ON EMBRACING
POSITIVISM
Dr.
R. A. Mashelkar*
Self-denegration
seems to be deeply entrenched in our psyche. We see a great deal
of cynicism, negativism and pessimism around us. A feeling of
diffidence, gloom and desperation seems to be engulfing us. When
we see a glass that is half full, we are beginning to endlessly
discuss the half empty part of it. When there is darkness, we
endlessly discuss the curse of darkness. We do not go out in search
of a candle to light the room and remove the darkness. But we
must generate a new hope, a new sunshine in our great nation embracing
the philosophy of positivism.
It has to be
emphasized that amidst bad news, which is inevitable in any nation
of our size and diversity, there is also a plenty of good news
around. Our gains in the post-Independent era are sizeable. We
have functioned as a nation in spite of the cultural, social,
political, economic and religious diversities. We have a vibrant
democracy, an independent judiciary, and a diversified and widespread
industry. We manufacture everything, from pins to missiles. Information
Technology (IT) has shown the way as India’s tomorrow. But the
future of India does not lie in information technology but in
another IT that stands for Indian talent. This talent is in demand
all over the world. Products of our higher education systems,
be they IITs or IIMs, lead the world. We may lack in economic
or military clout, yet we Indians have contributed significantly
to set up an equitable world order. There is much that we can
be proud of in this field.
Sometimes we
do not even realize the value of what we have achieved. Let us
first see India’s unity in diversity. We have 18 major languages,
1600 minor languages and dialects, 6400 castes and sub-castes,
52 major tribes, 6 main ethnic groups and 28 States and yet we
have remained one country! We are the largest functioning democracy
in the world. We had 619 million voters in the 1998 national elections,
making India’s election the largest in the world. And they were
fair elections too. How many countries can boast of such a feat?
Look at our Constitution.
It enshrines the fundamental rights of citizens in sovereign India
irrespective of the caste, creed and religion of its people. Look
at our free Press. We have over 5000 dailies, 16,000 weeklies
and more than 6,000 fortnightlies in all Indian languages. How
many countries can boast of a freedom of thought, freedom of expression
and freedom of action in the way we have in India?
India has the
reputation of being a thinking nation for a millennium. Indian
minds are great. But what about our mindsets? That is a matter
of concern. Our mindsets are not positive. We are perennially
in a state of self-doubt. We continuously ask ourselves, have
we performed? Are we good enough? Let me take only one example
of our science and technology (S & T). We keep on asking as
to whether Indian S & T has delivered. We do not realize that
India has achieved so much for so little. Our overall S &
T budget last year was less than 3 billion US dollars. Do you
know that Pfizer’s R & D budget was over 5 billion dollars
last year? For a national budget that was smaller than the budget
of a single company, India has achieved remarkably well.
Take our space
programme. Today, we design, develop, test and fabricate our own
launches. We have moved from one sophisticated launching vehicle
to another. We have moved from ASLV to PSLV to GSLV. We have done
it without any help from anyone since no one will give us the
technology in these strategic sectors for any consideration. We
have launched 35 satellites so far. Of them 17 are Indian launches,
23 are in orbit and 14 are geo-stationary. Not only do we launch
our own satellites today but that of our foreign customers too
including Germany and Korea. And all this is done for a budget
that is just 7 per cent of a single company in the USA! Should
we not be proud of this feat?
Let me move beyond
science and technology and again come back to the theme that India
does so much for so little. Only 50 per cent of our children go
to school. Of them only 30 per cent go up to the 10th standard
and only 40 per cent of them pass. That makes it 6 per cent-as
against, say Korea, for which the corresponding figure is about
70 per cent. So, with 6 per cent we are talking about a tip of
the iceberg. But what does that tip of the iceberg deliver? Last
year, we exported 9.7 billion US dollars worth of software. Do
you know how many contributed to this export? Only 50,000 software
engineers. That is 0.05 per cent of our population, and it contributed
to almost 10 per cent of our exports. The positive way of looking
at it is that if the tip of the iceberg can deliver so much, can
you imagine, what would happen, if the entire iceberg was lifted?
Again, those
with persistent self-doubts will say that all this is a dream.
It is going to take time. What do we do with the submerged part
of the iceberg that is not visible today. It is amazing to discover
as to how that part of the human capital that resides in this
submerged part is also so resilient, so valuable and so innovative.
