Social Science Research and Public Policy

Social Science Research and Public Policy social scientific purpose? And what was his purpose in placing a paper like this one, perhaps the summary of his work, in an Indian journal? We have to say that we do not know the answer to the first question. Regarding the second question, we can think of only one purpose: to influence social scientific research in India. Had he confined himself to writing a critique of what he saw during his field research, we might be wrong in our conclusion. In addition to offering an evaluative summary of Indian research, he provides us with recommendations. Perhaps even this could be regarded simply as an expression of the so-called 'human interest' if such an interest had also been shown by Third World scholars in evaluating social science research trends and funding in the United States. We checked an American index of social science periodicals to see if an Indian scholar's commentary on American social research had been published in the past ten years. We did not find a single example. To say that Indians have not been interested in studying and commenting on American social research is to miss a vital aspect of the current sociology of knowledge. The direction of in- Uneasy Truce, What Next?