Science has emerged when humans started their Journey on this planet, gifted with an inquisitive mind, wondering and wandering, seeking to understand nature, shaping ‘relationships’ into a family, conditioning themselves to the struggle for survival, coming to terms with nature and its ‘seasons’, science and society have ‘evolved together’ establishing reciprocal correlates that have contributed to the evolutionary process of the ‘Jungle-man’ turning a citizen of the planet earth, yet characterized as a ‘social animal. It is his exploration of knowledge, (the ‘truth’) his search for the modes of survival, and urge for establishing his equations with his fellow humans et al., that have resulted in the build-up of material and non-material culture, and cultural parallels with several such clusters forging into civilizations. Civilizations have established the fact that the correlates between science and society have growth from a static equation to a dynamic process; from simple to complex, together inseparably contributing to making of the transformation both evolutionary and integrative, and revolutionary and disintegrative, concurrently. The nonuse, use, misuse and abuse of ‘science’ continues to remain in the hands of man. What for and how man uses his knowledge of the science of life determines the future of man. This issue has been crystallized by Margaret Mead long ago, in the form of her reflections of the interaction between science and society: “In each age, there is a series of pressing questions which must be asked and answered. On the correctness of the question depends the survival of those who ask. On the quality of the answer depends the quality of life those survivors will lead”. Today, the issue has acquired criticality, quality and life have not remained segregated but have become a set of aggregated variables.

The processes of “exploration” “speculation”, “explanation” and “experimentation” variously impacted by time and space variables, have led to the consequence of fragmentation of knowledge as well as of science, leading to a succession of ‘Schools’ of thought, and formulation of ‘conditioned’ dispositions with ideological labels. When the social reality — inseparably interwoven processes - is fragmented, it leads to fragmented explanations and speculative applications. It is high time that scientists recognize and correct this phenomenon of co-existing contradictions that has been summed up as: “Specialization has got the defects of its virtues”. In more substantial and visible terms, society has realized, by experience, the gravity of leaving economic development to the economists, politics to the politicians and political scientists; policing to the police, Justice administration to the Judges, nuclear weapons to the nuclear scientists et al. as their exclusive ‘realms’. We are witness to, as also the victims of, the global scenario of polarization as well as fragmentation of science, its applications and consequential impact on society. It was intellectually easier and perhaps ‘ego-satisfying’ to explore and postulate theories and concepts, but scientists have recognized the pitfalls therein, and the need for convergence so as to attain synergy and thus meet the challenge of change facing them.

The reciprocal impact of ‘social reality’ and the ‘value-parameters’ of science is best illustrated by the award of Noble Prize in Economics for the year 1975 on the value premise postulated in terms of “profitability” as the prime requisite for the emergence, operation and continued existence of ‘organisations’. Such a value premise has been shifted to the “humanist - well being” as the rationale for organizations, as recognized in the award of the same Noble Prize for Economics in 1999. ‘Value-shifts’ can take place in less than a quarter century, within the life span of a single generation, manifest in terms of either ‘evolutionary’ or ‘revolutionary’ change. When science keeps distance from ‘social reality’, it retains and reinforces the isolated ‘ivory tower’ image. Science meets its challenge on the ground, in the society in order to secure validation as science.

It was John Lundberg, the German thinker, who had stated [during the 19th century] that “Science is not a subject but the method”; integrative, holistic, verifiable, that can be validated, ethical et al. Science had experimented with methods such as ‘empiricism’ statistical verification, experimentation, level of significance and validation but has not been able to come to grips with the rigours of ‘method’ so as to be able to formulate a modus of application and replication.

While the social scientists are taking faltering steps in the direction of application, the stream of scientists in natural, physical and medical sciences are registering relative success as a result of their ‘methodological’ advances, and their graduation into technological. The critical dimension of the “method” is recognized but not yet established in the stream of social sciences; its credentials remain undeveloped and suspect in regard to social development and transformation.

