Address to the Members of British Institute of Technology and E-commerce
By: Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam
Creativity
In a knowledge society, we have to make innovations continuously. Innovations come through creativity. Creativity comes from beautiful minds. It can be anywhere and any part of the world. It may start from a fisherman hamlet or a farmer’s household or a dairy farm or cattle breeding centre or it could emanate from classrooms or labs or industries or R&D centres. Creativity has got multi dimensions like inventions, discoveries and innovations. Creative mind has the ability to imagine or invent something new by combining, changing or reapplying existing ideas. Creative person has an attitude to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. Creativity is a process through which, we can continuously improve ideas and find unique solutions by making gradual alterations and refinements to our works. The important aspect of creativity is: seeing the same thing as everybody else, but thinking of something different. Now, let me talk about Global sourcing, which is born out of many creative minds working together irrespective of their geographical boundaries to achieve a common goal leading towards prosperity.
Global Sourcing
Global sourcing has acquired prominence in the last few decades driven by market exploration elsewhere, potential cost advantages, skill utilization and business strategies. The communication revolution has enabled a rapid growth of global sourcing. It has also fueled debates and like any evolving system, I am sure these will result in some positive progress. To me, it appears that innovation in working together can result in global sourcing as a source of benefit to the entire human kind. There are several challenges that are faced by the humanity as a whole, whether they are developed or developing. Clean environment, abundant energy, copious supply of water, empowerment of people with education and health care, availability of globally employable human resources, preservation of human culture and value system and above all looking at alternate habitat for the earth citizens are all global challenges as well as opportunities rather than just national issues. They require thinking globally and acting globally and locally.
The first step is to have a different mind set for global sourcing. It has to be seen beyond “profit” for a limited purpose. Global sourcing is an activity to create knowledge workers and leaders who are beyond the realm of narrow borders of geography, disciplines and products. Global sourcing is a methodology to combine the core competence of organizations and nations to design, develop products, processes and human resources for solving the major problems facing the planet Earth. It should be realized that such working together would not only enable world-class products of optimum performance, cost and time, but also provide a sense of security to the world. Economic development of a nation is powered by competitiveness. The competitiveness is powered by knowledge power. The knowledge power is powered by technology and innovation.
Growth of Knowledge Society
Knowledge has always been the prime mover for prosperity. A knowledge society is one of the basic foundations for the development of any nation. Knowledge has many forms and it is available at many places. The acquisition of knowledge has therefore been the thrust area throughout the world and sharing the experience of knowledge is a unique culture of our country. Economic growth for India is fundamentally tied to societal transformation in the knowledge products and service sector. Of course this in turn strengthens agriculture and manufacturing through innovation and value addition.
Our multi-dimensional movement towards Developed India 2020 aims to generate revenue not only from raw material, agricultural and industrial products which are the hallmarks of an agricultural society, but also through information and knowledge society with knowledge intensive products and a vibrant manufacturing sector using new knowledge and skill.
Dimensions of Knowledge Society
In the knowledge economy the objective of a society changes from fulfilling the basic needs of all-round development to empowerment. The education system will be promoted by creative, interactive self learning – formal and informal education with focus on values, merit and quality. The workers instead of being skilled or semi-skilled will be knowledgeable, self-empowered and flexibly skilled. The type of work instead of being structured and hardware driven will be less structured and software driven.
Management style will emphasize more on delegation rather than giving command. Impact on environment and ecology will be strikingly less compared to industrial economy. Finally, the economy will mostly be driven by knowledge and knowledge driven industry. In order to promote national prosperity, it is essential that simultaneously a citizen-centric approach to evolution of business policy, user-driven technology generation and intensified industry-lab-academy linkages have to be established in every country.
Innovation and India’s Role in the Knowledge Economy
Today the IT sector employs more than 2 million persons and contributes roughly 25% of India’s exports. The IT sector also contributes roughly 4% of India’s GDP. When you consider that the IT sector employs just 0.2% of the population, you can see that the IT sector is contributing many times its share to the Indian economy. Indeed it is not wrong to say that the IT sector, perhaps single handedly, changed the world’s perception of India.
Now let me dwell on few other instances of Indian innovation. The top figure shows a sachet of shampoo that costs just Rs. 2, or about five cents! Imagine producing something for five cents that includes not just the aluminum for the sachet, but also its contents, not to mention the cost of distribution. Yet these sachets can be found everywhere in India.
