Deepmala 31 – Indian Industry: 21st Century Challenges

What are the challenges for the Indian industry? As I see it, in the short term it is quality, productivity, cost, response time and innovation. In the long term, the challenges will be scale (our scales have been miniscule), technology upgradation (our technologies are out-dated), product design (we have very poor concepts of product design) and finally strategic partnerships not only within India, but outside, and also attitudinal changes and mindset changes.

New paradigms in the generation and protection of intellectual property rights will pose new challenges. We believed in July 1991, when we moved to integrate the Indian economy with the global economy, that integration started and ended with the capital T, as in trade. But unless the other T, as in technology, is emphasized and technology is also integrated, we cannot reach a competitive position. The second problem is that we had a misperception that with the opening up, there will be an enormous flood of foreign capital and foreign technology. If we draw of technology has not really taken place in important areas. Indian firms that seek technology are looked at today as competitors. When IPCL was trying to get technology for alpha olefins to make alpha olefin sulphonates, we went Idemitsu, Chevron, Shell and others, but they would not sell. Because, India was no more being considered as a bottomless pit for demand but as competitors. This is something that we will have to realise.

There has been no significant forward technology licensing. There have been conditionalities in terms of technology markets, stake-holding, product swap, technology being broken into different packages, not even straightforward technology licensing agreements because mergers and acquisitions distort the entire picture. Then, of course, there is the dual-use issue. These are the real issues that India will have to grapple with.

Strength respects strength – and that is the key issue. You can always extend your hand and ask someone to shake it. It is upto the other person to decide whether he will shake hands with you or not. He will look at your technological muscle. I believe unless we develop this strength, we are going to be in a very hopeless situation. So what do we do?

Deepmala 30 – Potential Vs Performance : The Indian Challenge

We say India has great potential. Institutions have great potential. But time has come to convert the potential into performance. In all the sectors we will face this challenge. To start with, let us just take the example of food processing.

The total chain in food processing is very familiar. It starts with farming, fishing, etc. This total chain delivers value to the consumer. Manufacturing, processing, assembling; all these elements of the total chain matter. Performance now means mastery over the entire chain. Let us, for a moment, look at the beginning of the chain, namely primary production. Where does India stand?

We lead in rice production; in wheat, we are number four. But this primary production itself will have to have infusion of new technology in major way. Consider mechanical harvesting – the combined harvesters. We have always talked in India about cheap labour being an advantage. As time goes on, farm labour will become more expensive with growing industrialization. With the advent of multicropping, harvesting will have to be done more quickly. Use of mechanical combined harvesters in the primary production process becomes a must.

India is the largest producer of fruit in the world. But what is our export share? One percent. How much do we process? Two per cent.. How much does Brazil process? Seventy per cent. What is coming in the way? You will find that about ninety percent of the food-processing is in the small-scale sector. Organised fruit processing industry with state-of-the-art manufacturing technology will again be the key to progress.

We are the largest milk-producer in the world. But look at the variety of technological problems. We have one-third of the cattle population in the world – the largest by the way – but, in terms of export of milk products, we have only 0.05 percent share. We get carried away by the large numbers because we are a large country. Eventually it is the productivity, the efficiency all measured on a per capita basis, that is going to count. Technology is going to play a major role in all this.

If India lives upto its potential, it can be the ‘Grannergy’ for the rest of world.

Deepmala 29 – Need for New Values on Traditional Technology

To encourage communities, it is necessary to scout, support, spawn and scale up the green grass root innovation to generate employment and use natural resources sustainably through linking of innovation, enterprise and investment. This requires building up adequate linkages with modern science and technology and market research institutions.

