Speech by
Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi
Hon'ble Minister
for Science & Technology
on May 11, 2000
Technology Day 2000
In the life of a nation, a few moments capture the definitive essence of the process of nation building recalling our famous tryst with destiny. May 11, 1998 was one such moment. Years of investment and effort in developing scientific and technological capabilities, in nurturing innovation, in empowering our scientists and technologists and in creating ‘Science & Technology institutions of excellence culminated in the demonstration of our national ability to deliver some of the most sophisticated and complex technological systems known to humankind’ As a tribute to this defining moment, our Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose vision and decisiveness unshackled our technological potential and prowess, christened it the National Technology Day. I have been deeply honoured that in the Millennium year, when we begin our quest for an Indian Technology leadership initiative, he has specially conferred on me the privilege of giving away the National Technology Day award.
Today as we stand committed to extending our full throated support to technological innovation and excellence it is most fitting that the award has gone to an organization, a team and a product that exemplifies a firm conviction in our inherent abilities, in our traditions and in the fact that the spirit of ceaseless innovation can and should become a core value. The Tata name has always evoked a spirit of national pride, of ethicality and principled conduct, of quiet professionalism, of pioneering leadership and of taking on innovative challenges against the heaviest of odds. Until recently skeptics had argued that creating an automobile, that too a small car could not be done without import of technology and capital investment, that an indigenously developed car would always be inferior in quality, would not be able to withstand competition and that Telco had bitten more than it could chew. I share the pride of the Tatas in having proved the skeptics wrong in every respect. This must have been an exhilarating experience and I am happy to be able to savour a part of that exhilaration. Once again, my congratulations.
I also take this opportunity to commend the remarkable achievements of the Technology Development Board of the Department of Science & Technology. Quietly and without much fanfare the Board, within just three years of its creation, has enabled over sixty projects to take up commercialization of technology, largely developed indigenously, with over 20 innovative products already in the market and doing extremely well. The Technology Development Board is the first mechanism within the Government for bridging the gap between the laboratory and the factory, for encouraging industry to inculcate a culture driven by R&D and technological innovation, for taking technological risks, for facilitating linkages and interactions between R&D institutions and industry, for developing a technological knowledge base and for ensuring that there is no compromise on quality, environmental safety and competitiveness. The TDB is a venture capitalist with a difference. Its primary concern is to see that a striving for technological innovation drives the process of industrial development across all sectors of industry and across a multiplicity of enterprise types - from self made entrepreneurs to established industrial concerns, to professionals undertaking start-up venture;. It is not confined to supporting high-risk, high-profit ventures alone, and as long as an idea, a process or a product, is backed by technological excellence and innovativeness, the TDB is mandated to support it. The success that TDB has achieved in the very short span of time since it came into existence is enviable and the executive leadership of both the Department of Science and Technology and the Technology Development Board deserves fulsome praise and approbation.
Much still remains to be done. The long chain of linkages backwards and forwards between academia, basic theoretical research, applied research, public R&D institutions, corporate R&D, financial institutions, entrepreneurship development, business incubation, industry and the markets, needs new tools and instruments of integration and networking. We need a bold new architecture of governance. We need new managerial technologies. We need new partnerships. We need to set our goals much higher. We need to become global leaders in niche areas of technology.
It is with this vision of a technologically resurgent India that a small beginning has been made for converting the Technology Vision for India 2020 into missions and action, and for launching a New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative. One of our most exciting organizations, the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) has been entrusted the task of shaping the vision into missions, which are action oriented, focus on regional needs and aspirations, establish new partnerships between scientists, technologists, industrial organizations and communities and aim for a strong societal impact. Missions for increasing agricultural productivity especially in traditionally poor regions, for improvements in milk quality, for health services infrastructure, and for indigenous capability development in engineering industry have already been formulated. These are in addition to the 21 Jai Vigyan Missions being undertaken by the Departments of Science & Technology. Bio-technology, Atomic Energy, Space, Environment & Forests, Electronics, Agricultural Research, Scientific & Industrial Research, Health and Ocean Development covering a multitude of fields including food security, plant genetics, bio-diversity, genomic research, medicine, disaster management, ocean-thermal energy and technologies for the visually impaired. Together these missions constitute a newer, more vibrant agenda and a means of knitting diverse people and disciplines into a new kind of commonwealth of people knowledge and action.
