a protein-undernourished country, exports protein-rich
feedstuffs to the developed countries for animal-feed, ie for wasteful
conversion to animal-protein.
6. R and D institutions remain as ornaments to provide jobs for the
children of the rich, or to provide services to some of the
enclave-industries.
Professor Bhattacharva makes the case for the development of a
dispersed technology at the intermediate level, close to, and
interacting creatively with, traditional production systems.
Readers of this column will note the similarity of the above to
the arguments which I have been developing in relation to Ireland.
The Indian situation is more extreme than the Irish, but there are
significant parallels in Ireland to every one of Professor
Bhattacharva's points.
Those of us who see it this way have the following problem: do
we interpret his advice as advice to us (ie do we identify with the
French, British or American scientists who have goodwill towards the
third world and who participate in the 'aid schemes' which he
condemns?), or do we identify with his position and echo his advice,
suitably adapted, to the expatriate expert who comes to work in
Ireland?
There is a significant difference: the expatriate expert in
Ireland is usually working for a multinational corporation, rather
than as part of an 'aid scheme'. Ireland is not 'third world' as far
as aid schemes are concerned....indeed, we have various aid schemes to
the third world which possibly qualify for condemnation on Professor
Bhattacharva's terms.
If, however, we do succeed in identifying with his position, is
there then perhaps scope for exchange of experience between developing
countries, with Ireland accepted among their number? Can the poor not
help the poor?
July 22 1975
It has been evident for some time that most if not all of the
State-sponsored bodies have a manpower planning problem, as the cohort
of initially-recruited staff ages. This can have very negative
effects on the career prospects of younger recruits, and can lead to
internal tensions and disillusion on a grand scale.
There is evidence that the State and semi-State agencies are
becoming aware of this; the ESB has been following up actively the
'export knowhow package' market pioneered by Bord na Mona and Aer
Lingus. There is an embryonic group called DEVCO, with which
SFADCO(11) is associated, which looks like becoming a useful pool of
exportable knowhow experience gained by the activities of the
semi-State bodies.....
An analogous process has already been developed by British Rail,
which in 1970 established a subsidiary called Transmark for exporting
consultancy services in rail technology to developing countries.
Brazil is to invest 2,000M pounds over the next five years in
railways, and Venezuela, currently without railways, is to build a
4000 km network.
Transmark has done work for CIE in evaluating the feasibility of
suburban rail electricication.
Profitability of the domestic rail system is, of course, not
necessarily a good measure of the expertise of rail system engineers;
there are spurious elements in the traditional costings of
transportation systems which are beginning to be recognised and
consolidated into a rational system of subsidies. Transmark clearly
enjoys a high international reputation; this suggests that CIE, if
engaged in the DEVCO process, would need to carve out an ecological
niche for its services without competing with the BR subsidiary.
To my knowledge the strongest area of CIE exportable expertise is
the analysis of urban road passenger systems, for which unfortunately
they they still appear to be fighting a losing battle on the home
market, so that there is no credible 'shop window'. All the more
reason for Dublin public transport users to unite and press for a
proper system of public vehicle priorities, so that CIE losses can be
cut, and an acceptable service provided. CIE public transport skills
cannot be exported unless they can demonstrate a creditable
performance on the home market.
December 9 1975
I referred on October 28 to an 'alternative technology'
conference in Bradford which looked as if it might make a bridge
between the philosophers and the organised redundant workers of Lucas
Aerospace ltd. This took place on November 15-16. I have seen the
conference documents; there is also some feedback via the New
Scientist of November 20. ]
It seems that the hoped-for bridge-building did not take place,
at least in the form intended. The Lucas Shop Stewards Committee,
which had taken the original initiative in writing around to the
'alternative technology' people for ideas, was put off by the relative
lack of response, and particularly by the insistence of the Bradford
conference organisers of the need for 'management-worker synthesis'...
The Lucas workers, understandably, did not feel happy about sitting
down with the same management that was planning their redundancy.