Technologies developed by local artisans, craftsmen, potters, farmers, weavers, etc. are considered as traditional. These technologies are never included in the fabric of modern technology. Again a change of mindset and value systems is required. I tried an experiment in Pune during the Indian Science Congress in January 2000. As President of the Science Congress, I said let this Science Congress be ‘knowledge congress’. Let it be ‘people’s congress’. We will show that we value people’s knowledge. We had several grass root innovators participate in our science exhibition. They demonstrated their technologies. None of them spoke English. We had a session, where they made a presentation on their technologies in local languages to around 2000 scientists. They stood on the same platform from which the Nobel Laureates spoke. I must say that they got a bigger applause than even the Nobel Laureates. I believe the scientists, for the first time, realised the power of innovation that takes place in the field. They also saw the innovative and creative abilities of those, who were unadulterated by the modern day educational system. Can this realization now turn to respect and then to meaningful partnership? CSIR is forging such partnerships. Let me share one of them with you.

A village called Athaoni, on the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka is the place from where Kolhapuri chappals come to us. They were till recently made by age-old traditional technique. Our scientists from Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI), Chennai studied this and helped to reduce the processing time from 30 days to 10 days through application of some innovative science. The stamping process was standardised, certain innovative changes in design, based on fairly sophisticated computer aided techniques, were made to give more comfort to the wearer. But this ‘inclusion’ of modern science was done gently and subtly, so that it will not be interpreted as ‘invasion’ on traditional practices, which had gone on for several generations. The oldest man in the village was consulted. He was convinced that the age old traditions must change. Today several hundred artisans have been trained by CLRI. This has not only enhanced the family incomes of the villagers but also changed their perception of science, development and change – in short, a micro social transformation. For us in CSIR, we have realised that it is not techno-economics alone, but also socio-economical & socio-cultural aspects, that we need to be conscious about when we build a bridge between traditional craft and modern science.

Deepmala 27 – Indian Education : Lesson from our Glorious Past

India had a great civilization and a unique system of education called gurukul. The education of the student took place at the home of the teacher. With the advent of Buddhism, education shifted from the home of the teacher to the monastery. In the middle ages some of the monasteries developed into universities. We had the Buddhist monastery of Nalanda in the 3rd century A.D. We still recall with pride the 7th century account of Nalanda. One recalls the intellectual activity involving, not only Buddhist texts but also Hindu philosophy, logic, grammar, medicine and so on. More than 10,000 students of different faiths from within the country and abroad passed through the portals of Nalanda. What happened to our past glory? Where are our 20th century Nalandas? How did the indigenous educational systems get marginalised? How did the community responsibility, which was the hallmark of our early education system, become the responsibility of the state? How did the colonial legacy of an impersonal school system continued to drive our educational entities even after independence? These are the questions we need to ponder over as we start designing the 21st century India.

We also need to remind ourselves that some of our greatest minds have given a great deal of thought to education. Gandhiji emphasised integration of the intellectual, physical and spiritual aspects of the education. To Vinoba Bhave education was the sum of Yoga, Udyoga and Sahayoga. It is being increasingly recognised that cognitive learning, practical work, community life and spiritual vision alone can provide the foundation of education. Our new millennium education system must bring these values back.

I believe that the next century will be the century of the mind. Products of mind will dominate the next century. Therefore, creating the right minds through the right process of education will require the top most priority. Let us all rise to the occasion to create a self-reliant and strong India, an India that will be determined to lead and not follow.

Again we need to recognize that scientific knowledge generated in formal laboratories is not the only knowledge system. There is knowledge generated in the ‘laboratories of life’ by people over centuries. Many societies in the developing world, like India, have nurtured and refined systems of knowledge of their own, relating to such diverse domains as geology, ecology, botany, agriculture, physiology and health

As a student of S&T, I must confess that we have not shown enough respect for the long drawn empirical and thoughtful process by which men and women through generations have gained knowledge about nature around them, with a view to benefiting from it

Today, we have created walls between the traditional knowledge and modern science. During the colonial period of the world history, which was also the period of phenomenal growth in S&T, science was perceived, projected and accepted as an essential feature of the western civilization. An unfortunate and retrograde corollary of this was that modern scientific knowledge was seen as an adversary of traditional wisdom and traditional knowledge. The two were seen as mutually exclusive, as traditional knowledge was something unscientific, as if traditional knowledge was darkness itself waiting to be dispelled by the light of modern science. This has been a regrettable syndrome, because it had the effect of belittling the intellect and wisdom of vast fraction of the world’s population and the heritage of the whole humankind.