I will be remiss if I do not highlight the specific initiatives in the field of biotechnology and bio-tech industry. It is said that as much as the present belongs to information technology, the future belongs to bio-techno1ogy - bio-technology for health, bio-technology for the human being. Bio-tech remedies vaccines and treatment systems, bio-seeds, biofertilizers, bio-pesticides, bio-genetic engineering - all hold a promise for solving some of our hitherto most intractable problems~ This promise can be fulfilled only if we substantially increase our investments in R&D, public and private, and in linking these investments with accelerated commercialization. To encourage inventors as also entrepreneurs to join the bio-industrial revolution. I have approved the institution of five awards in bio-tech product and process development and for commercialization of bio-tech products. These awards will be presented next year on the Technology Day.
In the process of building bridges between academic institutions, R&D institutions and the industrial enterprise a significant mediating role has to be played by structured entrepreneurship development interventions. Mechanisms such as entrepreneurship parks, business incubators, vocational guidance programmes, patent facilitation, venture capital support have proved extremely successful universally. The initiatives taken by the Department of Science and Technology to establish Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Parks through the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, the setting up of Business Incubators and Vocational Guidance Centres are indeed laudable and have yielded high dividends. However, we need to step up public investment very substantially in this field and also join hands with the private sector, the financial institutions and venture capitalists to leverage the investments manifold. I hope-the Technology Development Board and the Department of Science and Technology will come up with new ideas for achieving this. In order to provide an incentive to the existing Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Parks and to foster a spirit of healthy competition among them, I am pleased to announce the institution of an Annual Award for the best performing STEP which will carry a cash prize of Rs.1 lac and a citation.
I have dwelt sufficiently on the promise offered by technology for building a resurgent India, how we expect to fulfill this promise and the small beginnings we have made in this direction. However, the 'Technology Day' is also an occasion to reflect on the pitfalls of a purely technocratic vision of development and of an uncritical faith in Science & Technology as an Omnipotent God and as a universally valid prescription for whatever ails our society.' The myth of social, cultural and ethical neutrality of technology is a myth perpetuated by a purely consumerist form of social organisation. We know well that technology has often led to the oppression and the manipulation of the individual, to the widespread destruction of the natural environment and the depletion of the world's finite supply of natural resources. At the same time, technological skills have so far failed to provide effective solutions to many of the worlds major problems, in particular those of mass poverty, starvation and international conflict. Fuel shortages and power cuts have made man aware of the precariousness of his technological existence. Weapons of mass destruction have provided a sinister backcloth against which international power struggles are acted out. The individual in contemporary society feels himself increasingly trapped by powerful forces outside his control. He is reduced to little more than an economic cipher, continuously and uncomprehendingly manipulated within a vast inhuman complex. Technology, originally developed as a means of raising man above a life of poverty, drudgery and ill-health, now shows its other face as a major threat to his sanity and survival. Not surprisingly many have begun to feel that our technological society has opened the real Pandora's box, and is finding itself rapidly overcome by the content' - (David Dickson - Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change).
The two factors which have had the greatest impact on circumscribing the unchecked advance of the technological juggernaut are the emergence of environmental and gender concerns to the forefront of public policy and action. The poisoning of river systems by industrial effluents, the lung diseases induced by atmospheric pollution, the desertification of vast tracts of land, the disappearance of tropical rain-forests and mangroves, the sclerosis of our cities caused by the private motor car have brought home the perils and the tyranny of modern technology with great force. Community and peoples led resistance to the onslaught of technology has led to a global movement demanding ecological sustainability to be the cornerstone of all economic action whether on the part of Governments or the private firm. Such has been the power of the green movements that today even the most die-hard supporters of high energy consumption have to accept green constraints as imposing limits to technology growth. The real challenge among our technologists, however, is not merely to accept environmental and ecological considerations as constraining forces but to alter the way in which we think and design technology.
