BJP's policies on science and technology (1991 manifesto) have come a long way from those envisioned in the 1984 elections. With a clear pro-urban bias, the 1984 manifesto had promised to evolve :ppropriate technology for Indian industrial needs", and develop high tech areas like -biochemistry, cybernetics, avionics, electronics, nuclear technology and technotrony'. The party had also promised to stem brain drain. Research priorities, thus, neglected the need of science and technological inputs into the rural agricultural sector.

But this has been rectified in the 1989 and 1991 manifestoes, which promise to use science and technology for ending starvation, poverty, diseases, to create employment and to build research laboratories and centres in rural areas. They also aim at popularising science by producing science and technology literature in local and regional languages.