Heading for a Never-Never land?

I wonder how many are aware that the Central Government has declared the years 2010-2020 as the Decade of Innovation and has established a National Innovation Council in 2010 with Sam Pitroda as the Chairman.

Have these steps brought about a better understanding of ‘Innovation'? It is, of course, a word that is used to the maximum extent in all seminars and workshops on any subject to do with human resources development.

Everybody nods his head when a reference is made to it, but ask him what it connotes in specific and practical terms: He will be at a loss to answer. The existing management literature throws little light on the mindset needed for it, the precise skills leading to it, the means and techniques of nurturing it and the role it plays in research and development, manufacturing and production processes, and promotion of brand equity.

Couched in jargon

The aims and objects of the National Innovation Council, the contents of its First Report to the People as also the proceedings of the two-day Global Innovation Roundtable in New Delhi on November 14 and 15 are couched in such obtuse and incomprehensible jargon that they too do not advance the understanding of the mission of the Council in any great measure.

The Council declares its aim to be to develop “an inclusive innovation strategy focused on encouraging and facilitating the creation of an Indian Model of Innovation by looking at five key parameters: Platform, Inclusion, Eco-system, Drivers and Discourse.” It also claims to be engaged in redefining innovations “to go beyond formal R&D parameters and look at innovation as a broader concept that breaks sectoral silos and moves beyond a hi-tech, product-based approach to include organisational, process and service innovation (so as) to produce affordable and qualitative solutions that address the needs of people at the Bottom of the Pyramid, eliminate disparity and focus on an inclusive growth model…fostering an innovation eco-system across domains and sectors to strengthen entrepreneurship and growth, and to facilitate the birth of new ideas.”

No jargon can get to be more mystifying, bombastic and off-putting than this. It rules out any of the Council's ‘innovative' ideas taking off, beyond the initial burst of fanfare and trumpet. That the Innovation Council would fall into the quicksand of highfalutin verbiage is only to be expected considering that all its 17 members come from highly Westernised cocoons, with little or no touch with India's grassroots for most of their lives.

SURREALIST BACKGROUND

The people Mr Pitroda has assembled to lead the crusade for innovation in India mostly comprise chieftains of multi-million dollar corporates out of sync with the ethos that rural India represents.

The crony Council includes members drawn from a biopharmaceutical enterprise, a film maker and even a cardiac surgeon, but none from any of the reputed think-tanks, universities, academia or small and middle business enterprises. Perish the thought of inducting a representative of the Association of Mumbai's Dabbawalas, the Panchayati Raj institutions or the unkempt and the unwashed rural leadership.

There is no acknowledgment in the entire stack of documents produced so far by the Council on the importance of jugaad which is India's most precious resource and the key to its rapid economic growth. The finding of a recent survey by the Legatum Institute is that 81 per cent of Indian businessmen pointed to jugaad as the principal reason for their success. There is nary a word about it from the Council's members.

Their surrealist background is what has driven them to giving topmost priority to convening a Global Innovation Roundtable at astronomical expense, instead of first finding out what exactly are the people's expectations, aspirations and needs in the various States.

To sum up: The membership of the Council should be changed to reflect the real India. The plan of work of the Council should have an indigenous, not exotic, bias. It should unveil its plans and approaches in simple, intelligible words in day-to-day use in all the regional languages. It should find a way of keeping close and constant contact with the civil society.

Absent these pre-requisites, the Council will only be heading for a Never-Never Land.

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