Protection of knowledge based on ancient wisdom is only a limited issue. The bigger issue is to add value to our lives by creating a synthesis between ancient wisdom and modern science. Consider Ayurveda, which literally means ‘science of life’. It encompasses the total sweep of life sciences and pursues the quest for understanding life in all its ramifications. 20th Century has revealed some of the greatest insights into our understanding of life at increasingly higher levels of organization – molecular, sub cellular, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, species and ecosystems –the most remarkable feature of modern medicine is its close integration with the basic sciences – physics, chemistry and biology. Unfortunately these two domains of knowledge, namely traditional medicine and modern medicine have remained isolated from each other.

The only right approach has to be one of Science, that is, of experiment, trial and error. In whatever type of medicine we may deal with, we cannot profit by its study unless we apply the method of science. Everything should be tested and proved and then it becomes a part of scientific medicine – old and new.’ Unfortunately this message was lost. We need to build a new bridge in this spirit.

Deepmala 26 – Information Technology & Indian Education

The march of new technology will change the way we teach and the way we learn, both in space and time. The new India must proactively look at the sweeping changes on the horizon and prepare for it. The computer-communication convergence has made knowledge accessible quickly and cost-effectively practically all over the world. Internet has opened up astounding opportunities. With half of the world’s population being linked by Internet by the year 2020, the world will truly have become a global village. These ‘netizens’, or the ‘net people’, as they will be then known, will not be confined by physical boundaries or that of political economy of a nation. They will have a world of their own and a unique system of governance.

Teaching hitherto meant speaking and learning meant listening. We were all confined to the four walls of a classroom where the teacher taught and we as students listened. It was a one way linear process, sometimes with no opportunity for an interaction. Internet has already made it possible to take education to the homes of the learners. Such an education system has made a beginning in India too. Multimedia has been extensively and creatively used to create self-learning programmes. The fact that education is being brought to our homes will mean that one will be in a position to undertake learning at one’s own pace. Vast repositories of educational materials will be available, the learner will have the choice of the most effective way of learning by scanning different teaching methods and systems. Personal digital libraries will be created to provide a mechanism for managing one’s accumulated knowledge resource. Software technologies will enable development of educational materials quickly and easily to support their modification and maintenance. The process of continuous learning will also become easy; the concept of life long learning will become a reality. The limits of time and space will gradually vanish.

The evaluation systems will also change. We evaluate the students in a ritualistic way every year. Hundreds of thousands of students appear for examinations at the same time and answer the same question papers. We then grade them and differentiate them. The new system of evaluation will be continuous and individually centered. What it means is that theoretically, there can be a day to day evaluation of one’s capacity. It is, therefore, possible that a situation may arise where the child may acquire the intellectual maturity several years earlier than his physical age. This would mean that the mental age required to perform a job would be reached much earlier but not the physical age. Such events are going to cause a major turmoil and discontinuities in the process of education system and our way of thinking, teaching, learning and problem solving. Information Technology can make a radical difference to the Indian education system. Let us get geared to this new challenge and an opportunity.

Deepmala 25 – University Education & Non-Formal Innovation

I have often spoken about building the bridge between the formal and informal systems of innovation including the traditional knowledge, which has been built over several centuries. How do we integrate the two? Can, we begin by getting our young students interested in these endeavours. The answer is, yes, we can.

