Ignited Minds Read online

  Some forty years ago, the daredevil Biju Patnaik piloted his Kalinga Airways plane into Jakarta to find Indonesian President Sukarno in the first flush of fatherhood. Sukarno’s wife had delivered a baby, and the family was searching for a name for the newborn girl when Bijuda called on them.

  Sukarno explained the problem on hand to the visitor from India. Biju Patnaik cast his mind back to the clouds that had greeted the baby’s arrival and suggested the Sanskritequivalent for them. Sukarno’s daughter was promptly christened Megawati and thus the daughter of the leader of the world’s largest Muslim nation got a Hindu name. For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool.

  Many years later, after several political upheavals, Megawati Sukarnoputri would become first the Vice President and then the President of Indonesia.

  Lament, my friend, at the passing away of a generation of politicians with a voice, vision and reach that went far beyond our borders. Lament at our State-sponsored, abnormal and paranoid fixation with a particular country that has blinded us to the rest of the world, including the Third World, which we used to head not so long ago. And weep softly at what we have reduced ourselves to in the comity of nations. For a large country with a billion people, a country with a thriving industry and a large pool of scientific talent, a country, moreover, that is a nuclear power, India does not count for as much as it should. In terms of our influence in world affairs, probably no other country is so far below its potential as we are.

  After Pokhran II, the West speaks about India and Pakistan in the same breath. Is it not in our national interest to demonstrate to the world that we can think of a world beyond Pakistan, that we are a qualitatively better, more mature and secular country with a greater commitment to the values of democracy and freedom?

  During March 2002, I was teaching about 200 final year students of engineering at Anna University and I gave a series of ten lectures on ‘Technology and Its Dimensions’. On the final day of the interaction, there was a discussion on Dual Use Technologies. One of the students raised a question.

  ‘Sir, I have recently come across Dr Amartya Sen’s statement that the nuclear weapon test conducted in May 1998 by India was ill conceived. Dr Amartya Sen is a great economist and a Nobel laureate who is much respected for his ideas on development. A comment from such a personality cannot be ignored. What is your view on his comments?’

  ‘I acknowledge the greatness of Dr Amartya Sen in the field of economic development and admire his suggestions, such as that thrust should be given to primary education,’ I said. ‘At the same time, it seemed to me that Dr Sen looked at India from a Western perspective. In his view, India should have a friendly relationship with all countries to enhance its economic prosperity. I agree, but we must also bear in mind India’s experience in the past. Pandit Nehru spoke in the United Nations against nuclear proliferation and advocated zero nuclear weapons in all the countries. We know the result. One should note that there are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads on American soil, another 10,000 nuclear warheads are on Russian soil and there are a number of them in the UK, China, France, Pakistan and some other countries. The START II and the recent agreements between the USA and Russia only talk about reducing the number of nuclear warheads to 2,000 each and even these agreements are limping. Nobody takes the reduction of warheads in serious terms. There should be a movement by those who are against the May 1998 test in America and Russia or other Western countries to achieve zero nuclear weapons status. It is essential to remember that two of our neighbouring countries are armed with nuclear weapons and missiles. Can India be a silent spectator?’

  India has been invaded in the last 3,000 years by a succession of conquerors, including the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese, either to enlarge their territory or to spread a religion or to steal the wealth of our country. Why is it India never invaded other countries (with a few exceptions in the Tamil kingdoms)? Is it because our kings were not brave enough? The truth is Indians were tolerant and never understood the true implications of being ruled by others for generations. But after the long independence struggle when we got our freedom and the country got united and has physical boundaries, is it possible to remain with economic prosperity as the only goal? The only way to show the strength of the country is the might to defend it. Strength respects strength and not weakness. Strength means military might and economic prosperity. The decisions and policies of the United Nations Security Council are dictated by the countries who possess nuclear weapons. How is it we did not get a seat in the Security Council so far but now other nations are recommending that India be made a member?

  In this regard, there is another incident I would like to narrate. My friend, Admiral L. Ramdas, who retired as the naval chief, told me that he and a group of people would hold a demonstration before Parliament protesting against the nuclear test carried out in May 1998. I replied to my friend that he and his group should first demonstrate in front of the White House and the Kremlin against the large quantity of nuclear warheads and ICBMs there.

  I call to my people to rise to greatness. It is a call to all Indians to rise to their highest capabilities. What are the forces which lead to the rise or fall of nations? And what are the factors which go to make a nation strong? Three factors are invariably found in a strong nation: a collective pride in its achievements, unity and the ability for combined action.