The non-attendance of the Lucas workers, however, had the effect
(according to the New Scientist) of polarising the 'alternative
technology' conference into the 'well-heeled drop-outs with
aspirations to play at being an idealised peasantry' (on the one hand)
and those who accept that 'alternative technology' has a potential
positive role to play in providing jobs for redundant workers, on the
other.
The Lucas Committee plan, however, is positively forging ahead.
One result is the prevention of the sacking of 167 workers in the
Hemel Hempstead factory, who had been producing industrial
ball-screws. A new market was detected and tapped as a result of the
committee initiative.
Products envisaged in the Committees's plan include: integrated
energy systems for houses, fuel cells burning hydrogen (enabling solar
energy to be tapped and stored), fail-safe braking systems for buses,
airships, hybrid vehicles (having small petrol engines and energy
storage by battery to cope with the acceleration load)(12), devices
for the disabled etc.
The philosophy of the Lucas workers is to accept that it is
useless to demand public money for the continuation of the same
thing.... If public money is to be pumped into an ailing
high-technology firm, the public ought to be able to see something
socially useful emerging.
January 13 1976
I met Peter O'Brien, an expatriate Irishman on the staff of
UNCTAD (the United Nations Committee for trade and Development) at
Geneva, who was here last week on a fact-finding mission. He will
return, as there are many positive elements in Irish technology which
might make Ireland a candidate for the siting of a 'Transfer of
Technology Centre' under UN auspices.
The precise picture is not yet clear, but there is a need for
people in developing countries to get a training in problem-solving
which makes use of relevant technology, enabling them to take
investment decisions without depending on the advice of the
hardware-suppliers.
There are vendors of Irish technology, mainly in the
State-sponsored bodies, where there is a good track-record in this
field. Aer Lingus, Bord na Mona and the ESB are all in the knowhow
export market, training being in all cases a part of the package. I
suspect that the UNCTAD concept would be likely to involve linking
this with the third-level education system. This step has to date not
been taken by the State bodies concerned, largely (I understand)
because the 3rd-level system has managed to project an image which is
not business-like. This needs to be bourne in mind when specifying
'Technology Transfer Centres'.
I referred last week(13) to a rather weak export image projected
by the Irish 3rd-level system in the 'European University News'. This
image will undoubtedly be strengthened by a glossy NSC production
entitled 'Ireland-Science and Technology' edited by Dr W K Downey.
This covers systematically all the universities, colleges of
technology, institutes and agencies where work of relevance to science
and technology is going on, with photographs and shop-window
statements by responsible authors in each institution.
This publication establishes the NSC with an important role in
the development of an export-marketing agency for 3rd-level education
in Ireland(4). This process must be viewed as a generator of jobs for
graduates in Ireland, or based in Ireland with spells abroad....
NOTES
1. This formula was subsequently adopted by Professor F G Foster of
the TCD Statistics Department and implemented in the form of the
'Systems Development Programme', supported in part by the Irish
Department of Foreign Affairs. The programme has UNIDO recognition.
2. The writer attended the UN conference on Renewable Energy in
Nairobi in August 1981. Arising from this he attempted to get going
some joint Irish-Kenyan work involving postgraduate training of
engineers in renewable energy systems, the central concept being the
multi-source small-scale local renewable energy centre (1MW or less).
The proposal foundered on the rock of the conventional wisdom that
energy schemes should be large-scale. People seem to have forgotten
that in the developed countries small-scale local schemes preceded the
national grid, were good training-grounds for electrical technicians,
and tied up little capital.
3. See Chapter 1.1 (Science, Technology and the State) on this date.
4. There now exists an inter-college co-operative body, HEDCO, which
is actively promoting the export of 3rd-level education knowhow. It
works closely with DEVCO (see note 11). Its largest contract to date
(1983) involves setting up an engineering faculty in the University of
Jordan.
