PM
URGES ADVANCED NATIONS TO HELP REDUCE DEVELOPMENTAL DIVIDE IN
THE THIRD WORLD
GLOBAL
STRATEGY NEEDED FOR IMPROVING THE LOT OF POOR NATIONS – DR. JOSHI
The Prime Minister
Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee has urged the advanced nations to help
reduce the developmental divide in the third world countries.
What is needed is, bold and benign political and economic responses
from the industrialised countries to meet this challenge. And
this is what India and other developing countries have been consistently
advocating in the United Nations, WTO and other multi-lateral
forums. Reducing and ultimately removing this divide is one of
the biggest and most pressing challenges of the 21st
century, said Shri Vajpayee in his inaugural address, read out
in absentia at the 8th General Conference of the Third
World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), which began here today.
Pointing out that
science and technology are yet to make an impact on the quality
of life of hundreds of millions of people in the developing and
underdeveloped countries, Shri Vajpayee said that in addition
to political and economic initiatives, greater and appropriate
inputs of science, technology and education are needed to overcome
the developmental devide. Problems of poverty, ill-health, unemployment
etc. in these countries require low-cost solutions with optimal
use of local, natural, human and traditional resources, the Prime
Minister added.
Addressing the TWAS
scientists, the Minister for Human Resource Development and Science
and Technology Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi called for a global strategy
to improve the lot of the poor nations both in absolute terms
and also relative to the so called developed societies. This is
a primary task before the third world as it poses a great challenge
to our present generation. There is also a need to examine the
factors, which have impeded sustainability of development in the
poorer nations. Apart from this, the nature and pattern of consumption
in the developed world also requires a change and scrutiny. It
is now incumbent on TWAS to see how science and technology can
be used to break the present impasse of unbalanced growth and
how the developing nations can work together so that the current
statusco of economic development does not remain static under
the global techno-economic system evolved to suit the requirements
of rich nations, he said.
Proposing to the
consideration of the conference ‘technology with a human face’
as the common agenda, Dr. Joshi said, providing innovative solutions
in health services, population management, technology for higher
productivity, integrated management for sustainable development
and ecologically balanced management could form crucial elements
of such an agenda. The south, needs to work together for bridging
several divides, one of them being information or knowledge divide.
Indian initiatives have been focussed on reducing this and we
are also setting up new paradigms not only in technology creation
for the poor but also in technology pricing for the rich and the
poor, Dr. Joshi added.
The President of
the TWAS, Prof. C.N.R. Rao spoke of the need to strengthen knowledge-base
in the developing world and said inequalities the world over must
end and the poorest of the poor should get a better deal.
Dr. Joshi gave away
awards to outstanding scientists from the TWAS and announced 50
fellowships in biotechnology for young scientists from the third
world.