  For a people and a nation to rise to the highest, they must have a common memory of great heroes and exploits, of great adventures and triumphs in the past. If the British rose to great heights it is because they had great heroes to admire, men like Lord Nelson, say, or the Duke of Wellington. Japan represents a fine example of national pride. The Japanese are proud of being one people, having one culture, and because of that they could transform a humiliating military defeat into a triumphant economic victory.

  All nations which have risen to greatness have been characterized by a sense of mission. The Japanese have it in large measure. So do the Germans. In the course of three decades, Germany was twice all but destroyed. And yet its people’s sense of destiny never dimmed. From the ashes of the Second World War, it has emerged a nation economically powerful and politically assertive. If Germany can be a great nation, why can’t India?

  Unfortunately for India, historic forces have not given a common memory to all communities by taking them back to their roots a millennium down the ages. Not enough effort has been made in the last fifty years to foster that memory.

  I had the fortune of learning many of our religions in the country from my childhood, in high school and then onwards for nearly seventy years. One aspect I realize is that the central theme of any religion is spiritual well-being. Indeed it should be understood that the foundation of secularism in India has to be derived from spirituality.

  It is because our sense of mission has weakened that we have ceased to be true to our culture and ourselves. If we come to look upon ourselves as a divided people with no pride in our past and no faith in the future, what else can we look forward to except frustration, disappointment and despair?

  In India, the core culture goes beyond time. It precedes the arrival of Islam; it precedes the arrival of Christianity. The early Christians, like the Syrian Christians of Kerala, have retained their Indianness with admirable determination. Are they less Christian because their married women wear the mangalsutra or their menfolk wear the dhoti in the Kerala style? Kerala’s Chief Minister, A.K. Antony, is not a heretic because he and his people are part of Kerala’s culture. Being a Christian does not make him an alien. On the contrary, it gives an added dimension to his Indianness. A.R. Rahman may be a Muslim but his voice echoes in the soul of all Indians, of whatever faith, when he sings Vande Mataram.

  The greatest danger to our sense of unity and our sense of purpose comes from those ideologists who seek to divide the people. The Indian Constitution bestows on all the citizens total equality under its protective umbrella. Wh
at is now cause for concern is the trend towards putting religious form over religious sentiments. Why can’t we develop a cultural–not religious–context for our heritage that serves to make Indians of us all? The time has come for us to stop differentiating. What we need today is a vision for the nation which can bring unity.

  It is when we accept India in all its splendid glory that, with a shared past as a base, we can look forward to a shared future of peace and prosperity, of creation and abundance. Our past is there with us forever. It has to be nurtured in good faith, not destroyed in exercises of political oneupmanship.

  The developed India will not be a nation of cities. It will be a network of prosperous villages empowered by telemedicine, tele- education and e-commerce. The new India will emerge out of the combination of biotechnology, biosciences and agriculture sciences and industrial development. The political leaders would be working with the zeal born of the knowledge that the nation is bigger than individual interests and political parties. This attitude will lead to minimizing the rural-urban divide as progress takes place in the countryside and urbanites move to rural areas to absorb the best of what nature can give in the form of products and wealth.

  The most important and urgent task before our leadership is to get all the forces for constructive change together and deploy them in a mission mode. India is a country of one billion people with numerous religions and communities. It offers a wide spectrum of ideologies, besides its geographic diversity. This is our greatest strength. However, fragmented thinking, compartmentalized planning and isolated efforts are not yielding results. The people have to come together to create a harmonious India.

  The second vision of the nation will bring about a renaissance to the nation. The task of casting a strong India is in the hands of a visionary political leadership.

  SUMMARY

  There are success stories among failures. There is hope among chaos, promise among problems. We are one billion people with multiple faiths and ideologies. In the absence of a national vision cracks at the seam keep surfacing and make us vulnerable. There is a need to reinforce this seam and amalgamate us into one national forum.

  6

  The Knowledge Society

  Wisdom is a weapon to ward off destruction; It is an inner fortress which enemies cannot destroy.

  —Thirukkural 421 (200 BC)

  Ancient India was an advanced knowledge society. Invasions and colonial rule destroyed its institutions and robbed it of its core competence. Its people have been systematically degraded to lower levels of existence. By the time the British left, our youth had lowered their aims and were satisfied earning an ordinary livelihood. India is essentially a land of knowledge and it must rediscover itself in this aspect. Once this rediscovery is done, it will not require much struggle to achieve the quality of life, strength and sovereignty of a developed nation.