The Decade of Development (1991–1999) global dialogue conducted under the aegis of the United Nations has come out, inter alia, with one cardinal observation; Development is not the quantitative substance, but the “process” of change. It is the “modus” that has been found to be more critical than the substance of “development”. Method, i.e, the process has come to be recognized as the critical variable and ingredient of sustainable development. The several streams of social sciences have to jell and fuse into the mainstream of social science and ‘focus’ on its methodological rigour in order to be able to comprehend and contribute to the ‘process’ of development, so as to make it ‘sustainable’ and tenable. To move over from the ivory tower comforts of fragmentation (in the name of specialization), speculation, theorizing and ‘dogmatization’, social science has to meet the process and challenge of change on the ground. The tenability of social science depends upon the graduation of social scientists into social-technologists and managers of ‘social engineering’, to attain a state of convergence. Social science has to facilitate fine-tuning the macro-generalities and the micro-realities, for at the turn of 21st century man has come to represent the measure of human development. Social science comes of age when it meets the society, face to face with the challenge of directing and managing social change. It has to shift its focus from research reports and number of Ph.Ds. ‘produced’ to ‘social recognition; earned on the strength of applications and ‘mission’ orientation. Social science has to establish its professional credentials.

Industrialization was ushered into India at the advent of the 20th century, as the harbinger of prosperity and of better standards of life, ‘equated’ with quality of life. But, a variety of factors that emerged from within and impinged from without merely shifted their base from rural backyards to the urban slums and pavements so that the quality of life degenerated to a status of servility, frustration and suppressed hostility. Alongside came to ‘mobilization’ for political freedom, laced with the social reform and the human rights movements. India had attained political freedom and celebrated it by developing a blue print, the Constitution of India, through uniquely its own ethos of synthesis (Samanvaya), humanist vision and consensual process incorporating its own mode of participative democracy, ‘development’ and the institutions for good governance. Most important of all, the constitution envisaged the need and provided for a dynamic ‘moving-equilibrium’ between the Constitutional goals and social transformation on the ground so that it promotes and sustains a revolutionary change through an evolutionary progression of social transformation. The Constitution of India is hailed as the first document of human rights in the most comprehensive form — the political, economic, social and the cultural facets - winning for India the acclaim as a ‘role-model’, especially for the emerging democracies. In fact, India has played a prime role in shaping the global ethic of movement towards democracy, which itself has come to be celebrated as if it represented the “end of history”. The Indian ‘model’ of democracy has made a shift from the dogmatized ‘models’, polarized by the extremes of ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’. The collapse of socialism though celebrated in the polarized world, has not vindicated either the market —driven capitalism, or the mixed-mode of India. The Gandhian model having never been given even a limited or even an experimental chance has hence not been tested and has remained consigned to the archives. Having experimented with the diverse mutations of growth and development, the comity of nations had organized the decade long global level ‘Dialogue on Development’ [1991–1999] for all of their experiments have suffered a ‘trauma’ in diverse ways, unique within their own respective ‘boundaries’ and have brought out some common strands of experience.

Twentieth century ‘development’ has witnessed a scenario where: nations prospered while sections of peoples have been impoverished leading to their marginalisation and alienation, disparities have grown due to exploitative human relations; large sections of populations have been subjected to distress migration in search of livelihood and an equally large section of poor and ‘backward’ communities became refugees of the developmental projects; institutions of state have become grossly non-performing, if not, atrophied, trespassing the very human rights they were designed to protect and promote - there has emerged a direct correlation between economic prosperity, social strife and conflict.

What has been found at the global level proved to be even more glaring and acute in regard to India. India has no doubt developed a continental economy and made significant strides in the spheres of food production, scientific advances and a technological break-through but, India's significant economic growth in GDP terms has not only failed to alleviate the human condition but has accentuated the preexisting distortions, caused social degradation, and generated Gross Social conflict (GSC), negating much of the development that has been registered. India has rediscovered, along with the rest of the world, that increases in GDP do not, ipso facto. contribute to human development, and that we have to shift the measurement of development in terms of Human Development Index (HDI); by which measure, our performance has been found, ‘statistically’, to be distressing among the comity of nations. The degradation is experienced by the people as an empirical reality. The consequence is that today democracy in India has become regressive, turbulent and fragile, with a growing volume of violence, which is the very anti-thesis of both democracy and development. Gross Social Conflict (GSC) is creating a political backlash detrimental to both democracy and development.

