ABSTRACT
It was in a moment of desperation in early December 2010 that I had called up the telephone number of the physics department at the Savitribai Phule University in the city of Pune. I was trying to get in touch with Prof CV Dharmadhikari, Head of the Center for Advanced studies in Materials Science and Solid State Physics at the department here. It was nearly a year since I had begun my PhD work on “The Cultures of Innovation in nanotechnology research for development in India,” and I had made little progress in identifying laboratories that would agree to be the subjects of my study. With one partial exception, I had no case-study or even a potential case-study to report on and this was a situation that needed urgent correction.