In India it has become common for villagers speaking on cell phones. India has the cheapest telephone rates in the world, for both land lines as well as cell phones. India also has the fastest growing telecom market in the world, adding roughly eight million cell phones every month! This amazing growth has been made possible because the Indian cell phone service providers had a number of innovative business models, such as free incoming calls, prepaid calling cards, etc. We should remember that innovation in business models is also innovation!
The so called “Jaipur foot,” which was originally made for about $ 28, by itself a very low price? But the Indian Space Research Organization applied its technical competence to the problem, and designed a still lighter and more durable foot. The Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad also developed a very low-cost “stent” that brought down the price of stents by more than 90%. Similarly, the cost of a heart bypass surgery in India is just about $ 3 – 5K, compared to more than $ 50K abroad.
India’s democratic society also benefits from Indian innovation. Foreigners are often surprised to find out that in Indian elections, 100% of the voting is through EVMs. So we don’t have to worry about “butterfly ballots,” “dimpled shards,” and so on. In recent times doubts have been raised about the reliability of the software used in electronic voting machines in some countries. Our EVMs are based on push button technology (rather than touch screen technology) which makes them absolutely tamper-proof. Moreover, it is also possible to have a “recount” in the case of close contests, without any difficulties. It is an interesting sight to see the Indian authorities of the Election Commission carrying EVMs on elephant back to remote regions in the Northeast corner of India. So we use electronic voting even in areas that are so remote that there are no roads.
What drives innovation in India? India has a unique blend of ingredients. We have a shortage of capital, so we have to be very innovative to stretch our limited capital. By and large, government agencies are not able to deliver citizen services fully effectively, at any level, be it national, state, or regional. But fortunately we have had democracy, so that individual citizens have been free to evolve local solutions for local problems. Until now our local innovations have not been able to spread outside India. But as the Indian economy becomes more globalised, our impact will be felt worldwide.
Convergence of Technologies
Information technology and communication technology have already converged leading to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Information Technology combined with biotechnology has led to bio-informatics. Now, Nano-technology is knocking at our doors. It is the field of the future that will replace microelectronics and many fields with tremendous application potential in the areas of medicine, electronics and material science. When Nano technology and ICT meet, integrated silicon electronics, photonics are born and it can be said that material convergence will happen.
With material convergence and biotechnology linked, a new science called Intelligent Bioscience will be born which would lead to a disease free, happy and more intelligent human habitat with longevity and high human capabilities. Convergence of bionano-info technologies can lead to the development of nano robots. Nano robots when they are injected into a patient, my expert friends say, will diagnose and deliver the treatment exclusively in the affected area and then the nano-robot gets digested as it is a DNA based product.
Convergence of ICT, aerospace and Nano technologies will emerge and revolutionize the aerospace industry and electronics leading to nano computing systems. This technological convergence will enable building of cost effective low weight, high payload, and highly reliable aerospace systems, which can be used for inter-planetary transportation.
Till recently, silicon and its siblings were considered to be inefficient as sensors, actuators and for photosynthesis. Many changes have set in. The convergence of computers, communication and sensing into a single smart device and the ability to have mobile and communicate between them is leading the research and development in an important area of Sensor networks. This research is revolutionizing our monitoring systems be it in the area of environment and pollution control, be it in the area of agriculture for crop health monitoring or be it in the area of surveillance. The sensor networks are finding newer applications. This is another convergence of functions that will be very important in our future systems. From now onwards, Nano-technology will take a center place in the convergence of technologies. Let me give some examples of the nano technology products developed by Indian institutions.
Nano Science & Technology – Products from India
a) Water: Nano tube filter – water purification
The scientists from Banaras Hindu University, supported in part by Government, have devised a simple method to produce carbon nanotube filters that efficiently remove
microto nano-scale contaminants from water and heavy hydrocarbons from petroleum. Made entirely of carbon nanotubes, the filters are easily manufactured using a novel method for controlling the cylindrical geometry of the structure.
b)Healthcare: Typhoid Detection Kit
Typhoid Detection Kit has been developed by DRDE, Gwalior using the nano sensor developed by Prof. A K Sood, and his team from IISc, Bangalore. Typhoid fever caused by Salmonella typhi is a major health problem and an important challenge to health authorities of third world countries due to unsatisfactory water supply, poor sanitary conditions, malnutrition, emergence of antibiotic resistant strains etc.