5. In the Irish microcosm, those of us who have attempted to get
support for a political approach to the resolution of the Anglo-Irish
conflict can in a sense claim to be the analogues of the 'peace
activists' in the Heffner sense. Theoretically, the associated
'non-zero-sum game' structure of the problem is somewhat more complex
than the East-West version; there are many more groupings involved,
not the least being the English people, who are paying through
taxation for the present repression. It is, however, quantifiable,
and I put in an application for support for a research project along
these lines to the National Science Council some years ago.. Needless
to say I heard no more about it. So peace research, on an academic
scientific basis analogous to what is going on in the US, Sweden and
elsewhere, does not exist in Ireland. I can claim to have sown the
seed. There has recently been started a School of Peace Studies
associated with the Jesuit centre at Milltown Park, Dublin; this
however lacks a science/technology dimension. (A 'zero-sum game', by
the way, implies that there is always a winner and a loser. A
'non-zero-sum game' implies the possibility of a co-operative strategy
to gain a benefit; in the case of many participants, it implies the
possibility of various types of alliance developing. There is an
extensive mathematical theory, amenable to use in computer
simulation.)
6. See Chapter 5.2 (Scientific and Technological Information) on
5/3/70 and then on 6/9/72.
7. The CIA-financed overthrow of the democratically-elected
government of Allende had just taken place; his widow took part in
the conference.
8. At this time Dr Salazar was still running Portugal as a Fascist
state in the style of the 20s. In an aside in the column, the writer
pointed out the danger of developing technological relations with
Portugal, as the IIRS was then doing in the pharmaceuticals field
through the work of Dr Arni. Such relations, had they developed,
would have destroyed in embryo our good standing as a source of
'technology transfer' to the third world. We would have been dealing
with a nation which had earned opprobrium as a perpetrator of
old-fashioned colonial repression.
9. Ireland has not yet managed to pull in any UN-financed
international service (with the exception of publishing through
Tycooley).. The type of technology transfer service envisaged is
taking place through HEDCO and DEVCO-initiated activity, without
focussed UN recognition. The enquiries of Peter O'Brien (see 13/1/76
in this chapter) never bore fruit. The writer in 1979 carried out a
small feasibility study for FAO around the concept of technical centre
for software development to service the needs of the international
network for information on the genetics of the main food crops. There
are many similar opportunities for Irish initiatives to provide
prestigeous specialist services of this type.
10. This body, which was inaugurated in 1949 by Bernal, Joliot-Curie
and others in a vain attempt to halt the development of the cold war
and the nuclear arms race, has been forced by default into a posture
of apparent subservience to the Soviet line on most issues. The 1973
Moscow conference and the associated period of 'detente' gave it an
opportunity to broaden its basis of support in Western Europe, and
emerging as a genuinely interactive east-west forum. Regrettably it
cannot be said to have been wholly successful. The inaugural meeting
was held on April 20 1949 in the Salle Pleyel in Paris. There were
2198 delegates from 72 countries; a further 251 delegates whose entry
had been blocked by the French Government met in parallel session in
Prague. By this time 'peace' had become a 'dirty word' and the World
Peace Council (which believed in organising people in large numbers to
block from below war-like activity by governments) was generally
regarded as some kind of Red conspiracy. By 1967 however the WPC had
achieved recognition by the UN as a non-governmental organisation with
consultative status. Now when they want to meet in Paris, they can
meet in the Senate-house with the blessing of the French Government,
and without having the entry of delegates blocked. This is one
measure of the decline of cold-war politics; it was, at least in
1973, possible to discuss problems of technology and the third world
without being unduly bedevilled by east-west politics. In 1983
regrettably the situation is visibly worse, thanks to Reagan and the
re-deification of the arms race.
11. Shannon Free Airport Development Co.; this was the first of the
semi-State bodies to promote actively the export of knowhow. Its
experience in this field led to the setting up of DEVCO, to service
knowhow-export from the State sector as a whole, under the
chairmanship of Brendan O'Regan.
12. See Chapter 3.1 (Engineering and Manufacturing) 25/8/71. The
hybrid vehicle concept has been around for some time. It deserves
more attention than it has got.
13. See Chapter 1.3 (The Educational System) 6/1/76.
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