The Hindu Business Line : The long journey

The other day a national daily carried a 1966 photograph taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson of a rocket-cone being taken by bicycle to the Thumba testing facility in Kerala by two people — one tending the cycle and the cone on foot, the other walking by his side. In the picture at least, the road leads to nowhere with a couple of palms standing mute sentinel to the efforts of a 20-year-old Free India trying to find its feet in the world of rocket technology.

The photograph — taken by a master — portrays in microcosm the past of this nation and also its future. In short, that rocket-cone being taken on the back of a bicycle was the precursor of today's geo-stationary satellite launch vehicles which the country is hawking around the world. It has taken all of 40 years for the Indian rocket-technician to reach this point in his quest for attainment, a point which compares favourably with countries in the West generally where such technology was first used in the 1940s during the Second World War.

What makes the Cartier-Bresson creation somewhat poignant is that, for a large swathe of the country, the bicycle continues to represent the basic norm of civil transport, a phenomenon that has been completely over-shadowed by the huge strides made by rocket-technology since those early days.

So while the business of economic development has taken time to percolate to the rural areas, the Indian mind has leapt forward to a point where it seems ready to take on the world.

As President Abdul Kalam told US President Bush on Thursday, "The India that you are visiting is in the midst of profound change. It is on a scale that has never been attempted before in a democratic framework... has lessons for the whole world because it is being attempted under the most challenging of conditions".

That Cartier-Bresson photograph tells the world exactly how much India has travelled the distance towards progress and modernity since 1947 yet keeping the moorings of Indian society intact.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

More Stories on : Science & Technology | View Point

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
A POWER DEAL

A Budget for growth and consolidation

`Many a man knows no end of his goods'

Still floored by MAT

Financial fine-tuning

Docking on to Customs

New breed of consultants

The long journey

From eco barriers to bizarre activism