It is a challenge to the social scientists to explain as to where and what has been inadequate? Why are we where we are, in spite of the national vision and mission - mode of governance as the design parameters for the ‘institutions’ of state? Have we failed to recognize, or even observe what is visible to the naked eye that, the political, economic, social and cultural change is not ‘sequential’ or isolated but ‘concurrent’ and ‘interactive’; and to attune the macro and the micro processes? Is it that we assumed that economic growth will, ipso facto, contribute to social and cultural development? Equality, that the New Economic Policy (NEP) will operate as a corrective to the shortfalls and distortions in development? or failed to provide built-in correctives in the form of a ‘middle — path’?; opened the flood-gates of liberalization without setting in place safety nets, to facilitate smooth transitions?; or, bureaucratized the entire process of development? Even worse, having recognised the need for peoples' ‘participation’ as a prime-requisite for development, pressed the button to effect a pause in ‘development’, amended the Constitutional status and role to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), forgotten to ‘de-centralise’ administration, and by volition, negated the Constitutional amendment through power-driven de facto political re-centralization?; choked the PRIs like we have been doing, by tradition, the female child to extinction? Did we fail to mould and attune the NEP to our Constitutional vision? Having recognized the gravity of the need for a redefinition of the role of the state and to redesign the Institutions of governance, (measured by the number of reform commissions and committees) we have built only a magnificent set of national archives and the state as a mighty machine?

Did we fail to check the reckless-drive towards privatization et al. especially in some states, in the wake of fresh opportunities thrown up in the form of liberalization, and shifting equations as between the centre and the states? In the conflict of values, interests and identities that have ravaged the nation in the making, did we jettison the overarching values of a liberal constitutional democracy? Have we energized or enervated the prime-movers of our Constitutional democracy - the political parties? Or, consciously tempered them into ‘corporate’ organizations? In sum and substance, how far have our social scientists recognized and succeeded or failed in integrating democracy and development as the inseparable sides of a coin? Have we failed in effecting decentralization and participation as the vitals of democracy, not merely as the means but also as an integral part of the process of development?

Even a satellite view of the first five decades of national development reveals that the dimensions of development and the dynamics of democracy are interwoven. An analysis of these dimensions and dynamics is the ‘natural’ professional terrain of social science. At the end of the five take-off decades of national development, India is back to its own civilizational perspective of development, expressed as ‘Abhyudaya’ meaning, in quintessential terms, that material growth gets validated only when it contributes to the equity and quality of life of the people. Indian tradition held that “man is the measure of development”. Jennifer Miller (of the British Museum) observed “the lofty, holistic and all-inclusive vision of the sages of ancient India was cosmic, not just global”. The essence of the Indian civilization, the concept of Abhyudeya had to be imported from the west and wrapped up as the ‘HDI’. India has the civilizational wisdom, national vision of holistic social transformation, and is endowed with national and human resources to become a ‘great’ democracy, but we witness a regression of constitutional democracy, and a degradation of the human condition. India seems a country at war with itself, suffering from Gross Social Conflict (GSC), a multi-dimensional social strife; a country of a billion plus people, but remains a country of ‘people’ without the pride of being ‘citizens’ of a nation, moving forward as a great democracy.

A critical, or a fatal lapse has been the non-recognition, and nonobservance on the ground, of several ‘contra-indicators’ of development. Suffice it to say that a series of contra-indicators have emerged in regard to spheres such as education, health-care and development of tribal communities.

