• More than 1,000 delegates -- academics, activists, students and farmers -- attended the Congress on Traditional Sciences and Technologies of India, held in Bombay from November 28 to December 3, 1993.

• The congress took nearly two years to organise and cost Rs 35 lakh, most of which was to fund about 40 studies on aspects of traditional science and technology. Only a few of the studies have been completed but none has been published.

• There were 140 exhibition stalls, 25 demonstrations, 112 technical sessions covering nine themes, 14 plenary lectures, three workshops and marathon informal debates early into the morning.

• The faculty and the students of the Indian Institute of Technology, which hosted the congress, had a harrowing time attending to the whims and fancies of the delegates, including procuring clean bedsheets at 2 am.

• Many delegates saw all traditions as relics or curio items. A section equated this past with a golden Hindu era and sought to revive them to attain narrow, non-secular political objectives. But they were kept at bay.

• The question of what to do next remained unclear because most participants considered their job done once they made their presentations.

• Though the Congress couldn't resolve how to fuse the traditional with the modern or how to revive the very basic issue of community organisations -- the backbone of Indian rural society and science and technology -- it succeeded in acquainting Indians with a respect for their roots.