The Hindu : National : "India poised to be an innovation leader in manufacturing sector"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 09, 2005

National

National

"India poised to be an innovation leader in manufacturing sector"

Special Correspondent

Can join developed nations in next 25 years, say scientists

Dr. R. Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: Two Indian scientists, Dr. R. Chidambaram and Professor V.S. Ramamurthy, on Sunday unveiled their vision to take India in to the "developed nations' group" in the next quarter of the century.

"India can become an innovation leader, particularly in the manufacturing sector, provided we have proper technology foresight to make the right technology choices in a national perspective," said Dr. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. To achieve this goal, India should introduce "coherent synergy in science and technology related activities." He added that the S&T system, if it was to contribute the maximum to national development, required a variety of efforts, notably human resource development, research and development privatisation, academia-industry interaction, and international collaboration, and most importantly coherent synergy among all these factors.

Professor Ramamurthy, Secretary in the Department of Science and Technology, said that the biggest challenge was to translate one billion mouths to feed into one billion practising brains. "Once we do that through education, I have no doubt we will be in the leading group of developing nations."

Dr. Chidambaram was giving the inaugural speech and Professor Ramamurthy the keynote address at a workshop on `Science and Technology Challenges for India' organised by the Observer Research Foundation. Scientists and experts, including Y.S. Rajan, Rajendra Prasad, Amit Roy, Ashok Khosla, Prasad Rao, Y.P. Kumar and Rajasekharan Pillai took part in the one-day workshop. It was divided into four sessions on economic competitiveness, societal development, national security and looking back, looking forward.

Hotspot for innovation

Citing an observation made by an American business publication that India was one of the hotspots for innovation for low-cost high quality products and services, Dr. Chidambaram said the country's capacity for innovation went beyond this, across the board into complex high technology areas. The automotive sector in India was booming and that was why "we have decided to focus first on the automotive industry in the manufacturing sector. Other potential candidates are the petroleum sector and the IT/telecom hardware sectors. In the drugs and pharmaceuticals sector, academia-industry interactions are already strong," he said.

Prof. V.S. Ramamurthy

Dr. Chidambaram said that in some technology areas, such as atomic energy, space, and IT software, the world no longed viewed India as a developing country. On the other hand, two thirds of India lived in villages and small towns and their S&T needs were urgent. He observed that the globalisation of industrial research and development was useful, and its growth was perhaps inevitable. "The synergy needed for the globalisation of R&D is, I think, sustainable in those cases where there is coherence between the motivations of the trans-national corporates and the technology needs — existent and latent — of the host country."

Prof. Ramamurthy said India was now in globalised company and there could not be any going back. Competition was going to be one of the most challenging tasks. "Can we compete globally by creating a better value for the same resource? In this, science and technology would play a big role." He said that even the traditional Ganesha idols were being made in China and people were buying these products, irrespective of where they were made.

"People are not going to look for who made it or where it was made. They simply want better value in terms of quality and price. This is a major challenge." Prof. Ramamurthy said that competition was both a concern and an opportunity for India.

Advantage India

India had the advantage of low cost, labour and raw material. If it could make use of this unexploited advantage, it could be in the forefront of the developing countries. Though the country was facing tough competition and, initially, had problems, there was a newfound confidence in the people, he said.

"We are confident of competing. I do not have to speak of the credibility of Indians in the IT field in Silicon Valley or anywhere in the world. Take the case of automobiles, now we have the Indica [and] its various models, developed and produced by the Tatas. Our Scorpios are doing very well in Europe. They all speak of scientific and technological advance[ment]."

He also spoke of the great success of the Indian electric car, Reva, in America and other countries, adding that "now they are planning electric buses." Prof. Ramamurthy said he had coined a word, "co-eptition" to describe cooperative competition, which would be the hallmark of the future.

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