In India for routine diagnosis for typhoid disease Widal test is performed with single serum sample which does not provide the correct diagnosis of infection. Therefore a Latex agglutination based test has been developed at DRDE, Gwalior using recombinant DNA technology and immunological technique for rapid diagnosis of typhoid infection. The test detects S. typhi antigen directly in patient’s serum within 1-3 minutes which is very important for initiating early treatment and saving human life.
A collaborative work has been carried out with Prof. A K Sood of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the sensitivity of the test has been increased 30 times by applying a small electric charge (1.5 V). With this improvement, extreme low concentrations of the antigen in clinical sample can be detected. Moreover, very small quantity of clinical sample as low as 2-3 µl is required to perform the above test as compared to 10-15 µl samples required for latex agglutination test.
c) Power through CNT
Prof. A K Sood, professor of Physics at IISc and his student Shankar Ghosh has studied, experimented and found that the liquid flow in carbon nano tubes can generate electric current. One of the most exciting applications to emerge from the discovery is the possibility of a heart pacemaker – like device with nanotubes, which will sit in the human body and generate power from blood. Instead of batteries, the device will generate power by itself to regulate defective heart rhythm.
The IISc has transferred the exclusive rights of the technology to an American start-up Trident Metrologies. They will develop the prototypes and commercialize the gas flow sensors.
Drug delivery system
A research group headed by Professor A N Maitra of the University of Delhi’s Chemistry Department has developed 11 patentable technologies for improved drug delivery systems using nano-particles. Four of these processes have been granted U.S. patents. One of the important achievements at the initial stage of drug delivery research was development of a reverse micelles based process for the synthesis of hydrogel and ‘smart’ hydrogel nano-particles for encapsulating watersoluble drugs. This method enabled one to synthesize hydrogel nano-particles of size less than 100nm diameter. This technology has been sold to Dabur Research Foundation in 1999.
Another technology has been transferred to industry deals with nano-particle drug delivery for eye diseases.
Traditionally, steroids have been used extensively in the treatment of ocular inflammatory disease and allergies. However, prolonged use of steroids has many side effects. The Delhi university group’s process uses nano-particles to encapsulate non-steroidal drugs. “This process improves the bioavailability of the drug on the surface of the cornea.” The technology has been transferred to Chandigarh-based Panacea Biotech Ltd.
d) Microwave CNTs Production unit
DMSRDE, Kanpur is synthesizing non-aligned, quasi-aligned and aligned CNT with a batch size of 50 grams using a fast synthesis process. It has a maximum operating temperature 1200C. The CNTs will have applications in EM absorbers, composites, gas sensors, flow monitors, field emission devices.
Nano technology initiatives in India can mature into marketable products for worldwide applications. Many Industries are keen to take the technologies from academic institutions and commercialize. Industries should now take the lead and become a partner in the nano science and technology ventures to capture the international market. I am sure that academic institutions and industries working in this area in UK may find interesting collaborations.
Next ten years will see nano technology playing the most dominant role in the global business environment and is expected to go beyond the billion dollar estimates and cross the figure of $ one trillion. The market share for the nano technology products such as Nano materials will be about $ 340 billion, Electronics and Semi conductors will be $300 billion, Pharmaceutical will be around $ 180 billion and Aerospace and chemical plants and tools will be around $ 200 billion.
Conclusion
The 53 countries of Commonwealth constitute a population of 2 billion i.e. one third of the population of the Planet. This network of independent nations in the past has taken up many initiatives for interconnecting their heritage in art, culture, science and technology, history, sports and way of living. Such a strong base of relationship and the core competence of the countries can be further integrated into a very useful partnership by providing connectivity through the Evolution of a Commonwealth Knowledge Grid. This can address many common challenges for development such as developing a knowledge society through quality education, providing affordable quality healthcare to all, sustainable rural development through PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) cluster approach, providing transparent people-friendly-governance and above all evolution of an enlightened society for improving the National Prosperity Index of all the partner countries. The model developed by the Commonwealth Nations will have the potential to be extended to the entire Planet.
