Ignited Minds (7 page)

It is because our sense of mission has weakened that we have ceased to be true to our culture and ourselves. If we come to look upon ourselves as a divided people with no pride in our past and no faith in the future, what else can we look forward to except frustration, disappointment and despair?

In India, the core culture goes beyond time. It precedes the arrival of Islam; it precedes the arrival of Christianity. The early Christians, like the Syrian Christians of Kerala, have retained their Indianness with admirable determination. Are they less Christian because their married women wear the mangalsutra or their menfolk wear the dhoti in the Kerala style? Kerala’s Chief Minister, A.K. Antony, is not a heretic because he and his people are part of Kerala’s culture. Being a Christian does not make him an alien. On the contrary, it gives an added dimension to his Indianness. A.R. Rahman may be a Muslim but his voice echoes in the soul of all Indians, of whatever faith, when he sings
Vande Mataram.

The greatest danger to our sense of unity and our sense of purpose comes from those ideologists who seek to divide the people. The Indian Constitution bestows on all the citizens total equality under its protective umbrella. What is now cause for concern is the trend towards putting religious form over religious sentiments. Why can’t
we develop a cultural–not religious–context for our heritage that serves to make Indians of us all? The time has come for us to stop differentiating. What we need today is a vision for the nation which can bring unity.

It is when we accept India in all its splendid glory that, with a shared past as a base, we can look forward to a shared future of peace and prosperity, of creation and abundance. Our past is there with us forever. It has to be nurtured in good faith, not destroyed in exercises of political oneupmanship.

The developed India will not be a nation of cities. It will be a network of prosperous villages empowered by telemedicine, tele- education and e-commerce. The new India will emerge out of the combination of biotechnology, biosciences and agriculture sciences and industrial development. The political leaders would be working with the zeal born of the knowledge that the nation is bigger than individual interests and political parties. This attitude will lead to minimizing the rural-urban divide as
progress takes place in the countryside and urbanites move to rural areas to absorb the best of what nature can give in the form of products and wealth.

The most important and urgent task before our leadership is to get all the forces for constructive change together and deploy them in a mission mode. India is a country of one billion people with numerous religions and communities. It offers a wide spectrum of ideologies, besides its geographic diversity. This is our greatest strength. However, fragmented thinking, compartmentalized planning and isolated efforts are not yielding results. The people have to come together to create a harmonious India.

The second vision of the nation will bring about a renaissance to the nation. The task of casting a strong India is in the hands of a visionary political leadership.

There are success stories among failures. There is hope among chaos, promise among problems. We are one billion people with multiple faiths and ideologies. In the absence of a national vision cracks at the seam keep surfacing and make us vulnerable. There is a need to reinforce this seam and amalgamate us into one national forum.

Wisdom is a weapon to ward off destruction; It is an inner fortress which enemies cannot destroy.

—Thirukkural
421 (200
BC
)

Ancient India was an advanced knowledge society. Invasions and colonial rule destroyed its institutions and robbed it of its core competence. Its people have been systematically degraded to lower levels of existence. By the time the British left, our youth had lowered their aims and were
satisfied earning an ordinary livelihood. India is essentially a land of knowledge and it must rediscover itself in this aspect. Once this rediscovery is done, it will not require much struggle to achieve the quality of life, strength and sovereignty of a developed nation.

Knowledge has many forms and it is available at many places. It is acquired through education, information, intelligence and experience. It is available in academic institutions, with teachers, in libraries, in research papers, seminar proceedings and in various organizations and workplaces with workers, managers, in drawings, in process sheets and on the shop floors. Knowledge, though closely linked to education, comes equally from learning skills such as those possessed by our artists, craftsmen, hakims, vaidyas, philosophers and saints, as also our housewives. Knowledge plays a very important role in their performance and output too. Our heritage and history, the rituals, epics and traditions that form part of our consciousness are also vast resources of
knowledge as are our libraries and universities. There is an abundance of unorthodox, earthy wisdom in our villages. There are hidden treasures of knowledge in our environment, in the oceans, bioreserves and deserts, in the plant and animal life. Every state in our country has a unique core competence for a knowledge society.

