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Whose wealth?

Whose wealth? the National Institute of Science Commu nication (niscom), New Delhi, is facing flak. Several scientists working with the institute allege that niscom is virtually serving Indian knowledge on a platter to the West by transferring information from its reference series onto cd-roms. And this, they feel, will hamper the quest for scientific knowledge in India.

Interestingly, there also seems to be a transfer of copyright from niscom to ahead (Asian Health, Environment and Allied Databases), a private consortium of eight Asian countries formed in 1994, which has niscom as the nodal agency. ahead supposedly holds the copyright on the cd-roms.

Following agitation and demands by scientists and workers of niscom for an investigation into the institute's's alleged mismangement, the government recently ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry.

Things came to a sorry pass with GP Phondke, director of niscom, taking over as ahead's executive director. ahead, funded by the International Development Research Centre based in Canada, has five full-time senior scientists of niscom working for the databases. The consortium had been assigned the task of producing cd-rom databases on Asia's health, environment and natural resources (Down To Earth, Vol 4, No 15).

All the Indian information for the cd-rom databases is being transferred directly from niscom's Wealth of India series, a multi-volume printed encyclopaedia of India's natural and biological resources. The Wealth of India project has involved several generations of scientists who compiled and regularly updated this massive reference series. But with the genesis of ahead, researchers feel that Indian users will be deprived of the scientific information, as most Indians do not yet have access to cd-rom facilities.

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