Where and why are we sliding? How do we arrest this slide? How do we translate our vision into reality and sustain, nourish and renew our democracy? Whether social science? How do we revive the atrophied national institutions-political, legislative, administrative, regulatory, judicial, educational, health-medi-care, along with the institutions of the Fourth and Fifth Estates, and the professions from the state of low/Nonfunctional National Institutions (NNIs) into the instruments of social transformation? Whither social science? What is its status? Shall we not address its role and upgrade its potential, as a prerequisite so it can perform its professional role?

Somewhere earlier in this paper it was observed that exploring the theme presents a fascinating opportunity. But the Indian ‘scenario’ of social science research emerges as so complex and clouded that the fascination turns into a daunting challenge. Hence this exercise of ‘mapping’ will only end up as no more than ‘profiling’ where the artist adapts his own ‘idiom’

It has been recognized that science and society have reciprocal correlates constantly interacting and together contributing to the process of development. In the Indian scenario, the reciprocity emerges in the form of societal needs for directed social change (of a revolutionary character and scale, but in an evolutionary mode) through ‘socio-legal’, ‘value-engineering’ in keeping with the normative framework of Constitutional democracy, [based on decentralization of institutions and participative processes] humanist development, and good governance, institutions cooperating with each other in order to realise an inseparable set of common objectives, warranting operational convergence and synergy. In sum, the vision of the nation and the mission of the institutions (including their operational norms and ethos) are clear at the starting line of the national tryst with destiny. The vision represents the ‘demand’ made on social science for its translation into reality, on a mission-mode. Thus, society has carved out a role for social science. How far, and how did social science respond on the ‘supply side’? If it has not responded adequately and appropriately, the question emerges as to why social science has not been able to do so. An overview of these issues constitutes the canvas for the leading question of the theme of the National Conference [2004]. ‘The role and future directions of social science research in national development’

There has been a deficiency in the institutional design that has shaped social science, and that deficiency continues to operate even after awareness of the mission of social science research in national development. The deficiency has surfaced as a consequence of the outdated role and structure of the education system. The sub-system has not been re-engineered to meet the objectives and place of education in the mainstream of an emerging democracy with a vision and an agenda of comprehensive change - “transformation”.

India's educational system has not yet attained a stable-state, has not emerged from the ‘experimental’ stage; it is struggling to attain a state where it can perform, (tooled and be measured) by the design parameters. In fact, the first five decades proved to be very unsettling for the education system. The only change has been an ‘explosion’ of ‘experimentation’ with the lives of two generations. Like a ‘cloud-burst’, it has devastated society. The rhetoric on the reform of education has become cacophonic. The debate over the issues and challenges of ‘reform’ in the education system are dominated by the ‘false pains’ reflected in the form of (1) language/medium, (2) mass production of educated unemployable graduates (3) role and place of university level education (begin pursued as if it is a solution to unemployment, and as a way to meet competition in the employment market), (4) minority —educational Institutions and reservations, (5) privatization of education, with its attendant corporatization and escalation of costs, leading to subsidies and (6) brain-drain vis a vis inflo of forex. Indian education has not yet perceived the Constitutional vision of the nation; how can it then perceive its own role, and place itself on a ‘mission-mode’? The debate over the ‘false’ issues has assumed the proportion of forest fires. The fires have to be contained before the process of ‘regeneration’ can be initiated. Several national and state level commissions and committees have been set up but even before the wisdom of the first generation commissions [1947–70] could be absorbed by the education system, they are drowned by the ‘second generation’ [1970–2000] inputs in the name and form of reforms that are adding fuel to the raging fires. If this is the ‘soil condition’ how can social science, even if it is like the High Yielding Variety (HYV) of seed, take its roots, flourish and yield fruit?

