INDIA ARRIVES
ON THE WORLD SCENE
Lalit
Sethi*
In fifty-three years
since India became a Republic, it has travelled a great deal,
especially in the arena of science and technology. It is breaking
new ground, finding new paths, reaching out in space, into the
depths of the earth and oceans – not just to feed a billion Indians
with grain and milk, but also try and put quality into the life
of the people. An Indian mission to the moon has already been
announced. The world is tapping Indian brains as never before.
India has arrived on the world scene. Indians are now looking
for a fortune overseas. The big corporations are coming to India
to set up shop and do their research and development right here.
They are also sourcing billions of dollars of software and other
work from Indian corporates – both public sector and private –
to get high technology and innovations from India.
The Prime Minister,
Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, says: "Science and technology
are undoubtedly a critical input for India’s all-round development.
Many of the most visible triumphs of post-independent India have
been based on the fruits of science and technology. But the development
of India’s S&T capabilities also brings an important benefit
to our nation. They give all of us a high degree of self-confidence.
And self-confidence is itself a crucial input for the success
of any endeavour in any field of nation building. The sky of science
belongs to the entire mankind. No part of it can be a monopoly
of any single nation".
Even as India
is engaged in refining and developing high technology in new directions,
it is not overlooking grassroots technology to serve the man in
the street or the poor farmer. A classic example of this is the
development of a simple hand-held computer called the Simputer
by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. It provides Internet
and electronic mail (e-mail) access in local languages with touch
screen functions and micro-banking applications. It has already
been commercialized. Future versions promise speech recognition
and text-to-speech software for illiterate users.
About 20 years
ago when India was trying to acquire a supercomputer for weather
analysis, the advanced countries were unwilling to sell one because
it had dual use capabilities for defence purposes. India started
developing its own supercomputer at the Centre for Advanced Computing
(C-Dac) in Pune and came up with the Param Super-computer which
is capable of millions of calculations by the second. It adopted
the architecture of cluster computing in 1994 and integrated into
parallel processing by dividing certain areas of work and then
integrating them. The Indian supercomputer then cost only about
Rs. 20 lakh against overseas supercomputers costing $ 20 million
or more. India also used the rapid developments in micro processor
and memory technologies and made cost-effective use to build state-of
-the-art high performance computing (HPC) to reach the third generation
in indigenous capability. Indian supercomputers are in use in
50 installations within the country and overseas.
Telecom in India
is among the fastest growing areas in the world. There are now
35 million fixed lines and their number has been rising at 5 million
lines a year and could soon be 10 million a year. India also has
15 million mobile phones and their annual increase could soon
overtake the fixed lines as a number of public and private sector
outfits are around to meet the public demand fully. Some experts
see a potential of 500 million telephones – fixed and mobile –
in India in a few decades. But India’s innovation was the low
cost small rural exchanges (RAX) which could withstand extreme
climates in different parts of the country without air-conditioning.
The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) which initiated
RAX became popular in several developing countries. Even Russia
found RAX suitable. This was another effort to take technology
to the distant and inaccessible areas with few or no maintenance
problems.
Innovations
India is one
of the few countries engaged in developing clean fuels of the
future. One of these is hydride – small blocks of solidified hydrogen
to run motor vehicles. Advanced work is being done at the Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi and Banaras Hindu University. In
Varanasi, 50 prototype motorcycles are being tested to ascertain
whether hydride can run them in difficult terrain as well as in
town and country. The cost of the engines may be high today but
if and when experiments succeed even in a decade, the fuel cost
of running them would be very low. The prime concern of the innovators
is safety and no risks are being taken anywhere in the world to
rush it for use. But in future even aircraft could use hydride.
Decentralised
fuel cell power packs using agro alcohol have also been developed
to electrify rural and remote areas. To encourage and support
grassroot innovations a National Innovation Foundation has been
set up with a corpus of Rs. 50 crore. There were 1000 applicants
in the year 2000 but by the end of 2003 more than 40,000 applications
will be considered from Indian innovators at home and overseas,
especially the USA. The Government is offering Swarnajayanti fellowships
to young scientists and each fellowship is Rs. 25,000 per month
for research in frontier areas of science. Two science awards
have been announced for women besides awards for school children.
India has set
up an optical infra-red telescope with an aperture of two metres
at Hanle in Ladakh at an altitude of 15,000 feet above sea level.
It is the highest astronomical laboratory in the world. It is
operated remotely via satellite communication and the control
station is located at Hoskote near Bangalore. India is presently
developing a 14-seater multi-role transport plane and it will
be ready soon for a test flight.
In the area of
health, India has achieved several leads to cure cancer, malaria,
diabetes and ulcers. A poly herbal formulation "Asmon"
to treat asthma, a common ailment in highly polluted urban areas,
has been evolved to bring relief to thousands of people.
An Indo-US Science
and Technology Forum, set up during President Clinton’s visit,
is engaged in collaborating in frontline areas of science. An
Indo-US Meteorological Data Centre has been set up in Delhi and
its data will be available for research and analysis by scientists
of the two countries.
R&D
The investment
on research and development is being raised by two and a half
times in three years from 0.8 per cent in the year 2000 to 2 per
cent of the gross domestic product now. The latest science policy
is intended to make India one of the leaders in this area. India
is engaged in developing high-yielding wheat varieties resistant
to fungal diseases in cooperation with Switzerland. The Government
has allowed production of trans-genetic Bt. cotton with yields
25 per cent higher than the conventional varieties and resistant
to pests. Modified mustard seeds are being evaluated carefully.
India has developed
and perfected the world’s first mobile seabed mining system at
the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa to extract polymettalic
nodules from the seabed. The nodules are rich in high value metals
like cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. India has established
its sealed boundary in the continental shelf under the Law of
the Seas to stake claim to millions of square miles of seabed
area to be used for petroleum exploration, mining and fishing.
The world’s first one megawatt floating ocean thermal energy conversion
plant is getting ready at Tuticorin, off the coast of Tamil Nadu.
This project could help tap India’s vast potential of ocean thermal
energy in future.
Work in many
more science and technology projects is under way in many laboratories
spread all over the country. These endeavours are expected to
change the face of India as the experts are able to translate
their findings and the applications are put to work.(PIB Features)
*Freelance
Writer
