Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Time to be self-reliant, says Kakodkar

Special Correspondent

`India should focus on areas where it is strong and reduce dependence on other countries'

TRIBUTE TO A HEALER: S.S. Narasanagi, Bidar-based surgeon, receiving honorary doctorate degree of the Gulbarga University from Governor T.N. Chaturvedi, at the convocation in Gulbarga on Monday. With them are Vice-Chancellor V.B. Coutinho (left), Hig her Education Minister D. Manjunath and Atomic Energy Commissioner Chairman Anil Kakodkar. At right are gold medal winners M. Somshekhar, Shilpa, Anupama and Deepali.

GULBARGA: Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar on Monday said the country's dependence on foreign technology would come in the way of its aim to become a world leader, and India could not survive the global competition unless it achieved leadership at least in some areas where it was strong.

Delivering the 24th convocation address of Gulbarga University, Dr. Kakodkar said the challenge before the country's education system was to produce empowered youth who could pull the country up the ladder and not be a baggage causing drag to upward movement.

He said that building technology out of the country's own knowledge pool was of crucial importance. Despite India making important contribution to the global knowledge pool, the country depended on foreign technology, and this was mainly because of the disconnection that had come about between knowledge activity and its transformation into robust technology. Research, development of application, their demonstration and their field deployment should be seen as a chain of interlinked activities that needed to be pursued in close coordination to achieve the object of developing robust technology, he said. Dr. Kakodkar, who is also Secretary of Department of Atomic Energy, said in the department a structure that allowed the entire spectrum of activities to be pursued in more or less seamless fashion had been achieved.

This was the main reason for the country's success in the domestic development of commercially successful nuclear power technology with all its linkages.

He said that experience had shown that while one must nurture organic linkages between individual segments, it was also equally important to nurture and sustain excellence in each one of them. Dr. Kakodkar said that higher education, research and its complimentary technological domain had to be pursued hand in hand with freedom for people within each of these domains to work across their respective domain boundaries. There should be a special motivation for them to do so. However, in contrast, today "we seem to have created tall boundary walls with all openings guarded by an inflexible systems of rules that neither nurture excellence nor cooperative working across these boundaries. All this must change." He said: "we should reach a situation in which an academic or researcher is respected in industry for his or her technological insights and technologist is respected in an academic or research environment for the academic enrichment and multidisciplinary capabilities."

Dr. Kakodkar said the country had one of the largest human resource pools of experts in nuclear science and technology. The country's contribution to scientific publication in the area of pressurised heavy water reactors, fast breeder reactors and thorium utilisation technologies was large, and India had gained international recognition due to its strong technological capabilities in this area.

Dr. Kakodkar said through nuclear technology a million-fold increase in the energy per unit of mass extracted from the earth in an environmentally benign manner could be achieved.

He said that while energy constituted an important input to improve the standard of living, food and agriculture, human health related services, urban and rural waste management, water, preservation of environment and associated technology were the other areas where the developments in atomic energy programme have made significant contribution. He cited the example of wastewater sludge generated by a sewage plant that contained high level of pathogens limiting its reuse, which otherwise was a rich source of nutrients. Its disposal in the present form was an economic loss to the country. The treatment of the sludge to reduce odour and pathogens was, therefore, necessary for its beneficial utilisation.

Field trials at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) had showed that by using high energy gamma radiation from Cobalt-60 the pathogens in the sludge could be inactivated with high degree of reliability and in a clean and efficient manner.

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