In India since independence, several good ideas have been given concrete Institutional (structural) shape and ‘grounded’. If such institutions have to take roots, they have to be jelled into the ‘supply-chain’. Social science research represents, or it should provide a bridge between the ‘KNOW HOW’ supplied by the education system, and the ‘DO HOW’, the application of the KNOW HOW. Devoid of application-oriented exploration and development of social science technology and management, social science has remained in a glorious state of knowledge-explosion. The great reservior of social science in India can be likened to a gigantic reservoir damned without using the waters either for power generation, or irrigation or to quench the thirst of parched throats. Conceptual-theoretical exploration is necessary and should be adequate in other to facilitate the role of social science in society. Similarly, empiricism cannot be seen as the end all of social science; it reminds us of the jurisprudential dictum: “absence of evidence is no evidence of its absence”. This dictum vividly illustrates the ethnocentric premises in understanding and explaining the roots and rationale of customs and traditions of tribal communities in practices relating to farming and child rearing.

India had demonstrated success' stories in registering scientific advances and ‘developing’ applications in critical areas, designed ‘drawing table’ models for applications, developed full-scale technology, and grounded projects for commercial production, through ‘transfer of technology’ where specialist engineer-scientists provided ‘extension’ services to production ‘managers’. Also, the scientist-engineers have evolved themselves as technologists and managers. This ‘chain’ has been demonstrated in several research streams such as atomic energy [BARC], space [VSSC] and defence [DRDL]. All of them have attained a level of excellence to a point where they converted ‘losing’ situations such as “technology denied” into winning opportunities of “technology gained”. Such a ‘mission-mode’ has been attained even in other sectors and streams of national development such as agriculture where a visionary, creative leadership and mission mode had succeeded in establishing institutional convergence between the politicocrat, the bureaucrat and the technocrat in attaining the first agricultural revolution in India. All these land-marks of institutional development have proved that national development is a function of organizational development as a managerial mode for the fulfillment of a vision.

Through the modes of ‘Technology Missions’, we have discovered, and demonstrated how the national vision can be translated into reality in the sphere of social development covering items such as drinking water supply, polio-eradication, literacy etc. The initiative for technology mission, ‘Mission Technology’ had emerged, strangely, from outside the institutions of social science. Social Science has not cultivated the process of converting ‘know-how gained by research into DO HOW’. In place of a ‘DO HOW’ orientation, and institutional convergence and synergy that would have established its credibility, social science has retained some of its preexisting limitations and imbibed some more aberrations that emerged within society.

The diverse streams of natural science had derived the strength of convergence [in the form of BARC, VSSC, DRDL] and further reinforced by TIFAC agenda enabling mission-orientation. The various steams of social science remained isolated parallels, channeled by diverse, if not different, support systems such as the UGC and the ICSSR. In the absence of convergence, and an activity chain, social science lagged, and could not step into the realm of ‘applications’. The entry into the realm of applications, in the form of ‘evaluation’ studies, was found to be from the wrong-end, the OUT gate.

Collection of empirical data ‘on-scale’ was explained away as ‘costly’ but it has not focused on the macro data generated by diverse institutions. There has emerged from the administrative, development organizations, ministries and parliamentary committees, a large mass of macro data on issues such as ‘crime’ (NCRB), population/census (RG01), cooperative credit [NCDC], and justice delivery. The administrative units/ministries did not enter the arena of analysis, interpretation and inference, for policy reformulation as a part of the management of development. But social science, by virtue of a theoretical orientation and purity of academic ‘disciplonary’ conditioning, did not attempt to enter the realm of public policy management, the IN gate of social development.

Social science has not focussed on the redefinition, re-design, reform and management of the institutions and processes of national development. The critical national agenda of political, legislative, administrative and judicial reform, and the dysfunctional institutional interface management that is raging the institutions of governance in the form of ‘centre versus state’, ‘legislature versus judiciary’, ‘generalist versus specialist’, ‘technocrat versus bureaucrat’, ‘ministers versus civil servants’, ‘IAS versus IPS’ et al. have not captured the attention of social science in India with the consequence that it has isolated and marginalized itself. Instead of promoting institutional convergence, as an essential process and as a fascinating opportunity, social scientists have fragmented the problems and issues of change/development.