Knowledge has always been the prime mover of prosperity and power. The acquisition of knowledge has therefore been the thrust area throughout the world. Additionally, in India, there has been a culture of sharing it, not only through the tradition of guru—shishya but also by its spread to neighbouring countries through travellers who came to Nalanda and other universities drawn by their reputation as centres of learning. India is endowed with natural and competitive advantages as also certain distinctive competencies. But these are scattered in isolated pockets and the awareness of these is inadequate. During the last century the world has changed from being an agricultural society, in which
manual labour was the critical factor, to an industrial society where the management of technology, capital and labour provide the competitive advantage. In the twenty-first century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. Efficient utilization of this existing knowledge base can create wealth for us in the form of better health, education and other indicators of progress. The ability to create and maintain the knowledge infrastructure, to enhance skills and increase productivity through the exploitation of advances in various fields will be the key factors in deciding the prosperity of this society. Whether a nation qualifies as a knowledge society is judged by how effectively it deals with knowledge creation and knowledge deployment.

The knowledge society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is in respect of education, healthcare, agriculture and
governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity.

The task of wealth generation for the nation has to be woven around national competencies. The TIFAC task team has identified core areas that will spearhead our march towards becoming a knowledge society. The areas are: information technology, biotechnology, space technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, telemedicine and tele-education, technologies utilizing traditional knowledge, service sector and infotainment which is the emerging area resulting from convergence of information and entertainment. These core technologies, fortunately, can be interwoven by IT, a sector that took off only due to the enterprising spirit of the young.

Thus there are multiple technologies and appropriate management structures that have to work together to generate a knowledge society. With India carving a niche for itself in information technology, the country is uniquely placed to fully capitalize
on the opportunity to quickly transform itself into a knowledge society. The methodology of wealth generation in these core areas and to be able to meet an export target set at $50 billion by the year 2008, especially through the IT sector, is a subject that is currently under discussion. Also being discussed is how best to simultaneously develop the capability to generate information technology products worth $30 billion domestically to pump in for societal transformation. I am glad that the Planning Commission has taken a lead in generating a roadmap for transforming India into a knowledge society. I had the opportunity to be the Chairman of the Steering Committee set up for this task.

Evolving suitable policy and administrative procedures, changes in regulatory methods, identification of partners and, most important, creation of young and dynamic leaders are the components that have to be put in place. In order to generate wealth, which is the second component for establishing a knowledge society, it is essential
that simultaneously a citizen-centric approach to shaping of business policy, user-driven technology generation and intensified industry—lab—academia linkages have also to be established.

Becoming a knowledge superpower by the year 2010 is a very important mission for the nation. While a knowledge society has a two-dimensional objective of societal transformation and wealth generation, a third dimension emerges if India is to transform itself into a knowledge superpower. This is knowledge protection and it entails a tremendous responsibility. It is very important that our communication network and information generators are protected from electronic attacks through surveillance and monitoring. There should be a focussed approach to intellectual property rights and related issues, and our ancient knowledge and culture too are part of our resource base and need to be protected as such.

In 1960, the agriculture sector employed in part or in full 74 per cent of the population. This came down to 62 per cent
in 1992 and is expected to further fall to 50 per cent by 2010, though the demand of agricultural products will double by then. Higher productivity and better post-harvest management will have to compensate for the manpower reduction in the farming and agricultural products sector.

There was a function in Chennai organized by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education who felicitated me along with the father of the Green Revolution, C. Subramaniam, and eminent lawyer N.A. Palkhivala. After the function, I shared with the ninety-year-old Subramaniam his vision of a second green revolution. He told me about his dream of setting up a national agro foundation that would develop hybrid seeds. His foundation would adopt small and marginal farmers and provide them with laboratory facilities for soil testing and access to information on the weather and markets, so that they could earn more through enhanced yields and better prices for what they produced. He aimed at bringing a million farmers under the scheme. Visionaries don’t age!

On another occasion, I was talking to the students of Dr Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology at Pollachi, near Coimbatore. Dr N. Mahalingam, a great industrialist and academician, was sitting with me. He was telling me how the country can generate wealth through agro, chemical and textile industries. Amazed by his achievements in establishing industries and educational institutions, I asked him, ‘Sir, what is your next mission?’ As I said this, I realized I was asking this question of a person who was about eighty years old!

Dr Mahalingam replied, ‘I have analysed the Tamil scripts used in the last Sangam, which was 2,500 years ago. Now I would like to do research on the Tamil scripts used in the first Sangam which existed 5,000 years ago!’ It was another reminder to me that visionaries don’t age.