Let me give you a startling example. What do global giants like
General Electric and Motorola have in common with a humble tiffin
delivery network comprising 3500 dabbawallas, who deliver 1.5
lakh lunch boxes to the citizens in Mumbai each day? The dabbawallas
have the six sigma rating or an efficiency rating of 99.999999,
which means one error in one million transactions. This rating
has been given to them by Forbes Global, the noted American
business weekly. Now, these are largely illiterate dabbawallas.
Their secret lies in a coding system devised over the years. Each
dabba is marked in an indelible ink with an alphanumeric code
of about 10 characters. In terms of price and the reliability
of delivery, say compared to a Federal Express System, the dabbawallas
remain unbeatable. Their business models have become a class room
study in some management institutes. By giving this one example,
all that I am trying to convey is that the innovative potential
of the people does not plummet to zero, when the people are illiterate
or semi-literate. They necessarily have to innovate to survive
and to succeed. There is a plenty of cheer there too. We must
be prepared to discover it and salute it.
What we really
require is self-confidence. It is rather ironical that when we
are losing faith in ourselves, the rest of the world is looking
to us for inspiration. One hundred major companies from the USA,
Europe and Japan have set up their research, design and development
laboratories in India in the last five years. Intel’s design of
super chip to GE’s design of aircraft engines gets done in India
today. As Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric (GE)
said during the inauguration of GE’s 1000 Ph.D. R&D Centre
in Bangalore ‘India is a developing country but it is a developed
country as far as its intellectual capital is concerned. We get
the best intellectual capital here - thanks to the amazing quality
of Indian mind’. It is amusing, at least to me, that the confidence
in the supremacy of Indian minds that the others have, we do not
seem to have ourselves.
We are, again,
a peculiar country. When we are challenged and denied a technology,
we perform. Let us remind ourselves about how India reacted to
the denial of the supercomputers in the late eighties. Cray XMP-1205
was something that we needed for weather forecasting. It was not
available for a variety of reasons – one need not go into the
details. But Indian scientists were challenged. They met the challenge
by using massively parallel processing computing technology to
create a supercomputer. In less than three years that C-DAC was
given, and within less than $ 10 million that C-DAC was allocated,
the PARAM supercomputer was delivered. I remember reading the
Washington Post, which said: "Angry India does
it". Our problem seems to be that we are not permanently
angry!
What would we
really require for transforming India? Now here is the issue.
People consider India as a ‘land of ideas’ but the USA as a ‘land
of opportunities’. That is why our young people with aspirations
go to the USA, which provides them an opportunity to reach their
own potential. I read some statistics the other day that 2 per
cent of Indians, i.e. non-resident Indians, who work in those
lands of opportunity outside, generate an economic output which
is almost the same as India’s economic output, which 98 per cent
of us generate from within India. Our challenge is to make India
a land of opportunity. That again requires a positivism and a
faith in ourselves.
As I said, Indian
talent will reign supreme in the twenty-first century. But it
is not Indian talent alone that the world would be seeking, it
will also be seeking the Indian way of life. With sharp demographic
imbalances, the aged population in the western world would increase
phenomenally. This will mean that the social security demands
will increase. It is estimated that in some nations, this may
be as much as 20 to 30 per cent of their GDP. Someone said recently
to me that the only way to deal with these problems is by emulating
India, namely, by adopting its joint family system. As you know,
our joint families give a value of belonging and sharing that
is almost epic in scope. That model is what the rest of the world
is seeking. The world wants to go back to nature, back to yoga,
back to Ayurveda, back to spiritualism. It is all "an Indian
way of life".
But cynics will
still have their doubts. The rest of the world will go the Indian
way. But what about India? Will globalization not destroy India?
Will we not lose our identity? Let me re-emphasise that Indian
civilization has accommodated new elements from outside over the
entire course of its history. Indian society has shown a great
capacity to accommodate diverse and contradictory elements without
losing its identity. Therefore, the fears about the impact of
globalization in terms of losing our identity are unwarranted.
Our challenge today is to maintain this traditional record for
diversity while finding more room for quality and individual freedom.
For India, which
is an ancient civilization, one century can only be a chapter
in its history. I do believe that the chapter on the 21st century
India is going to be our crucial chapter. It will set the mood
and tone for our future. We can make it a golden chapter if we
believe in ourselves. All that we need is an attitudinal change
towards life and work. A shift from a culture of drift to a culture
of dynamism, from a culture of idle prattle to a culture of thought
and work, from diffidence to confidence and from despair to hope.
I am sure, this will happen and we will see India emerge as a
major power in the world. (PIB Features)
*Director
General, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research
