***Britain's 'New Scientist' Journal on India Special: The Next Knowledge Superpower

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ram Narayanan <ramn_wins () adelphia net>
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:02:00 -0600
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: ***Britain's 'New Scientist' Journal on India Special: The Next
Knowledge Superpower

Dear Dave:
 
Britain¹s premier scientific journal, New Scientist, has done a special
issue for which the journal sent a team of investigative journalists to
India. Its conclusion: India is not yet a knowledge superpower. But it
stands on the threshold.
 
What is encouraging about the NewScientist.Com issue is that there is no
hype that would be intolerable to scientists with clinical minds.
 
³For the NewScientist reporters who have been in India for this special
report, many features of the country stand out,² says the magazine. ³With a
population of more than a billion, the country presents some curious
contrasts. It has the world¹s 11th largest economy, yet it is home to more
than a quarter of the world¹s poorest people. It is the sixth largest
emitter of carbon dioxide, yet hundreds of millions of its people have no
steady electricity supply. It has more than 250 universities which catered
last year for more than 3.2 million science students, yet 39 per cent of
adult Indians cannot read or write.²
It is against this sober background it informs its discriminating readers,
who include the best-informed scientists in the West: ³The first sign that
something was up came about eight years back. Stories began to appear in the
international media suggesting that India was Œstealing¹ jobs from wealthy
nations ‹ not industrial jobs, like those that had migrated to south-east
Asia, but the white-collar jobs of well-educated people. Today, we know that
the trickle of jobs turned into a flood. India is now the back office of
many banks, a magnet for labour-intensive, often tedious programming, and
the customer services voice of everything from British Airways to
Microsoft.² 

It points out: ³In reality, the changes in India have been more profound
than this suggests. Over the past five years alone, more than 100 IT and
science-based firms have located R&D labs in India. These are not drudge
jobs: high-tech companies are coming to India to find innovators whose ideas
will take the world by storm. Their recruits are young graduates, straight
from India¹s universities and elite technology institutes, or expats who are
streaming back because they see India as the place to be ‹ better than
Europe and the US. The knowledge revolution has begun.²

According to NewScientist: ³There's a revolution afoot
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524876.800>  in India. Unlike
any other developing nation, India is using brainpower rather than cheap
physical labour or natural resources to leapfrog into the league of
technologically advanced nations. Every high tech company, from Intel to
Google, is coming to India
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.100>  to find
innovators. Leading the charge is Infosys, the country's first
billion-dollar IT company
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.900> .²

³But the revolution is not confined to IT. Crop scientists are passionately
pursuing GM crops <http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524876.900>
to help feed India's poor. Some intrepid molecular biologists are pioneering
stem-cell cures for blindness
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524877.100> , while others
have beaten the odds to produce vaccines for pennies
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.500> .²

"And the country is getting wired up as never before. Mobile phone networks
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.300>  have nearly
blanketed the country and the internet
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524872.000>  is even reaching
remote villages". 

³Looking skyward, India's unique space programme
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.000>  has fought
international sanctions to emerge as key player in India's development.
Meanwhile, India's nuclear industry is boldly building cutting-edge
fast-breeder reactors
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524877.000> .²

There are those who ask: ³But why is India, a country that still has so many
development problems on the ground, aiming for the heavens? To Indian
scientists, the question is not only patronising of their scientific
aspirations, it betrays an ignorance of the Indian space programme¹s greater
purpose and successes against the odds.²

NewScientist provides the answer: ³India¹s political leaders say the country
cannot afford not to have a space programme. Indira Gandhi, who was India¹s
longest-serving Prime Minister, believed it was not only important for
science, but also vital to India¹s development.²

The special issue dated February 19, 2005
(http://www.newscientist.com/special/india
<http://www.newscientist.com/special/india> )  has a dozen well researched
articles covering developments in Indian science and technology, all worth
reading. 

The cover page article is reproduced below.

Ram Narayanan
US-India Friendship
http://www.usindiafriendship.net/ <http://www.usindiafriendship.net/>
 
 
http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524876.800
 
India special: The next knowledge superpower
* 19 February 2005 
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
THE first sign that something was up came about eight years back. Stories
began to appear in the international media suggesting that India was
"stealing" jobs from wealthy nations - not industrial jobs, like those that
had migrated to south-east Asia, but the white-collar jobs of well-educated
people. Today we know that the trickle of jobs turned into a flood. India is
now the back office of many banks, a magnet for labour-intensive, often
tedious programming, and the customer services voice of everything from
British Airways to Microsoft.
In reality, the changes in India have been more profound than this suggests.
Over the past five years alone, more than 100 IT and science-based firms
have located R&D labs in India. These are not drudge jobs: high-tech
companies are coming to India to find innovators whose ideas will take the
world by storm. Their recruits are young graduates, straight from India's
universities and elite technology institutes, or expats who are streaming
back because they see India as the place to be - better than Europe and the
US. The knowledge revolution has begun.

The impact of the IT industry on the economy has been enormous. In 1999 it
contributed 1.3 per cent of India's GDP. Last year that figure had grown to
3 per cent. And what's good for one science-based industry should be good
for others. India has a thriving pharmaceutical industry which is
restructuring itself to take on the world. And biotech is taking off. The
attitude is growing that science cannot be an exclusively intellectual
pursuit, but must be relevant economically and socially. The hope among some
senior scientists and officials is that India can short-cut the established
path of industrial development and move straight to a knowledge economy.

For the New Scientist reporters who have been in India for this special
report, many features of the country stand out. First, its scale and
diversity. With a population of more than a billion, the country presents
some curious contrasts. It has the world's 11th largest economy, yet it is
home to more than a quarter of the world's poorest people. It is the sixth
largest emitter of carbon dioxide, yet hundreds of millions of its people
have no steady electricity supply. It has more than 250 universities which
catered last year for more than 3.2 million science students, yet 39 per
cent of adult Indians cannot read or write.

