Today morning I opened Times of India and read the column by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar which happens to be my favourite. But reading today, I found out how people jump onto commenting on a topic without knowing it from inside and even mock those who are the pillars of that field. I am no economist but still take interest in economics, but will never ever say that Mr Aiyar is wrong about economics. But science and technology is something different. I happen to work in a very hi-tech company which is among the top 3 in its field world-wide and files thousands of patents and papers each year. I feel I am qualified to comment on technology at-least.
First of all, I should mention that Mr Aiyer and Mr Rao agree on at least one -point: sorry state of Indian Science today. I have my own views about how to improve it and catch-up with the rest of the developed world. One field needs special mention: the basic sciences. No more Indians are doing research on basic sciences like physics, mathematics, astrophysics, chemistry etc... There are contribution from Indians but only from those who work abroad. It is silly to argue that they should not have left the country but why can't we have similar conductive environment for research here? Its better to let the brain drain that keep here and rot.
In technology, there are three aspects to it: research and architecture ( to be done in universities and labs to make new technology), design (covert a new technology into an idea and design of product) and lastly the implementation (where we convert the idea and fundamental design to actual product. It is important to understand that innovation is mainly in first two stages, the last stage simply implements the innovation. While there are opportunities of innovation in last stage but chances are meagre. Let us have an example. Consider a new radio technology like OFDM which is a new radio technology. Now this is basically a research idea proposed by professors at US universities (stage 1). Companies like Qualcomm incorporate this technology in advanced cellular systems. There were senior architects and engineers in USA who did the job of using it to fulfil the needs of cellular devices (stage 2). When they had finished their prototyping and designing, they passed on the designs to their "R&D centers" in India to implement the other bits and pieces and convert it to final phone.
Most Indian technology companies and foreign technology companies working in India are following this model. Though one can argue that with this model, latest technology comes to India, truth is that this is like a service job out sourced to India. Low tech jobs are done in India which implies that almost no new technology is 'created'. Western countries still do not transfer the hi-technology and keep it to themselves and the MNCs also do not do new technology development in India, they only get things implemented.
So, the fact that many patents have been filed in India and lot of technology companies have labs in India doesn't reflect the true picture. True idea will come from figures like: how many students do PhD in engineering from Indian colleges? How many seminal papers are published by Indian students and professors in IEEE journals? How many 'new technologies' are created in India? Leave apart IITs and the situation will be pathetic. Only good fact is that Indian engineers, by virtue of their intellect, are able to learn even the latest technology and get things done.
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