In the case of industry, in 1960, 11 per cent of the population was engaged in small- scale and large-scale industries. The trend continued with 11 per cent even in 1992. However, it has to increase to 25 per cent in
2010, bearing in mind the envisaged GDP growth and increased competition as trade restrictions are lifted under the WTO. The pattern of employment will take a new shape. Employment in the service or knowledge industry has increased from 15 per cent in 1960 to 27 per cent in 1992. And it will further increase to 50 per cent in view of infrastructure maintenance areas and IT sector and entertainment demands. This big change will demand more trained personnel. Our leaders in commerce and industry have to prepare themselves for the transformation.

The fact that there is net migration from the villages to cities shows the disparities in living standards between the two. Ideally, both rural and urban areas should be equally attractive with no net migration either way. Near zero net rural—urban migration is a mark of development. How can we achieve that happy balance? Rural development is the only solution. This means providing rural areas with the amenities that are currently available only in cities. This would generate employment on the same scale, and at the
same level, as in the cities in the rural areas too. The other challenge would be to provide these benefits at a small fraction of the financial, social, cultural and ecological costs the cities have to bear.

It is the expectation that this combination of generating employment bearing in mind environmental factors will make rural areas as attractive as cities are, if not even more attractive. Then, rural development may be expected to prevent, if not actually reverse, rural—urban migration. Hence, PURA aims at integrated physical, electronic knowledge and economic connectivity.

Experience in India has demonstrated that the true handicap suffered by rural areas is poor connectivity and little else. Linking together a loop of villages by a ring road and high-quality transport may rectify that lacuna. Villages thus linked would also provide a large enough market to support a variety of services, which they would not be able to do individually. The ring road and the transport service together can convert the linked villages immediately into a virtual
town with a market of tens of thousands of people. Such an area, which would also possess state-of-the-art telecommunication connectivity, will have a high probability of attaining rapid growth by setting up a virtuous cycle–more connected people attracting more investment, and more investment attracting even more people and so on. Basically, this involves selecting a ring of villages; connecting the villages on the ring by establishing a high-quality transport and telecommunication system; encouraging reputed specialists to locate schools, hospitals and other social services around the ring; marketing this well-serviced space to attract industry and commerce; and Internet connectivity.

The model envisaged a habitat designed to improve the quality of life in rural places and made special suggestions to remove urban congestion. Naturally our most intractable urban problem is that of congestion. Efficient supply of water and effective waste disposal in every locality are the paramount civic needs. There is a
minimum size below which a habitat is not viable and not competitive with the existing congested city. At the same time, the existing congested city is not economical compared to a new town once a minimum size of expansion is crossed. As against a conventional city that is, say, rectangular in shape and measuring 10 km by 6 km, the model considers an annular ring-shaped town integrating minimum eight to ten villages of the same 60 square km area, and the same access distance of 1 km to transport arteries. It needs only one transportation route of a distance half that needed for the rectangular- shaped city, so frequency of transportation will be doubled, halving waiting times. It has zero number of junctions and needs only one route as against eight needed for the rectangular plan, so people will no longer need to change from one line to another. That saves transport time. Further, as all traffic is concentrated on one single route, high-efficiency mass transportation systems become economical even for a comparatively small population. This cuts costs substantially
and is more convenient for the people.

Rural development is an essential need for transforming India into a knowledge superpower and high bandwidth rural connectivity is the minimum requirement to take education and healthcare to the rural areas. Roadmaps for development of certain areas have been generated and we have to work on their realization.

There was an invitation by Mr Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata group of companies, to visit Telco at Pune, particularly to witness the challenge of designing, developing and manufacturing in the country a fully Indian car, the Indica. The prospect of the visit excited me. I thought I would get an answer to some questions that I have been asked on many occasions.

In 1980 when our team in ISRO launched the satellite launch vehicle and put Rohini into low-earth orbit, it was a big event for the nation. On 4 January 2001, when I saw the first prototype fighter aircraft, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), designed and developed indigenously by the Aeronautical
Development Agency (ADA), taking to the skies, again India was described as one of the few countries to have acquired capabilities in this sophisticated field. This is the result of intensified networking between R&D laboratories, industry, academic institutions, users and the government.

Ratan Tata told me during the visit about his vision of making India a global player in the automobile sector. To implement his vision, he decided to acquire car manufacturing units from many countries rather than set them up here at considerable expense in terms of money and time. He looked towards manufacturing five times the present levels so that they could graduate to being globally competitive. This is a beautiful idea. I would add that Indian industrial complexes should become consortia as a first step and then envision becoming multinational companies.