Israel -
> POPULATION: 7 million (less than half of Mumbai)
> SIZE: Less than that of Kerala
> ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST IT: 2 soldiers kidnapped
> by Hezbolla, 1 by Hamas
> RETALIATORY ACTION : war on Lebanon and Gaza
> India -
> POPULATION: 1 billion+
> SIZE: 6th largest in the world
> ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST IT: attack on parliament , 150 + dead in blasts in the capital ,200+ dead in Mumbai, a good number at Hyderabad, at ludhiana at ajmer and perhaps a dozen daily in Kashmir.
> RETALIATORY ACTION: a speech by our Prime Minister and condolence messages...
So to kick off, There are two Indias in this country.
One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth &live up to all the adjectives that the world has been showering recently upon us.The other India is the LEASH.
One India says ,give me a chance& I'll prove myself. The other India says, prove yourself first & maybe then you'll have a chance.
One India lives in the optimism of our hearts. The other India lurks in the skepticism of our minds.
One India wants. The other India hopes.
One India leads. The other India follows.
But conversions are on the rise. With each passing day, more &more people from the other India have been coming over to this side. And quietly, while the world is not looking , a pulsating, dynamic, new India is emerging.
An India whose faith in success is far greater than its fear of failure .An India that no longer boycotts foreign-made goods but buys out the companies that make them instead.
And one India-a tiny voice at the back of the head-is looking down at the bottom of the ravine & hesitating. The other India is looking up at the sky & saying-it's TIME TO FLY...
Chak de…………………
Forecasting always is a hazardous task and how often have people gone wrong in forecasting. ‘Heavier than air flying machines are impossible’ said Lord Kelvin, Airlinkage is the lifeline of global connectivity today. ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented’ said Charles Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patent in 1899. After this statement, around forty million patents have been filed! ‘I think there is no world market for more than 5 computers’ said Chairman of IBM in 1943. ‘There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’ said President of DEC, in 1977. ‘640K ought to be enough computer memory for anyone’. Said someone in 1981. And how wrong he was as we move from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes to terrabytes. Did you know, who said this? It was Mr. Bill Gates.
As we look back, one finds that Indian gains in the post-independent India are sizeable. We have functioned as a nation in spite of the cultural, social, political, economic and religious diversities and integration of states. Inspite of all that we have achieved, several formidable challenges remain.Almost as many Indians are below the poverty line and illiterate as the entire population of India in 1950. Never before in the history of mankind, did a country with democratic dispensation had to feed so many poor and teach so many illiterates and also simultaneously compete with the most advanced countries for a place under the sun. We have entered the next millenium, therefore, with a great challenge.
Science in India was always very closely intertwined with culture and philosophy. It was also tempered with very unusual wisdom. India’s contributions to astronomy, to mathematics, to medicine etc. in the millennia gone by have been truly phenomenal.
It was Acharya Bharadwaj who described the principle , construction and working of three categories of flying machines: 1.) One that flies on earth from one place to another. 2.) One that travels from one planet to another. 3.) And One that travels from one universe to another and all that was way back in 800 B.C.
> Baudhayana gave the "Pythagoras theorem" centuries before the Greeks in 800 BC.
Pingala (in 400 BC) invented the binary number system which is the basic of computer operations etc etc………..
Today we look at the modern India that was built after Independence .Sustained investments made in higher education and science and technology have helped build a new nation, which has now an aspiration to reach a developed country status by 2020.
Lets talk about the Benefits of Investment in S&T in the Developing World. It has been shown that a dollar invested in a developing country may go very far Take a specific example of the Indian space research programme. The R&D budget for this programme was US $ 450 million in 2002. The R&D budget for General Motors was around 7 billion dollars in the same year. What is it that the India's space programme has achieved for such a small budget that is equivalent to 7% of single company in USA? Today, India has developed a strong capacity to design, develop, test and fabricates its own launch vehicles and satellites. India has moved from one sophisticated launch vehicle to another - that is from SLV to ASLV to PSLV to GSLV. India has launched 35 satellites so far, of which 17 are Indian launches, 23 are in orbit and 14 are geo-stationary. India's space program has been able to draw hydro-geomorphological maps across the country. This scientific source finding approach has meant that the success rate for groundwater targetting has moved from 45% to more than 90%. Around 160,000 villages with drinking water problem have got benefited from this. It is clear that whether it is a poor nation or a rich nation, investment in S&T does play a key role in nation building.
