History from the Police Torture Chamber

sisting in the matching of national resources with needs on a priority basis, can only succeed if the resources are freed from control by vested interests. Unless resources are so freed, and made available, no planning can take place despite the organisational and ceremonial paraphernalia. Hence the crucial question in the present situation is as to how far the elected rulers are prepared to curb the powerful vested interests. Thus, whether the nation becomes technologically self- reliant or dependent will be decided by our preparedness to grow new knowledge according to needs and to compete on the basis of the quality of our products. However, if our entrepreneurs try to fulfil their narrow short-run interests rather than the long-run national ones, they will rather buy technology from abroad than invest in research and development, and this is what they have been doing: "Efforts have been made to link various streams of industrial production with institutions imparting technical education in order to obtain not only the mandate for the direction of technical education but also mobilise some resources for at least R and D work in technical institutions. There is enough evidence to show that the expected response has not been forthcoming from entrepreneurs either because their expectations of returns from investment are not very high or because it is cheaper to buy modern technologies from abroad" (p 107). In other words, buying modern technology from abroad makes our research institutions redundant, leading to even more need to buy from abroad. This vicious circle of dependency is a serious problem; dealing with it requires struggling against international monopoly capital and its collaborators within the country. Trying to deal with it by methods such as distributing 2,000 computers in schools in 1984-86 "to demistify the computer" (p 71) is like treating cancer with aspirin.