The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `Government agency needed for rating technologies'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 15, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`Government agency needed for rating technologies'

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JULY 14. The former director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, G. Thyagarajan, today stressed the need for a government agency, with participation of professional bodies and stakeholders, to rate technologies.

Suggesting that the Department of Science and Technology could call it `Technology Rating and Accreditation Council,' he said the facility would rate technologies in terms of their reliability and trust worthiness. Delivering the `Dr. V.C. Kulandaiswamy endowment' lecture organised here by Anna University, he said only a rating mechanism could weed out the "sub-standard, half-baked, unproven and obsolete technologies" from the market.

He said the process of globalisation, besides facilitating free flow of technologies and increasing the choice for users, had led to a big market for suspect quality technologies.

Many sellers pushed their products by "offering attractive kickbacks. Unsuspecting buyers in many countries, including India, are victims of such tendencies."

The need for a technology rating agency was greater in the backdrop of the emerging technological environment. Particularly, the demand for industrial technologies, home grown as well as foreign, would increase. In the absence of the agency, the small and medium enterprises would be most affected "as most of them lack an advisory support system."

They need to distinguish between "tainted technologies and taint-free technologies, between legally safe and unsafe technologies."

Dr. Thyagarajan, who is the chairman of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes Management, said the SMEs would particularly benefit by advice on cleaner technologies if a technology rating and accreditation system were available.

"A large number of chemical process industries in the country need renewal of their manufacturing processes if hazardous waste production is to be reduced or avoided," he added.

Dr. Kulandaiswamy, who held several important academic positions, including vice-chancellorship of Anna University and Indira Gandhi National Open University, was present at the meeting.

The gathering, including the Anna University Vice-Chancellor, E. Balagurusamy, greeted him on his birthday.

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