1.
I consider
it to be a great honour and a special privilege to have been invited to deliver
the 12th Convocation Address of Maharshi Dayanand University. The products of this University
have done the nation proud. There
are enormous expectations from everyone about this University role in building
the new India.
2.
Let me
begin by extending my wholehearted congratulations and my very best wishes to
the young graduates. You are going
to enter a new exciting world, which is changing rapidly. Indeed, you will see a sea-change in the
economic, political and technological environment the world over. There are extraordinary opportunities
for those, who are prepared to face the challenge of change. Indeed, only those of us will survive
and succeed, who will be able to anticipate the change and also exploit the
change. And those who do this will
one day lead the change. We in
India should have the ambition of leading the change and make things happen on
our own terms. It is all of you,
who will build the new India of our dreams in the 21st Century. This new India of our dreams should be
an innovative India.
3.
Everyone
recognizes that twenty first century is the ‘century of knowledge’. Nations, which have developed mastery in
the production of knowledge, its dissemination, its conversion into wealth and
social good, and its protection, have assumed a leadership position in the world
today. But it must be recognized
that knowledge without innovation is of no value. It is through the process of innovation
alone that new knowledge can be created.
It is also innovation alone, which converts knowledge into wealth and
social good. In fact, innovation
must become a way of our life. Why
do I say this India was a leader in innovation several centuries ago? Indeed, since the Indus Valley
Civilization of about 5000 years ago, innovation has been a part of the Indian
culture and the basis of its civilization. Our innovations were diverse and
pioneering. Indian civilization was
characterized by scientific thought, capabilities and techniques, at levels far
more advanced than others.
4.
In spite of
this great heritage and record of accomplishments, why did India fall behind in
the ensuing centuries? When the
scientific and industrial revolutions took place in the west a few hundred years
ago, there was a period of stagnation in India. Lack of development over this
period was a result of a hierarchical approach, irrational subjective thinking,
and build up of superstitions and superficial ritualism. The earlier great
traditions were allowed to decay. A
highly feudalistic structure of society developed. It was in this state of its society that
India came under the colonial domination.
By and large, compared to other nations, inhibition and imitation in the
society was evident during a substantial part of the twentieth century. We lost leadership position. This cannot continue into the twenty
first century. We must regain this position with determined action.
5.
We have now
an opportunity to start the resurgence of an innovative India today. What do we need to do? We need to build new social, legal and
economic structures that will support innovation. We need to make the symbol of ‘I’ in
‘India’ to stand for ‘Innovation’. I am convinced that just as we had launched a
freedom movement, which freed us from the stronghold of foreign powers, we must
launch an ‘Indian Innovation Movement’ now, so that India can assume its
rightful place in the comity of nations.
And the time to do it is now, at the dawn of the new
millennium.
6.
The
landscape of technology innovation in India is not static. It is continuously evolving. It has
undergone a number of positive developments over the past decade. Let us reflect
on some of these. There has been a paradigm shift that is reflected in a move
from research as an end in itself to research coupled with technology
development, with this linkage being increasingly driven by socio-economic
needs. The perspective has also
shifted from primarily a local or national focus to a global one, with the
globalization of R&D being a major driving force. This has resulted in some major
transitions: for example, the pharmaceutical sector that was based on
formulations of imported drugs in the 1960s has slowly enhanced its innovative
capabilities and is now gearing up to compete with the global players. Realizing the power of Indian intellect,
we have seen more than 100 top companies from abroad set up their R&D
centres here in India.
7.
What are
India’s major strengths in technological innovation? On the human resource front, India has
the largest pool of qualified engineers in the world, the 7th largest pool of
R&D personnel, and a large cadre of expatriate scientists, technologists,
and entrepreneurs, who are increasingly returning to their home country. On the institutional front, India’s
assets include numerous institutions of higher learning as well as an impressive
array of research centers and laboratories that focus on a large range of
scientific and technical problems.
8.
Our new
innovative India will have to be built by concentrating on our youth, which
represents the national strength, vitality and vigour. If properly moulded, the youth can
become the champion of our culture, custodian of our national pride and a
trustee of the freedom of the country.
Our youth must imbibe the spirit of a true innovator. Innovators are those who do not know
that it cannot be done. Innovators are also those who see what everyone else
sees, but think of what no one else thinks. Innovators refuse status quo,
they convert inspirations into solutions and ideas into products. Building such
innovators will require an all-pervasive attitudinal change towards life and
work – a shift from a culture of drift to a culture of dynamism, from a culture
of idle prattle to a culture of thought and work, from diffidence to confidence,
from despair to hope. Revival of Indian creativity and the innovative spirit
needs to be made into a national movement today.