Making Technology Work for the Poor
Let us take just one example of illiteracy.In India, we have about 200 million adults, who cannot read or write. At the current rate, India will need 20 years to attain a literacy level of 95%. Can we do it in less than 5 years by using technology?
Yeah .why not?????indians have developed a unique Computer-based Functional Literacy (CBFL) method. The method emphasizes on learning words rather than alphabets. When tested in a certain village ,Without a trained teacher, the women started reading the newspaper in Telugu in 8 to 10 weeks. 40,000 people have been made literate in these pilot experiments so far.
With CBFL, its predicted that we can increase literacy in India to 90 to 95% within 3 to 5 years, instead of 20 years and that too In just Rs. 100 per person.
Technology is a many splendored endeavor. There is a low technology and there is a high technology. Both can be used for solving the problems of the poor.
Sometimes scientific advances will create solutions – but adopting them to the developing world conditions can pose a challenge. How does one set up a telephone exchange in a village in the Rajasthan where temperatures will go
beyond 500 C and the sand storms create unmanageable dusty conditions. It was C-DOT that designed the rural exchanges, which could withstand these aggressive conditions.
Our real challenge seems to be to get the 'best minds' around. the world to engage themselves in providing solutions to the problems that can make a difference to the humanity.
Building Indigenous Technological Capacity
The car industry has changed in India over the years. In the last fifty years, the wheel has turned the full circle. It was British Morris Oxford, which was sold as an Indian Ambassador on Indian roads some fifty years ago. Today it is an Indian
Indica, i.e. an Indian car, designed and built in India that is being sold as City Rover on London roads! The creative ability of 700 engineers from Telco who designed it was always there for all to see, but it got 'expressed' only when the government policy changed through opening up and liberalization.
Brain drain to brain gain
Let us take the issue of brain drain in a broader context. Why does brain drain take place in the first instance? when an expert at Branding was asked how would he brand India, He was puzzled. He had branded a soap, a refrigerator, but he wondered as to how he could brand a nation. For instance, US brands itself as a land of opportunity’. He said ‘I will brand India as a land of ideas’. Now here is the problem. India is a land of ideas but it is USA that is a land of opportunities. That is why young people with aspirations go to USA, which provides them an opportunity to reach their own potential.
And the other reason…….
Just a small piece worth quoting:
GRASSHOPPER- in INDIA OLD VERSION...
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper. Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers. Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath. Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV. Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' .Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley. Lakhs of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country..... .
Coming back
I believe that for the young people, it is not the 'physical income' but it is the ‘psychic income’ that matters much more. That is why a computer engineer in India works on the challenge of the Param computer in C-DAC on a salary that is a small fraction of what he would get from IBM. That is why a space scientist in ISRO works on the indigenous satellite launching vehicle GSLV rather than joining NASA.
Today we have 50% Indian children that go to school, 30% of them reach upto10th standard and 40% of them pass. Multiply these percentages and you will find that 6% of the children go past the 10th standard -- as against 65% to 70% in Korea. Yet India is projected as an emerging IT Superpower. 600,000 software professionals with an average age of around twentysix generated 20% of our exports last year. But 600,000 professionals constitute only 0.06% of our population.
This is a tip of the iceberg. For this tip of the iceberg that is shining, there is a huge part of the submerged iceberg, which constitutes the 'have nots' and the 'underprivileged' that is in the dark.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude by saying that we must do everything to lift this iceberg. Science and technology has that power of lifting that iceberg as I have repeatedly demonstrated in this lecture.
In all this, time is not on our side. We have a solid foundation of 5,000 years to build on in the areas of science and technology, but we must build fast and ensure that the edifice is strong and functional. We can do it; we have all the resources. We are today in need of a leadership change like never before. A leadership Borne out of nationalism, a leadership , Indian not only by birth but also by deeds. It is perhaps the right juncture for us to decide whether we need a Ram rajya or a Rome Rajya…….believe me a political and able leadership foresight is necessary if We want to stroll India into the 21st century..
Lastly Francois Voltaire stated: "... everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges.
Albert Einstein: We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Remember Technology can transform our country
And to just sign off: No country is perfect, the people have to make it one...