  Knowledge has many forms and it is available at many places. It is acquired through education, information, intelligence and experience. It is available in academic institutions, with teachers, in libraries, in research papers, seminar proceedings and in various organizations and workplaces with workers, managers, in drawings, in process sheets and on the shop floors. Knowledge, though closely linked to education, comes equally from learning skills such as those possessed by our artists, craftsmen, hakims, vaidyas, philosophers and saints, as also our housewives. Knowledge plays a very important role in their performance and output too. Our heritage and history, the rituals, epics and traditions that form part of our consciousness are also vast resources of knowledge as are our libraries and universities. There is an abundance of unorthodox, earthy wisdom in our villages. There are hidden treasures of knowledge in our environment, in the oceans, bioreserves and deserts, in the plant and animal life. Every state in our country has a unique core competence for a knowledge society.

  Knowledge has always been the prime mover of prosperity and power. The acquisition of knowledge has therefore been the thrust area throughout the world. Additionally, in India, there has been a culture of sharing it, not only through the tradition of guru—shishya but also by its spread to neighbouring countries through travellers who came to Nalanda and other universities drawn by their reputation as centres of learning. India is endowed with natural and competitive advantages as also certain distinctive competencies. But these are scattered in isolated pockets and the awareness of these is inadequate. During the last century the world has changed from being an agricultural society, in which manual labour was the critical factor, to an industrial society where the management of technology, capital and labour provide the competitive advantage. In the twenty-first century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. Efficient utilization of this existing knowledge base can create wealth for us in the form of better health, education and other indicators of progress. The ability to create and maintain the knowledge infrastructure, to enhance skills and increase productivity through the exploitation of advances in various fields will be the key factors in deciding the prosperity of this society. Whether a nation qualifies as a knowledge society is judged by how effectively it deals with knowledge creation and knowledge deployment.

  The knowledge society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is in respect of education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity.

  The task of wealth generation for the nation has to be woven around national competencies. The TIFAC task team has identified core areas that will spearhead our march towards becoming a knowledge society. The areas are: information technology, biotechnology, space technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, telemedicine and tele-education, technologies utilizing traditional knowledge, service sector and infotainment which is the emerging area resulting from convergence of information and entertainment. These core technologies, fortunately, can be interwoven by IT, a sector that took off only due to the enterprising spirit of the young.

  Thus there are multiple technologies and appropriate management structures that have to work together to generate a knowledge society. With India carving a niche for itself in information technology, the country is uniquely placed to fully capitalize on the opportunity to quickly transform itself into a knowledge society. The methodology of wealth generation in these core areas and to be able to meet an export target set at $50 billion by the year 2008, especially through the IT sector, is a subject that is currently under discussion. Also being discussed is how best to simultaneously develop the capability to generate information technology products worth $30 billion domestically to pump in for societal transformation. I am glad that the Planning Commission has taken a lead in generating a roadmap for transforming India into a knowledge society. I had the opportunity to be the Chairman of the Steering Committee set up for this task.

  Evolving suitable policy and administrative procedures, changes in regulatory methods, identification of partners and, most important, creation of young and dynamic leaders are the components that have to be put in place. In order to generate wealth, which is the second component for establishing a knowledge society, it is essential that simultaneously a citizen-centric approach to shaping of business policy, user-driven technology generation and intensified industry—lab—academia linkages have also to be established.

  Becoming a knowledge superpower by the year 2010 is a very important mission for the nation. While a knowledge society has a two-dimensional objective of societal transformation and wealth generation, a third dimension emerges if India is to transform itself into a knowledge superpower. This is knowledge protection and it entails a tremendous responsibility. It is very important that our communication network and information generators are protected from electronic attacks through surveillance and monitoring. There should be a focussed approach to intellectual property rights and related issues, and
our ancient knowledge and culture too are part of our resource base and need to be protected as such.

  In 1960, the agriculture sector employed in part or in full 74 per cent of the population. This came down to 62 per cent in 1992 and is expected to further fall to 50 per cent by 2010, though the demand of agricultural products will double by then. Higher productivity and better post-harvest management will have to compensate for the manpower reduction in the farming and agricultural products sector.

  There was a function in Chennai organized by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education who felicitated me along with the father of the Green Revolution, C. Subramaniam, and eminent lawyer N.A. Palkhivala. After the function, I shared with the ninety-year-old Subramaniam his vision of a second green revolution. He told me about his dream of setting up a national agro foundation that would develop hybrid seeds. His foundation would adopt small and marginal farmers and provide them with laboratory facilities for soil testing and access to information on the weather and markets, so that they could earn more through enhanced yields and better prices for what they produced. He aimed at bringing a million farmers under the scheme. Visionaries don’t age!

  On another occasion, I was talking to the students of Dr Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology at Pollachi, near Coimbatore. Dr N. Mahalingam, a great industrialist and academician, was sitting with me. He was telling me how the country can generate wealth through agro, chemical and textile industries. Amazed by his achievements in establishing industries and educational institutions, I asked him, ‘Sir, what is your next mission?’ As I said this, I realized I was asking this question of a person who was about eighty years old!