In the long list of factors that have contributed to the pressures on the rupee, we must find a place for the role of technology. At the time of liberalisation it was hoped that competition would help bring about the technological breakthroughs that would provide Indian products a prominent place in the world market.

With India’s share of world exports still below what it was at the time of Independence, it is clear that the major breakthrough in terms of quality, price and new products is yet to come. And in a liberalised economy, the consequences of a lack of competitiveness are felt in the domestic market as well. It may then well be time to ask whether we have a technology policy that is sensitive enough to these needs.

Green Revolution

At the heart of India’s technology policies — from the 1958 Scientific Policy Resolution to the 2013 Science, Technology and Innovation Policy — is what can be called a core-outreach strategy. The major focus is on first developing science and technology capability and then using that capability to address the demands of industry and possibly the rest of the economy.

This strategy had its successes; among the most notable of them being the Green Revolution. With the country’s food security in the mid-sixties depending on the arrival of ships carrying PL480 food grains, there was an urgent need to step up food production.

The agricultural technology infrastructure was then given the task of developing the high yielding varieties of wheat and rice that took India out of its food insecurity.But this approach to technology was not without its inefficiencies. The choice of areas for the technology infrastructure to focus on was largely government-determined. And these choices tended to change depending on the government of the time.

Even within the Nehru-Indira Gandhi legacy the focus kept shifting. In the Nehru era the focus was on large-scale technologies whose benefits would only be realised over the long term.

In the Indira Gandhi years it shifted to technologies that provided more immediate, popular and visible gains, ranging from satellites to the Green Revolution. And in the Rajiv Gandhi years it went into information technology. S&T institutions created in one era typically found it extremely difficult to adjust to the demands of the next.

Costly mismatch

The basic approach of starting with science and then reaching out to the demands of development has other difficulties as well. It tends to create a mismatch between what scientists seek and what development requires.

The aero-space scientist Roddam Narasimha makes an interesting distinction between, what he calls, complex systems and complicated systems. For him complex systems can be based on very simple premises but their behaviour is very complex. In contrast, complicated systems involve a large number of variables whose connections are explicitly known but need not necessarily be sophisticated. And there is a clear divergence in the demands of scientists and those of development.

On the one hand, scientists seek the glamour of complex systems. It is the exploration of this complexity that will give them the recognition of their peers. On the other hand, development requires a more systematic, and often less glamorous, putting together of multiple connections.

The costs of this divergence can be quite high. Scientists are understandably proud of putting an education satellite in space, but they can’t be bothered with more mundane issues of whether the facilities being provided by the satellite are being adequately utilised.

It could be argued that many of the facilities provided by Edusat that are actually used on the ground could have been provided at a much lower cost by distributing free CDs and computers in remote areas.

There are also serious doubts whether the most flexible and agile government machinery can respond adequately to the demands that are thrown up from the ground. Individuals may demand products that the government in its wisdom may not consider to be priority items. And this disparity may not be confined to consumption products with a high brand value.

In a country where the tractor still remains an important form of transportation in some rural areas, we still have some way to go before we can claim that we are developing products that meet the needs of our population.

Industry as intermediary

It is important then to ask whether we need a new S&T infrastructure that could identify and relate to the multiple and varied demands thrown up by a developing economy and society.

Industry could play the role of acting as an intermediary between the demands of society and the capabilities of the technology infrastructure. For the technological institutions to respond effectively to this demand they would have to be structured in a way that allows individual scientists and technologists to get the economic benefit of creating products that meet this demand.

Such a demand-led system would allow the scientific community to relate to the market through industry. But the system need not be entirely market driven.

There would be scope for the government to pay a comparable price for innovations of products that are national priorities.

Indeed, given the extent to which Chinese products are making inroads into the Indian market, developing a more vibrant and innovative technology regime may itself be a national priority.

(The author is Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.)

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