These contrasts take tangible form on the outskirts of cities from Chennai
to Delhi, Mumbai to Bangalore. Here, often next to poor areas, great
gleaming towers of glass are growing in which knowledge workers do their
thinking. These images of modernity are a far cry from stereotypical India -
a place bedevilled alternately by drought and flood, of poor farmers and
slum-dwellers. Yet both sets of images are real - and many others besides.

High-tech is not the sole preserve of the rich. Fishermen have begun using
mobile phones to price their catch before they make port, and autorickshaw
drivers carry a phone so that customers can call for a ride. Technology
companies are extending internet connections to the remotest locations.
Small, renewable electricity generators are appearing in villages, and the
government is using home-grown space technology to improve literacy skills
and education in far-flung areas.

These efforts are often piecemeal, and progress is slow. "Illiteracy today
is reducing only at the rate of 1.3 per cent per annum," says R. A.
Mashelkar, director-general of the government's Council of Scientific and
Industrial Research. "At this rate, India will need 20 years to attain a
literacy rate of 95 per cent." He is hopeful that technology can speed up
this process.

Science too has its role to play. Critics of India's investment priorities
ask why the country spends large sums on moon rockets and giant telescopes
while it is still struggling to find food and water for millions of its
citizens? The answer is that without science, poverty will never be beaten.
"You cannot be industrially and economically advanced unless you are
technologically advanced, and you cannot be technologically advanced unless
you are scientifically advanced," says C. N. R. Rao, the prime minister's
science adviser.
Rise of the middle class
The knowledge revolution is already swelling the ranks of India's middle
class - already estimated to number somewhere between 130 million and 286
million. And the gulf in spending power between the poor and the comfortably
off has never been more apparent. Take cars. Sales are rising at more than
20 per cent a year. Before India opened up its economy in the early 1990s,
only a few models were available, almost all home-built. Today, top-end
imported cars have become real status symbols. Another consequence of the
knowledge revolution is that the extreme wealth of a new breed of young,
high-tech yuppies is challenging traditional gender roles and social values.

Whether the new-found prosperity and excitement of present-day India can be
sustained will depend crucially on how the government guides the country
over the next few years. Cheap labour and the widespread use of English do
not guarantee success, and there are major obstacles that the country will
need to tackle to ensure continued growth. Take infrastructure. Where China
has pumped billions into water, road and rail projects, India has let them
drift. Likewise, companies complain that bureaucracy and corruption make
doing business far more difficult than it ought to be.

One of the critical issues facing India is the gulf between the academic
world and industry. The notion that scientific ideas lead to technology and
from there to wealth is not widespread. This stems in large measure from the
attitudes prevalent before 1991. Before economic liberalisation, competition
between Indian companies was tame, so they were under no pressure to come up
with new ideas, nor did academics promote their ideas to industry.

India's attitude to patents are a product of that mindset. The country has
no tradition of patenting, and only recently have institutions and academics
started spinning off companies and filing for patents in earnest. Most
applications filed in India still come from foreign companies. Until this
year, the country did not recognise international patent rules, a failure
that hampered interactions with foreign companies.

The suspicion remains that Indian companies are out to steal ideas, says
Gita Sharma, chief scientific officer of Magene Life Sciences, a start-up
company in Hyderabad. "We are not yet able to wipe away that image." And
while India has now adopted those international rules on paper, there are
still concerns about how strictly they will be enforced. "It will take a
couple of years before the full implications play out," says Sankar
Krishnan, a biotechnology analyst for McKinsey and Company in Mumbai.

Bringing research round to a more commercial way of thinking is not the only
issue that academia must face up to. Another cultural problem, according to
some scientists, is that too often institutions have an ethos of playing
safe. Researchers who devise and test daring theories are criticised if they
fail, discouraging the kind of ground-breaking research that India needs.

There is a widespread view that the entire university system needs an
overhaul. India awards only 5000 science PhDs a year, says Mashelkar, yet it
should be producing 25,000. There are funding problems and political
interference in the running of some universities, particularly those run by
state governments. In response, central government has decided to select 30
universities, give them extra money, and mentor and monitor them to create a
series of elite institutions.

But such changes will be for nothing if students choose not to study
science. In recent years, increasing numbers have chosen to study IT and
management because that's where money is to be made. "IT and outsourcing has
improved the economy and quality of life of people, but has had a negative
effect on science," Rao says. Mashelkar hopes that as science-based
companies grow, and demand for fresh blood increases, salaries will rise and
more students will opt for science.
Chasing China
These problems must be solved if India is to capitalise on its recent gains,
and there are hopeful signs that Indian science is improving in the global
scheme of things. Its share of the top, highly cited publications has
increased, but it is starting from a very low base. The government spends
only $6 billion a year on research and it still has fewer scientists per
head of population than China or South Korea.

India's greatest rival has always been its giant neighbour to the north.
While IT and services are helping India log 6 per cent year-on-year
increases in GDP, China's vast manufacturing base is raising its GDP by
around 9 per cent a year. Even in India's strong suit of knowledge-based
industries, China could still steal the march on it, not least because its
Communist government can command change, while in India the democratic
government can only guide national development.

Nevertheless, the rewards for India of a thriving science-based economy
could be huge. The investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates that if India
gets everything right it will have the third largest economy in the world by
2050, after China and the US. India is not yet a knowledge superpower. But
it stands on the threshold.

From issue 2487 of New Scientist magazine, 19 February 2005, page 31
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