Science and technology should be realigned in RI

Science and technology should be realigned in RI

Sulfikar Amir, New York

The 2004 legislative election ended successfully and
peacefully. Soon, for the very first time, we are going to vote
for the country's president. This is a no less daunting process
since it undoubtedly involves power-sharing, which can be messy
and unpredictable.

One thing is clear, though. Economics-related minister's
portfolios will be vigorously contested by the big players. For
these seats provide accesses to the state's financial resources.

I am not interested in discussing these lucrative seats. There
is one seat that is certainly crucial, yet ignored by politicians
for its lack of access to financial resources. I am talking about
the state minister of research and technology, a seat deemed not
lucrative and thus, usually left to the little players.

During the New Order, the position of state minister of
research and technology, as widely known, was glamorized by BJ
Habibie's central role in technology policy. For over two
decades, Habibie dominated the discourse of technology
development and relentlessly advocated high technology for
national development, making the state a major player in
technology development.

Habibie proposed a technological leapfrog by arguing that
developing high technology would allow Indonesia to catch up with
developed countries. This idea relies on the assumption that
technology is an agent of social change. His close relationship
with Soeharto enabled Habibie to nurture his pet project using
the state's economic and political resources.

From one point of view, Habibie proved that Indonesian
scientists and engineers had capabilities equal to those of
industrialized countries. Through Habibie's programs, many
talented students enjoyed the opportunity to study science and
technology at prestigious universities abroad.

With the success of the N250 flight test in 1995, Habibie
asserted that Indonesians could stand as tall as people of
developed nations. All of this is substantial progress for the
country that we are supposed to be proud of.

But pride is not enough. Despite aforementioned achievements,
it is quite clear that Habibie's hi-tech vision worked
technically but failed economically. Long before the crisis
surged over the country, economists questioned Habibie's
technology policies for their high cost and low contribution to
the economy.

Yet, the pragmatism of economists was in vain as Habibie's hi-
tech programs were not derived from economic rationality. They
were motivated more by an ideological stance than by financial
calculations.

Everybody would agree that technology is crucial to this
country. But not all of us realize that our economic and social
life today depends on imported technologies. Habibie left us with
a technological infrastructure and a small but significant number
of highly educated scientists and engineers. Hence, the issue the
next cabinet will deal with is how to rearrange this valuable
legacy, so as to make technology developments beneficial for
society at large.

The Office of the State Minister of Research and Technology,
thus far, has attempted to make technology developments down-to-
earth. A number of collaborative programs have been launched to
achieve this goal. This should be appreciated. But in my opinion
the problem is in the office itself.

With the current structure of state administration, the
office's technological programs are hardly relevant to the
demands and conditions of other related sectors because its
vision is oriented exclusively toward technology, not society.

Hence, what I propose is to split the office's two roles,
research (science) and technology, and implant them into
different institutions. This would entail a slight but crucial
change to the two existing ministries. First, the Ministry of
Industry and Trade would become "Technology, Industry, and
Trade". Second, the Ministry of National Education would become
"Science, Education, and Culture".

For years there was incoherence between economic and
technological programs. The government recently launched an Act
of National System of Science and Technology to solve this
problem. However, the Act ignored that such incoherence resulted
from a decades-long paradigm quarrel between the neoclassical
economics of economic ministers and Schumpeterian approaches
upheld by Habibie and his successors.

While the former views technology as the by-product of the
market mechanism, the latter sees technology as the source of
economic growth. The strict application of these paradigms by
competing groups, as such, results in economic policies that
ignore technological innovations on the one hand, and technology
policies that lack market considerations on the other.

The only way to reconcile these paradigms would be to conflate
their institutionalizations. For this, it would be more effective
to combine technology with industry and trade. The goal of this
integration would be two-fold.

First, it would allow technologically minded people to
directly interact with people of trade and industry, and vice
versa. These interactions would shape integrated policies of
technology, industry, and trade. Second, by integrating the
technological sector with the industrial sector, the major player
of technological development would be private, rather than state
industries.

By combining these three sectors in one institution, "the
ministry of technology, industry, and trade" would reflect the
industrialization process.

The proposed ministry would require a leader with a good
understanding of technology, industry, and trade. Moreover, the
minister would need to be aware that technological innovation is
not a cost, but a strategic investment in industry and the
economy.

One thing should be noted. Technology is never separate from
science. Thus, it is timely to pay more serious attention to the
development of science -- not solely for the satisfaction and
prestige of scientists, but for the interests of society. The
most competent institutions to conduct scientific research are
universities.

University is the place where knowledge is obtained through
scientific research and distributed through education. This is
the main reason why science and education should be combined in
one ministry.

If science and technology are separated in different
ministries, how then, do they interact? The interaction of
science and technology does not occur in state institutions. They
interact through the process of the application of knowledge by
university graduates in industry. This is a key point, whereby
the major players of technological innovation are industries --
no longer the state.

The last issue to point out is the urgency to bring culture
back into the ministry of education. Integrating culture with
tourism is a serious mistake. Culture is not about traditional
rituals, dances, craft, etc. that can be sold as commodities.
Culture is a process of interpretation through which humans
understand the world. If science is the creation of the knowledge
system and education is the distribution of that knowledge, then
culture provides the frameworks upon which the knowledge system
is based. This understanding would underpin the establishment of
a ministry of science, education and culture.

The writer, a PhD candidate of the Dept. of Science and
Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,
New York, may be contacted at amirs3@rpi.edu.