9.
Academies
must understand the route from Saraswati to Lakshmi. We must see an expression of
entrepreneurship in a scientist and vice versa. Technology entrepreneurship will lead to
creation of technoprenuers.
While creation of high-technology start-ups has been dominated so far by
information technology services and software, there is also activity in
knowledge-intensive sectors such as biotechnology and IT-hardware. There is also an emergence of innovative
models of entrepreneurship. The
TeNeT group at IIT Madras, for example, has spun off – with faculty, student and
alumni involvement – a series of firms that are engaged in a range of activities
from IT product development to provision of technology-based services. Scientists from Indian Institute of
Science have set up companies such as ‘Strand Genomics’. The nanoscience group at National
Chemical Laboratory has had a breakthrough on nanotechnology to make unique
materials, which is leading to the formation of a company. We need to multiply such examples
manifolds in India.
10. How can we induce creative thinking
amongst our young people? The young budding inventors can learn a lot from the
legendary career of an inventor like Thomas Alva Edison. As we know, Edison was
granted a record of 1,093 patents for inventions ranging from light bulb,
typewriter and electric pen to his phonograph and motion-picture camera. His
work methods reveal that the real keys to unlocking creativity are an
open-minded approach to learning and perseverance.
11. When Edison died in 1931, he left 3500
notebooks, which read like a turbulent brainstorm. It shows Edison's mind at
work spanning most of his six-decade career. They offer fresh clues as to how
Edison, who received virtually no formal education, could achieve such an
astounding unrivalled record of inventiveness.
12. When an experiment failed, Edison would
always ask what the failure revealed and would enthusiastically record what he
had learnt. He had an enormous talent for appropriating ideas that may have
failed in one instance and using them for something else. Whenever he succeeded with a new idea,
he would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions abandoned in the
past in light of what was recently learnt. He would often jot down ideas others
had come up with in other fields.
13. The lessons that we learn from Edison's
life are simple. Challenge
the assumptions continuously. Do not have a preset or prejudiced mind. Let the
windows of your mind be always open. Second, patience and perseverance pays.
Third, nothing is final. Strive for creating products that are better than the
best. And displace your products yourself. Finally, you can learn more from your
failures than you can from your successes. So do not be afraid to fail. Take
risks. Indeed, risk taking must become a part of the national innovation
policy.
14. Innovators are those, who do not know
that it cannot be done. Indian
history is full of such innovators. We need to highlight inspirational stories
of such innovators, which illustrate the point that even in India, people, who
have done ‘out of the box thinking’ have won and achieved hugely. Mr. Arun
Shorie, when he was the Minister handling the Ministry of Personnel, Public
Grievances and Pensions, had organized an inspirational series of talks on
“ideas that have worked.’
15. In this series, several people spoke.
N.R. Narayana Murthy spoke of how by putting together Rs.10,000 and starting in
his small 700 square feet apartment, he built Infosys. Its market
capitalization, at one point of time, was more than Rs. 60,000 crores. Infosys
has become a pride of the nation today.
Mukesh Ambani of Reliance spoke about building the largest green field
refinery complex at Jamnagar with an investment of five billion US dollars in a
record time of 36 months at a capital cost that was 50% lower than similar
refineries and commissioning it in 3 months as against the international norms
of 6 to 18 months. There were
others like Dr. Kurien talking about our white revolution and making India a
global leader in milk production in the world. E. Sreedharan spoke about
building the 760 km Konkan Railway project in one of the most difficult terrains
ever encountered in the history of railway construction by using the most
sophisticated technology.
Chandrababu Naidu spoke about his assuming the role of CEO of Andhra
Pradesh. He has converted Hyderabad into Cyberabad within no time. It is a
worldclass city today. Ratan Tata spoke about building the car ‘Indica’ by using
700 engineers, who had no experience of designing an automobile, and at a
development cost, which was one tenth of the international cost. I myself spoke about transforming some
of our national laboratories from the ‘reverse engineering mode’ or ‘copying
mode’ to ‘forward engineering mode’. CSIR today exports our knowledge even to
leading multinationals in USA and Europe, whose budgets are bigger than India’s
R&D budgets. And there were
others who spoke from different fields, whose ideas had worked right here in
India. The simple message is
that we can do it in India, in all fields, in all sectors.