Social science in India has pursued the diverse facets and processes of development - the political, the economic, the social and cultural as if they are independent ‘parallels’ or as ‘sequential’ - whereas in reality they are integral and concurrent. That is where economics has assumed, and allowed to assume, an exclusivist role as if development is an economic process, and that increases in GDP at a macro level will, ipso facto, lead to a change in the micro-social conditions. The skewed pattern and processes of ‘development’ has to be blamed, not economists alone, but as much as the other ‘streams’ of social science.

Social science has not recognized the potential of collaborative relations with the Non-Government Organizations of civil society that have entered the field of development in a big way. Social action provided a bridge between social research and national development. Social action represents one of the tools of social science research.

Shaping the public policy, processes of democratization and development have been contributed to by the social scientists elsewhere, through institutional innovation and co-optation in the form of ‘THINK - TANKS’, and diverse forms of multi-disciplinary institutional convergence. In the Indian scenario, the very spirit, ethos and role of ‘intellectuals’ as the watch dogs of institutions and processes have been diluted and distorted in diverse forms such as (a) centres of learning have either been reduced to or labelled as ‘schools’ or pools of ideologically trapped ‘determinism’, intellectuals walking into the partisantraps called ‘intellectual-cells’ of political parties, foreign versus Indian consultancy groups; World-Bank economists, and the like.

Social scientists who entered the application-oriented institutions such as management schools, institutions of technology and academies of administration are looked down upon by the ‘puritans’ confined to the universities.

The process of national development is starved of nourishment and renewal. The founding fathers of the Republic have provided for universal adult suffrage in recognition of the over-arching values of liberal democracy. The social responsibility is on the profession of social science to provide the inputs to the political system. The political system itself has expressed the need for ‘know-how’ and ‘do-how’ inputs in the management of democracy, development and goverance. But social science has not built any bridges, in other to create convergence within and to reach out to the political system as the prime-mover of the nation. Such initiatives are well developed in the democracies in the west, as much as all over the Asian region, but not in India.

Social science has yet to develop its own professional skills and ethos so as to establish its credentials. Are the social scientists afraid that they will be swept off the ground if the windows and doors are open to foreign consultants? Do they not recognize that they themselves have a proactive role in the era of globalization, in shaping the global ethic, processes and institutions?

They need to come out and learn to address the live problems of democracy and development, address themselves to the live issues such as (a) ‘freedom’ of the media to run opinion polls vis a vis the overarching value and sanctity of electoral process in a democracy; (b) tuning liberalization as a two-way process of absorbing as well as shaping the process of globalisation; (c) disentangle and operationalise the logjam of secularism; (d) explore sustainable development of tribal communities; (e) initiate cross-cultural studies so as to build bridges across cultural boundaries, in keeping with and aiding the process of democracy as a universal value.

Social science has to orient itself so as to be able to help (a) ‘scientists’ develop managerial skills, (b) administrators to become extension workers and change agents - and (c) universities to become engines of national development. It would be insightful to examine as to why partnerships between industry and universities, attempted several times, have not fructified in the sphere of social science as a link in the activity chain of development.

Social science gets validated on the ground; such validation wins and sustains its credentials. When change has been constant and evolutionary, the role of science was confined to observation and explanation in terms of philosophical postulations. But with the advent of directed social change, being accelerated rapidly by the processes of democratization, social science has been assigned the challenge of managing change. Science is alive to the challenge, but has not as yet developed the technology for managing change. Facing the challenge in terms of ‘ sociolegal engineering’, social science has to either ‘prove itself or perish’, dismissed to the status of a post facto analyst or to a post-mortem specialist.

5.1. For long, social science and management had recognized and operated on the premise that communities and countries are culturebound, and hence their explorations analyses and explanations are situation specific. But today, in the era of globalisation and citizenship of the planet-earth, social science has to deal with the cross-cultural realities on the ground, help manage social change across-cultural boundaries, and yet sustain the multi-cultural character of human society. For, mono-culture can lead, in the ‘ultimate’ analysis, to self destruction. Social science has to restructure itself from the disciplinary mode to a trans-disciplinary mainstream of development.