Take, for instance, the issue of preserving the traditional knowledge system of our farmers, artisans, grass-root innovators, be they in villages, in tribes or in remote areas. It is these innovations, which have improved their quality of life. We need to create a national register of such innovations. We can make our young students participate in this exciting endeavour. We can use part of their time during their holidays. We can send them to villages and tribes. Let them have a look at the local innovations, be they of a plant- based extract to cure a disease, or an improved method of sowing the seeds, or an innovative way of carrying the water. The inquiring mind of the youth could explore the underpinning innovation processes, which will enrich their own lives in turn. Further, it will also reduce the erosion of such knowledge, which is taking place at such a devastating pace.

Such a simple movement will do several things at the same time. The nation will have a repository of such innovations, which could be catalogued and utilized across the country. More important, it will expose our young students to the areas in villages and tribes that they have never visited before. They will see a different way of life. They will see how people innovate to survive. They will know that experiments are not done necessarily in only formal laboratories with sophisticated equipment and computers but they are also done in a hut, in the field, on the road, and so on. This will be the beginning of a new social contract between the young and that part of the society that they never knew anything about.

Deepmala 24 – On Building the New Young India

I always feel that India has a great future. There are several reasons for it and one of the primary reasons is the emergence of the young India, when the rest of the developed world is getting old. As per the demographic projection by the year 2015, over half of our population will be less than 20 years old. This part of our population is either just born or is about to be born. What it means is that we have a tremendous opportunity to focus on these young people, who are going to decide the destiny of the nation in the 21st century.

Youth represents the national strength, vitality and vigour. Therefore, this young India will play a crucial role in the development and upliftment of the nation. If properly moulded, the youth can become the champion of our culture, custodian of our national pride and a trustee of the freedom of the country. But the process of such moulding requires the right type of education right from childhood. Unfortunately, we are not equipped to provide such education to our children today? Why do I feel this way?

I feel that our education is not child centred. It is centered around text books, rigid unimaginative curricula, ill designed classroom teaching and an outdated examination system. An Indian child is forced to learn by rote, and its individuality and inquisitiveness is curbed.

Classroom learning within the four walls of the schools may be important, but what the child learns by self-observation outside the classroom is even more important. A child must become an active participant in the process of learning through observation, field studies, experiments and discussions. A child’s individuality and creativity needs to be given due importance in our education. Further, it is not the innovation in curriculum alone that will help, but what must receive priority is the reorientation of the outlook of the teachers, and overhauling of the examination system, so that it recognizes and evaluates creativity and new thinking rather than memorization of facts. Our system of examination, which is based on a single correct answer, must change. Problem solving to find multiple innovative solutions must become priority. The schools must move from becoming educational centres to knowledge centres and skill centres.

If we do this, the new young India will be resurgent and dynamic and a world leader.

Deepmala 23 – Denial Driven Innovation

We have three types of technology innovations. There is a large system innovation (such as a man on the moon mission), incremental innovation (such as development of an improved fax machine) and finally radical breakthroughs (such as an accidental breakthrough leading to the antibiotic industry).

India has done well in many large system innovations. Just take our space research program as a classic example. Satellite design, fabrication and launching have been mastered by our space scientists. Our space program has been one of the most cost-effective programs in the world. The entire budget of our space program last year was less than 3000 crores, small when compared to the budget of a single leading company like Pfizer, which was over 20,000 crores! The interesting feature of such innovations is that they have survived, succeeded and delivered in spite of the technology denial regimes. In fact in some cases, the innovation movement has been boosted due to a denial regime. Let us take India’s forays into supercomputers as a classical example to draw some generic lessons about innovation in the face of denials. Pune was a proud city, which witnessed the emergence of C-DAC under the visionary leadership of my friend Vijay Bhatkar.

In 1998, C-DAC launched PARAM 10,000 demonstrating India’s capacity to build 100 Giga Flops machines, which has been now scaled further to teraflops, reaching the levels reached by advanced nations. The United States has continuously relaxed the export controls as we kept on reaching bigger milestones. In 2000, the same CRAY company decided to set up a subsidiary in India; interestingly the same company had denied the CRAY supercomputers in 1980s.