16. Innovative India of the future must be
compassionate. It should
continuously look at the problems of the poor. Problems that affect millions of
people every day not get solved through the use of existing scientific
models? New innovative India or our
dreams must carry that compassion so that the problems of the poor can be
solved. We must harness the talent
of the scientists so that value can be added to the local, indigenous
ability.
17. For all this to happen, we must create a
new value system, where problem solving for the poor and the disadvantaged
becomes a national mission. Those
who contribute to this mission must be made into the national
heroes.
18. How can we change our mindset and value
systems? Technologies developed by
local artisans, craftsmen, potters, farmers, weavers, etc., are considered as
traditional. These technologies are
never included in the fabric of modern technology. How can we bring about this change. I tried an experiment in Pune during the
Indian Science Congress in January 2000.
As President of the Science Congress, I said let this Science Congress be
‘knowledge congress’. Let it be
‘people’s congress’. We will show
that we value people’s knowledge.
We had several grass root innovators participate in our science
exhibition. They demonstrated their
technologies. None of them spoke
English. We had a session, where
they made a presentation on their technologies in local languages to around 2000
scientists. They stood on the same
platform from which the Nobel Laureates spoke. I must say that they got a bigger
applause than ever the Nobel Laureates.
I believe the scientists, for the first time, realised the power of
innovation that takes place in the field.
They also saw the innovative and creative abilities of those, who were
unadulterated by the modern day educational system. The realization must now turn to a
respect and then to meaningful partnership.
19. National Innovation Foundation (NIF) is
helping to build such respect and partnership. NIF recognizes the innovations by grass
root innovators, by they farmers, slum dwellers, artisans, school dropouts and
so on. NIF set up a national
innovation competition five years ago. To begin with, in the first year, there
were less than one thousand entries, which increased to fourteen thousand in the
second year and in the third year it was more than 21,000. Hon’ble President Dr.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam gave away the prizes to the winners of second and third
competition. Many of them were illiterate or semi-literates. The winners during
the last year included an eight standard dropout, who developed a cardamom
variety, which today has over 80% share of the market in Kerala. The winners included again an illiterate
individual, who had developed a disease resistant pigeon pea variety, which
became a big winner. These
disadvantaged individuals had shown to us as to what they can to by working in
laboratories of life by using their power of observation, analysis and
synthesis. It is time that we sing
a song for these heroes and salute this part of India, which is as vast as it is
innovative. Others recognize them
but we do not. Let me give an
example.
20. What do global giants like General
Electric and Motorola have in common with a humble tiffin delivery network
comprising 3500 dabbawallas, who deliver 1.5 lakh lunch boxes to citizens
in Mumbai each day? The dabbawallas have the six sigma rating or an efficiency rating of
99.999999, which means one error in one million transactions! This rating has been given to them by
Forbes Global, the famous American Business Weekly. But we did not recognize them. Look at the innovation that these
largely illiterate dabbawallas have done. Their secret lies in a coding system
devised over the years. Each dabba is marked in an indelible ink with an alphanumeric code of about 10
characters. In terms of price and
the reliability of delivery, say compared to a Federal Express System, dabbawallas remain unbeatable.
Their business models have become a class room study in some management
institutes. By giving this one
example, all that I am trying to convey is that the innovative potential of the
people does not plummet to zero, when the people are illiterate or
semi-literate. They necessarily
have to innovate to survive and to succeed. Our challenge in India is to be truly
‘inclusive’ of all our population in the National Innovation Movement and not
‘exclusive’ to the privileged few.
21. I would like to end by emphasizing that
the future of India can be built by remembering and practicing three things,
which are encapsulated in the world ‘TI’. Firstly, TI stands for ‘Think
India’. We must have India in our
hearts and minds. As someone had
said, India’s response to WTO should be WTI, that is, ‘We Think for India’. The second meaning of TI is ‘Team
India’. We all must work as a team,
breathe as a team and strive forward as a team. TI also stands for ‘Total Innovation’. This means making India truly innovative
by changing its social, legal and economic structures. The most important pledge we should take
today is that, we should make the national symbol in ‘I’ in ‘India’ stand for
‘Innovation’. If we ‘Think India’,
work with the spirit of ‘Team India’ and push forward the movement on ‘Total
Innovation’, then I am confident that India will find its rightful place in the
comity of nations, which is right at the
top.