5.2. The mission of social science continues to be situation specific: the Indian situation is guided by the vision of India. If the vision is distorted in any way, promoting clarity of that vision is a prime role for social science so as to be able to clearly articulate its own mission, and help the nation in managing that vision.

5.3. If is only when the national vision is clearly set out that the development/change process can be managed, and contra —indicators monitored in good time, as pointers to distortions of development. The contra - indicators of development, in regard to critical aspects such as education, health - care, sustainable development (the value of traditional customs, equity as between generations), tribes transmutating as castes, et al. have to be monitored and corrected so as to contain the distortions of development. ¹

5.4. Research is a vital prerequisite but not adequate; hence it has to adopt and adapt the mode of application orientation. The ‘technology’ of social science has to be based on a fusion of three tools constituting an activity chain, viz; research, training and organisational institutional development. Research is the base, it has to lead to training imparting skills to the managers (political, legislative, administrative, judicial, non-governmental, industrial, et al.), and help in the development of organizations (instrumentalities of change). It is a challenge of enabling the actors and institutions of development to function. Otherwise, we will continue to exist with axiomatic statements such as ‘man versus system’, ‘egg or the chick’ et al. Happily, the researchers in natural and physical sciences proved the mode of ‘Research’ and Development’. It is a successful and replicable model that the social scientists should adopt and adapt. Training, Research and Organisational Development [TROD] have to be fused together as the tools of social science. ²

5.5. Social science has to demolish the high-rise walls of isolationism; the various streams cannot afford, any more, to operate in waterfight compartments. They have to fuse together and establish convergence; far beyond ‘inter-disciplinary’, and to capture within one holistic frame, all the dimensions and dynamics of managing change.

The strategy of ‘Research and Development’ will be ‘rejected’ by the existing structures of the universities. Social Science research and development has to break free from these frozen structures. The inadequacy is already proved by the several rounds of attempts at forging convergence between the universities and industry. That such relationships proved mutually beneficial to both institutions of management and of technology, on the one hand and to the industry on the other, provided the lead for social science to evolve and adopt the ‘research and development’ mode.

5.6. A transition to the mode of research and development should not be a great problem to social science, for the change process offers several entry points, and diverse technologies for the management of development. The change process can be scrutinized from the stand-point of (a) social science analytical elements such as values, interests and identities; (b) concepts such as empowerment, participation, quality of life; (e) processes such as centralization —decentralization; (d) tools such as SWOT analysis, and extension through modes such as think-tanks and social audit, as applicable to specific situations. The society in transition is caught up in a traffic jam with the consequence of institutional atrophy, and is being drowned in increasing levels of gross social conflict. We are deadlocked even in the definition of issues such as secularism, population management, and reservations.

5.7. Public policy process offers the points of convergence of social science. Of course if offers a challenge to the ‘discipline-bound’ social sciences. Social Science has to evolve so as to be able to take on the challenge of policy analysis, monitoring, course-corrections and formulation. Entry into the realm of public policy also enables social science to develop itself.

5.8. Social science has to establish collaborative relationships with the Non-Government Development Organisations to mutual advantage.

5.9. When social science research evolves to its full potential, it transcends cultural boundaries, as the boundaries also get subsumed as elements of analysis. Social science has to evolve in order to deal with issues and processes of polarization, globalisation, liberalization on the one hand, and the reciprocal impact of the political, economic, social and cultural processes of human development, based on the scale of a world (global) view. The Decade of Development Dialogue (1991–1999) has given a universal consensual call for the setting up of a Commission on Social Development to tackle issues and distortions of development. India is a party to that universal call. Social science in India has a global agenda facing it. It is an opportunity and a challenge to establish itself. Social science presents the opportunity which social scientists have to take on as a challenge and develop a professional ethos and ethic.