There are some interesting generic lessons in this supercomputer saga. The first is that it requires a driving force for innovation, no matter how able and competent you are. When the idea of building supercomputers through parallel processing was gaining ground in 1985, Germany launched a DM 100 million project called ‘Suprenum’ and gave its scientists five years to build parallel processing based supercomputers. However, this project was abandoned mid way because of several reasons including team management issues between the university and industry; but clearly this was due to the fact that there was no driving force, since Germany had other options. India went ahead, because India did not have any options.

In fact, I remember reading Washington Post, soon after India had exported its PARAM 8000 to Germany, UK & Russia. It said ‘Angry India Does It’, that is, India having been angered at the denial of supercomputers, developed its own. So this anger was the driving force for India and Germany had none, although they had a superior technical manpower to complete successfully the Suprenum project.

We do have a tendency to become relaxed, when the ban gets lifted or the export regulations become little lighter. For example, in 1991-93, when there was some relaxation from the United States, questions were being asked as to whether India should invest further in supercomputers at all. I remember a battle that was fought in Delhi, when we had to move from the first mission to the second mission; fortunately good sense prevailed, otherwise we could not have seen the birth of PARAM 10000!

When the sanctions again came back after Prokhran-II, the importance of a sustained long-range innovation policy and continuous investment is being realized again. To remain competitive, India has to be on a continuous alert.

Only strength respects strength. Let us continue to build our technological strength to build the new India of our dreams.

Deepmala 22 – Bridging the Digital Divide

Twenty first century will be the century of knowledge. Knowledge will be a driver of economic growth as well as social transformation. The existing disparities, which today are measured in terms of comparative economics, living standards, etc. are moving into other domains too, and this includes knowledge. The issue of ‘digital divide’ is being hotly debated, due to several emerging disparities.

Whereas one in two Americans is on line, only one in 250 Africans is on line. More strikingly, one out of the two citizens of this world has never had the luxury of making a telephone call! Entire Africa has only 14 million telephone lines, which are less than those in city of Manhattan alone.

Where does India stand? Not in a good position at all. All over India, the total number of personal computers do not exceed 5 million, which means one personal computer per thousand. Compare this with Singapore, which is reaching one personal computer per two students.

The first is that the technology is changing at breathtaking pace. The costs of transferring information, sending a communication and so on are plummeting. The second is that India is a late entrant and, therefore, our investments have not been locked in old infrastructure and old technology. We can take advantage of the front line technologies and leap frog. Thirdly, the new digital medium is providing unique opportunity to ‘reach the unreached’, that is those that are distant (due to the death of distance) or those that are uneducated or those that are economically poor. The fourth is that innovative sharing of infrastructure is one that can bring down the costs enormously. And finally there is a welcome change in the leadership in the country, where the importance of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) is being understood and promoted at all levels including the Centre and the States.

But let me empahsise that it is not technology alone that will bring down the costs. Rapid deregulation and reforms are equally important.

32 % of our population is still illiterate. Only 7% of our population is matriculate and only 5% of our population is English speaking. Can we avoid the digital divide under these circumstances? ‘Yes’ is the answer, if one is to draw lessons from the famous ‘hole in the wall’ experiment by Sugata Mitra of NIIT. He was able to experiment with the children from a slum adjoining NIIT. He provided internet access to them with a touch screen. A video camera recorded what happened. No instructions were given to the children. They experimented, learnt on their own and reached ‘functional literacy’ of internet within ten days. The children were able to access the Hindi music films, play cartoon games and land 747on a flight simulator. The powerful digital medium has the power to carry text, picture as well as sound and remain interactive even for the illiterate. The medium thus has the power to ‘reach the unreached’.

