The Hindu Business Line : Kalam recipe for development

THE President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has propounded the law of development or a three-pronged approach which could take the country into the league of developed economies.

While studying the development patterns and the dynamics of connectivity between various nations, especially in trade and business, Dr Kalam said he found that a developing country like India has to adopt such an approach that will enable it to enter the big leagueby 2020.

Almost every strategic technology has a dual purpose. "While these serve the current requirements, they can be replicated for use in other areas. Therefore, we need to inculcate the culture of competitiveness and just in time approach."

Speaking after the launch of Samyukta electronic warfare system developed indigenously, the President said that a country like India has to market its products in other countries in a competitive manner. The competitiveness has three dimensions — quality of the product, cost-effectiveness and supply in time. The dynamics of competitiveness in marketing of products by developing and developed nations determines the law of development.

Citing the example of the Samyukta system, Dr Kalam said it showed the range of capabilities of the Indian scientists, especially since they were denied the Defence programme. "When we were denied Content Accessible memory (CAM), it was designed and fabricated by SITAR as an application specified integrated circuit in its foundry."

"The electronic warfare system is a force multiplier system which needs high level of secrecy for maintaining surprise against adversary actions. In such a situation, it is essential that the system design, architecture and deployment knowledge is generated within the country and maintained as a closely guarded information by the services. This is essential to ensuring tactical and strategic advantage for our armed forces during an operation," he said.

This means, the Indian Army should demand totally indigenous products rather than provide the entire specifications and thereby the QR (qualitative restrictions) to the foreign vendor. This calls for the industry to gear up to provide quality products with speed, quality and economy. This will ensure life-time product support and cost effective midlife upgrades for the services which can never be achieved from foreign sources. This calls for a pre-planned product improvement strategy by the design team and delivery of contemporary systems to the services, which will ensure prevention of early obsolescence, he said.