Developments in the field of solar energy, of hydrogen fuel-cells, bio-fertilizers herbal cures, bio-diversity conservation, water-harvesting, are all pointers to the directions in which technology must advance. The concept of sustainability has now acquired ready currency. However, it is not possible to speak of sustainable development unless we first address the issue of sustainable consumption. As long as the ideal of unlimited consumption as a measure of progress remains, technology will continue to exercise its tyranny in its attempts to meet the ever-expanding demands of human greed and rapacity. To change patterns of consumption we need to (a) develop respect for Nature and the limits imposed by it as sacred (b) recognize that ethical values are absolute and that we need the ability to discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' technology and (c) bring about a shift in control and power over technological processes from technocracies to the community, the family and the responsible individual. The developments in Information Technology, especially the miniaturization of technology and the ability to be fully networked enables us to acquire greater control over production processes, but the same technology can also be used by giant corporates and centralized bureaucracies to create an Orwellian nightmare.
The glaring gaps in our technology development processes have been painfully brought home to us by the severity of the drought and the water-famine prevailing in many parts of the country today. It is not only that we have been unable to harness technology for preventing the misery that periodic drought conditions create, or mitigating the distress situation, but that our technological growth has been at the cost of the traditional methods and technologies that communities had evolved over centuries for protecting themselves from similar situations. We had some of the most astonishingly ingenious systems of water harvesting, storage, conservation, management and distribution especially in water scarce regions, which have either disappeared or fallen into disuse. These systems and technologies exemplified community empowerment and community capability. The model of individualistic pursuit of technology growth motivated primarily by human selfishness and greed has hit at the very roots of our social and communal fabric. We need to ponder on how we can restore the centrality of issues of community control of ethical regulation, of innovative management of moving from a strategy-structure systems model to the purpose-process-people model, of protecting traditional knowledge systems, of enlarging the sphere and range of each person's competence, control and initiative limited only by other individuals claim to an equal range of power and freedom. A vision bounded by spirituality and ethics.
In the context of community empowerment it is interesting to reflect on t how the most significant technological development of our times in computation communication - I am referring to the internet - is bringing about a fundamental change in our imagery, our language and vocabulary and the means by which individuals, communities and societies relate to one another. First the image of the universe as a giant machine, consisting of many parts, is being replaced by the image of the universe as a vast neural and completely interconnected network.
Second, the language of common parlance increasingly speaks of a knowledge society, knowledge capital, knowledge industry, knowledge governance, rather than of Information Technology - in other words 'Information' and 'Technology' are in themselves useless unless they get converted to knowledge. The ascendancy of the mind over the machine. Third connectivity, conviviality, creativity and conservation have become the most sought after values. The creation of material wealth by ceaseless and rapacious exploitation of energy and resources is being increasingly replaced by the creation of knowledge wealth. A small group of creative individuals can today create in a weeks time the wealth that it took large industrial conglomerates of the past, decades to accumulate. Technology has shaken our notions of economics. Is this a mere bubble which will burst any moment now? I do not think so because these developments have restored the centrality of the human being, of his close interconnectedness with Nature and the Universe to the mainstream of societal processes. This was a desperately needed corrective to the goal of technological growth as an end in itself and it is indeed paradoxical that like Nature, technology itself has engineered and fashioned its own corrective.
The restoration of the paramountcy of the human mind and the recognition of its role as the prime mover, the engine of growth is a development of overwhelming significance for the Indian civilization. As a civilization we can differentiate ourselves from many others by the extra-ordinary sophistication, complexity and richness of our traditions of the pursuit of knowledge. At a time thousands of years ago, when many societies were still struggling to negotiate the basics of material existence, we already had a body of thought and knowledge which was breathtaking in its range - cosmology, astronomy, mathematics, linguistics and grammar, logic, ethics, aesthetics, architecture - there was not a branch of human thought which had not been irradiated the rays of human brilliance. We never had a distinction between religious and scientific thought because tour way of life was governed not by primitive awe and superstition and dogma and doctrine but by a civilizational awareness of that deep and meaningful resonance between the human mind and the underlying organisation of the natural world. I cannot recall any other society, which has throughout its history accorded such primacy to the quest for knowledge, untrammeled and unbounded by theocracy. The Western notion of a conflict between religion and science, a conflict which so many modem scientific thinkers from Whitehead, to Fred Hoyle to Stephen Hawking, have tried to reconcile, never existed in the Indian mind, because our culture, our way of life, our religion was always a scientific quest, a journey into the unknown.