Let us look at the issue of access. In India, we always have had a practice of joint family, which embodies the principle of sharing. One newspaper is read by 10 people. One e-mail address is used by 10 people. Individual ownership is not what we keep on fighting for. What is, therefore, important is to create not ‘individual ownership’ but opportunity for ‘shared economic access’. Provision of internet at public institutions, libraries, local and regional government Offices, ISD and STD booths will do the trick. We have 800 thousand STD/ISD, which can provide a great outreach.

The economic access will also increase as the technologies as well as devices will become simpler. One wonderful development is a ‘simputer’, which is a ‘simple computer’. Can you imagine a computer which could be used by someone who does not know English, or who does not know how to read or write? Can you imagine a device, which is portable with a standard PC, which can keep your accounts, get e-mails and help you browse your net. Scientists from Indian Institute of Science have done precisely this by creating a device, which uses natural interfaces such as touch and sound and use of local languages. Whether ‘simputer’, which is slated to cost less than Rs. 10,000, will be a commercial success or not is not known. But what is sure is that it is technologies such as these, which are relevant to the developing world, that will make the final difference in bridging the digital divide.

India has a unique chance to covert the threat of a ‘digital divide’ into a ‘digital opportunity’, if we back up technology with reforms and investments with political will.

Deepmala 21 – Information Technology & Indian Democracy

The wide impact of IT on economically, education, health, governance, etc. is frequently discussed. However, what is not often discussed is the role of IT on democracy.

We are in the early stages of a digital revolution that is changing the way information is generated, owned and used. The speed with which information moves is breathtaking. As you read this line, in the next minute, 12 million e-mail messages will be sent. By this time tomorrow, 37 million people would have logged on the net. The internet traffic will double by this time next year. One, therefore, feels that this revolution will enable democracy to be more integral to all human endeavors, our government, our business and our personal lives.

The basis for democracy and a prerequisite for its long-term success, is an informed public. The fundamental political changes in Eastern Europe, Ireland, East Timor, and South Africa were all possible because, try as they might, those governments were unable to control the generation and distribution of economic, political and social information within their societies. Once that control is lost, democracy is inevitable. Chinese students found that fax machines were more powerful than rifles.

First the people must be literate enough to be able to read and understand the information that is relevant to their lives. Television and radio have been revolutionary tools in this sense. Secondly, democracy requires that people have open access to certain basic economic and political data and to a diversity of opinions. This requirement means an access of information to all.

Thirdly, people must be able to share their ideas with others. Information technology is making it possible to reach beyond time and place to a wider community of citizens. The content creation is, therefore, going to be a crucial part of the strategy, since information could be now used for a variety of purposes, from propaganda to enlightenment.

A monitoring system to measure the quantity, quality, and impact of different kinds of information upon the economy and society is needed. We have such information with regard to literacy today but not with regard to the issues of access and interaction. In India, we need a set of indicators to serve as a basis for regular monitoring and reporting on the state of our information systems.

We in India should create and implement a development strategy for information technologies that is supportive of democratic processes. Such a system should explicitly address the three goals of literacy, access and interaction and the roles of the private and public sectors in promoting those processes.

Finally, it is important to note that the advance of information technology will not only force a review of the legal and practical meaning of the notion of individual privacy, but also that of the ‘privacy’ of nations. Furthermore, the existence of inexpensive, multiple and worldwide network for communicating information will shift power from government to individuals. The netizens will have a world of their own. While information technology will vastly increase the power of a government to monitor its people, the government’s control over the information distribution will be diminished. Information will still be power – but it will be a shared power. The increased worldwide distribution of information will also lead to increased awareness in less developed countries of how the people with superior life styles live. This will provide interesting driving forces, both nationally and globally. The availability of information network will diminish the reliance on elected representatives and technical experts to make decisions on behalf of the public at large. The forum of public opinion rather than ministerial negotiation will control the final decision. This will also mean that greater attention to ‘quality’ of information available to electorate will be important. As the largest democracy in the world, it will be interesting to see what information technology will have, when it starts ‘reaching the unreached’ and ‘connecting the unconnected’.