Chak de india….rang de basanti
> POPULATION: 7 million (less than half of Mumbai)
> SIZE: Less than that of Kerala
> ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST IT: 2 soldiers kidnapped
> by Hezbolla, 1 by Hamas
> RETALIATORY ACTION : war on Lebanon and Gaza
> India -
> POPULATION: 1 billion+
> SIZE: 6th largest in the world
> ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST IT: attack on parliament , 150 + dead in blasts in the capital ,200+ dead in Mumbai, a good number at Hyderabad, at ludhiana at ajmer and perhaps a dozen daily in Kashmir.
> RETALIATORY ACTION: a speech by our Prime Minister and condolence messages...
So to kick off, There are two Indias in this country.
One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth &live up to all the adjectives that the world has been showering recently upon us.The other India is the LEASH.
One India says ,give me a chance& I'll prove myself. The other India says, prove yourself first & maybe then you'll have a chance.
One India lives in the optimism of our hearts. The other India lurks in the skepticism of our minds.
One India wants. The other India hopes.
One India leads. The other India follows.
But conversions are on the rise. With each passing day, more &more people from the other India have been coming over to this side. And quietly, while the world is not looking , a pulsating, dynamic, new India is emerging.
An India whose faith in success is far greater than its fear of failure .An India that no longer boycotts foreign-made goods but buys out the companies that make them instead.
And one India-a tiny voice at the back of the head-is looking down at the bottom of the ravine & hesitating. The other India is looking up at the sky & saying-it's TIME TO FLY...
Chak de…………………
Forecasting always is a hazardous task and how often have people gone wrong in forecasting. ‘Heavier than air flying machines are impossible’ said Lord Kelvin, Airlinkage is the lifeline of global connectivity today. ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented’ said Charles Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patent in 1899. After this statement, around forty million patents have been filed! ‘I think there is no world market for more than 5 computers’ said Chairman of IBM in 1943. ‘There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’ said President of DEC, in 1977. ‘640K ought to be enough computer memory for anyone’. Said someone in 1981. And how wrong he was as we move from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes to terrabytes. Did you know, who said this? It was Mr. Bill Gates.
As we look back, one finds that Indian gains in the post-independent India are sizeable. We have functioned as a nation in spite of the cultural, social, political, economic and religious diversities and integration of states. Inspite of all that we have achieved, several formidable challenges remain.Almost as many Indians are below the poverty line and illiterate as the entire population of India in 1950. Never before in the history of mankind, did a country with democratic dispensation had to feed so many poor and teach so many illiterates and also simultaneously compete with the most advanced countries for a place under the sun. We have entered the next millenium, therefore, with a great challenge.
Science in India was always very closely intertwined with culture and philosophy. It was also tempered with very unusual wisdom. India’s contributions to astronomy, to mathematics, to medicine etc. in the millennia gone by have been truly phenomenal.
It was Acharya Bharadwaj who described the principle , construction and working of three categories of flying machines: 1.) One that flies on earth from one place to another. 2.) One that travels from one planet to another. 3.) And One that travels from one universe to another and all that was way back in 800 B.C.
> Baudhayana gave the "Pythagoras theorem" centuries before the Greeks in 800 BC.
Pingala (in 400 BC) invented the binary number system which is the basic of computer operations etc etc………..
Today we look at the modern India that was built after Independence .Sustained investments made in higher education and science and technology have helped build a new nation, which has now an aspiration to reach a developed country status by 2020.
Lets talk about the Benefits of Investment in S&T in the Developing World. It has been shown that a dollar invested in a developing country may go very far Take a specific example of the Indian space research programme. The R&D budget for this programme was US $ 450 million in 2002. The R&D budget for General Motors was around 7 billion dollars in the same year. What is it that the India's space programme has achieved for such a small budget that is equivalent to 7% of single company in USA? Today, India has developed a strong capacity to design, develop, test and fabricates its own launch vehicles and satellites. India has moved from one sophisticated launch vehicle to another - that is from SLV to ASLV to PSLV to GSLV. India has launched 35 satellites so far, of which 17 are Indian launches, 23 are in orbit and 14 are geo-stationary. India's space program has been able to draw hydro-geomorphological maps across the country. This scientific source finding approach has meant that the success rate for groundwater targetting has moved from 45% to more than 90%. Around 160,000 villages with drinking water problem have got benefited from this. It is clear that whether it is a poor nation or a rich nation, investment in S&T does play a key role in nation building.