The reason why 1 am harking back to our primary civilizational characteristic is because 1 believe that every society inherits a certain 'genetic software' and that in our case we have inherited our traditions of pursuit of knowledge, including the pursuit of knowledge qua knowledge as our genetic software. This gives us an unparalleled edge to emerge as a formidable power in a globalized, networked environment. Some years ago the British socialist historian, E.P. Thompson, was struck by this civilizational characteristic and remarked thus - (I quote) “India is not an important but perhaps most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no ones condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular, Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought being thought of in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind" - (unquote). When we view this heritage in the context of a knowledge economy; when we realise that this heritage is not the preserve of a few and that in every Indian, however poor by standards of conventional economics, we have a repository of traditional Knowledge of astonishing richness, we know the task before our technologists. It should become our bounden duty to harness the technological means available to us to convert every knowledge holder into a dynamic producer of knowledge - not merely a passive recipient of information created by others but a creator, a generator, an entrepreneur of content. This places a demand on our scientists and technologists to make technology available, accessible, affordable and controllable. The question before you has to be whether you will be in a position to respond boldly and imaginatively to this demand placed on you. Let us strive for a technology with a human face.
I would like to end on an optimistic note with some recent examples of application of science and technology with a human face with a view to empowering the hitherto technologically disenfranchised. Shri Himanshu Parekh, a Cambridge trained urban infrastructure engineer, has developed a concept of ‘Slum-Networking’ whereby he has used the strategic location of slums along a city's natural drainage courses - which offer the most efficient path for laying high-quality, world-class urban infrastructure- i.e., piped water supply, sewerage, drainage and roads - to create an infrastructure grid for the entire city with the investment and participation of the slum community. This achieves a two-fold objective whereby firstly the slum community becomes the provider of high quality infrastructure to the entire city and therefore comes to be recognised as a rich resource than as a liability and secondly the access to clean drinking water, individual toilets, and a clean green landscaped environment brings about a dramatic transformation in their own lives - social, economic and cultural. Those who have seen the magical transformation of the slum communities in parts of Indore, Baroda, Ahmedabad and Bombay, where Shri Parekh led the initiatives have become aware of the powerful impact engineering innovation can have in the lives of the poor. I am really happy to know that the Department of Science & Technology has on the basis of Parekh's work initiated a mission to be implemented through TIFAC for the application of technology for urban renewal. This is highly commendable.
A similar effort of using technology to impact on the lives of the distressed and the poor is that of' some students and faculty of N.I.D., Ahmedabad, who are designing an e-commerce portal for Indian craftsmen and artisans which will link individual craftsmen directly to designers and markets. As I have spoken about it in one of my earlier speeches, it will be possible through this portal for a garment buyer, say in New York, to approach a Zardozi craftsman in Najibabad, directly; select a pattern, a weave and a fabric and place his order with him. This will mean not only a multiple increase in the craftsman's income but also his direct interaction with the market will unleash his creative skills to meet the demands of his market.
The third example is the collective initiative led by the Department of Science & Technology for the integrated application of science and technology for the development of the Central Himalayan region, covering the whole range of concerns from natural disaster management mitigation and control, to conservation, propagation and utilization of natural resources especially biodiversity, infrastructure creation and socioeconomic betterment. The objective is to make S&T region and context specific.
I have chosen these examples, among many, because they demonstrate that technology can be socially useful, enhance creativity, empower the have-nots, without compromising on independent standards of technological excellence. All examples show the use of high technology, of international standards made to service the requirements of the economically poor but knowledge rich.
To sum up, it is my abiding belief that for technology to grow, it must be green, it must be ethical, it must have a human face, it must be gender sensitive, it must be region and context-specific and it must empower the communi1 as a whole and not merely a section of it. I believe that it is only these abiding principles which will enable us to make our true tryst with destiny.