Making Technology Work for the Poor
Let us take just one example of illiteracy.In India, we have about 200 million adults, who cannot read or write. At the current rate, India will need 20 years to attain a literacy level of 95%. Can we do it in less than 5 years by using technology?
Yeah .why not?????indians have developed a unique Computer-based Functional Literacy (CBFL) method. The method emphasizes on learning words rather than alphabets. When tested in a certain village ,Without a trained teacher, the women started reading the newspaper in Telugu in 8 to 10 weeks. 40,000 people have been made literate in these pilot experiments so far.
With CBFL, its predicted that we can increase literacy in India to 90 to 95% within 3 to 5 years, instead of 20 years and that too In just Rs. 100 per person.
Technology is a many splendored endeavor. There is a low technology and there is a high technology. Both can be used for solving the problems of the poor.
Sometimes scientific advances will create solutions – but adopting them to the developing world conditions can pose a challenge. How does one set up a telephone exchange in a village in the Rajasthan where temperatures will go
beyond 500 C and the sand storms create unmanageable dusty conditions. It was C-DOT that designed the rural exchanges, which could withstand these aggressive conditions.
Our real challenge seems to be to get the 'best minds' around. the world to engage themselves in providing solutions to the problems that can make a difference to the humanity.
Building Indigenous Technological Capacity
The car industry has changed in India over the years. In the last fifty years, the wheel has turned the full circle. It was British Morris Oxford, which was sold as an Indian Ambassador on Indian roads some fifty years ago. Today it is an Indian
Indica, i.e. an Indian car, designed and built in India that is being sold as City Rover on London roads! The creative ability of 700 engineers from Telco who designed it was always there for all to see, but it got 'expressed' only when the government policy changed through opening up and liberalization.
Brain drain to brain gain
Let us take the issue of brain drain in a broader context. Why does brain drain take place in the first instance? when an expert at Branding was asked how would he brand India, He was puzzled. He had branded a soap, a refrigerator, but he wondered as to how he could brand a nation. For instance, US brands itself as a land of opportunity’. He said ‘I will brand India as a land of ideas’. Now here is the problem. India is a land of ideas but it is USA that is a land of opportunities. That is why young people with aspirations go to USA, which provides them an opportunity to reach their own potential.
And the other reason…….
Just a small piece worth quoting:
GRASSHOPPER- in INDIA OLD VERSION...
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper. Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers. Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath. Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV. Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' .Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley. Lakhs of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country..... .
Coming back
I believe that for the young people, it is not the 'physical income' but it is the ‘psychic income’ that matters much more. That is why a computer engineer in India works on the challenge of the Param computer in C-DAC on a salary that is a small fraction of what he would get from IBM. That is why a space scientist in ISRO works on the indigenous satellite launching vehicle GSLV rather than joining NASA.
Today we have 50% Indian children that go to school, 30% of them reach upto10th standard and 40% of them pass. Multiply these percentages and you will find that 6% of the children go past the 10th standard -- as against 65% to 70% in Korea. Yet India is projected as an emerging IT Superpower. 600,000 software professionals with an average age of around twentysix generated 20% of our exports last year. But 600,000 professionals constitute only 0.06% of our population.
This is a tip of the iceberg. For this tip of the iceberg that is shining, there is a huge part of the submerged iceberg, which constitutes the 'have nots' and the 'underprivileged' that is in the dark.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to conclude by saying that we must do everything to lift this iceberg. Science and technology has that power of lifting that iceberg as I have repeatedly demonstrated in this lecture.
In all this, time is not on our side. We have a solid foundation of 5,000 years to build on in the areas of science and technology, but we must build fast and ensure that the edifice is strong and functional. We can do it; we have all the resources. We are today in need of a leadership change like never before. A leadership Borne out of nationalism, a leadership , Indian not only by birth but also by deeds. It is perhaps the right juncture for us to decide whether we need a Ram rajya or a Rome Rajya…….believe me a political and able leadership foresight is necessary if We want to stroll India into the 21st century..
Lastly Francois Voltaire stated: "... everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges.
Albert Einstein: We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Remember Technology can transform our country
And to just sign off: No country is perfect, the people have to make it one...
Chak de india….rang de basanti
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