Will India have a leading knowledge edge?

Knowledge age: India leads race for supremacy DR AMIT MITRA

The Economic Times FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2005 (Dr Amit Mitra is Secretary General, Ficci)

In A path-breaking book, ‘The Singularity is Near’, Ray Kurzweil shocked the world by suggesting that by ’15-20 “machines will become more like us and we will become more like machines”. Nano-driven livers, kidneys and lungs would become commonplace by ’15. More importantly, our knowledge of the human brain would have reached heights that are incomprehensible today. In fact, the virtual will become real through systems biology and nano-research. Nano-particles will be capable of releasing magic bullets to destroy disease tissues in a minutely measured manner. In this brave new world, which will flower within the lifetime of the 547m Indians who are below the age of 25 today, will India have a leading knowledge edge?

Well, Indian pharmaceutical companies have already discovered three new chemical entities, which would revolutionise the cure in three different diseases — malaria, prostate cancer and diabetes. If this pace of discovery can be accelerated further, India could join the developed world in knowledge leadership. In the realm of nano-technology, India already has 154 centres of research and the focus is on new drug delivery systems. A leading pharmaceutical company, which draws on our traditional knowledge, has already produced a nano-particle based formulation, for the treatment of cancer. Here, with 4,000 nano-centres of research in the US and billions of dollars of support, US-India synergy in high technology cooperation is beginning to produce new vistas.

By the next decade, bio-fuels and ethanol will replace petroleum and diesel. Biotechnological research is on the verge of revolutionising the oil dependency pattern of modern civilisation — Jatropha being the case in point and developed by India. Similarly, Indian knowledge capabilities in Hepatitis-B vaccine has given the capability to market it at one-hundredth of the cost of similar vaccines produced in developed countries. Herein lies our strength. Our field-level scientific research on BT transgenic cotton is beginning to yield new results of a higher order. Of course, India has broken through the barrier of stem cell research, with particular focus on the human eye. Three major Indian institutions are growing stem cells, which are then being transplanted into the human eye, to rectify glaucoma, eye ulcers and chemical incidences.

We cannot forget India’s thrust into digital entertainment, which straddles animation, gaming and visual effects. Few Indians know that Hollywood films such as Madagascar and Shrek had the touch of Indian animators. The Gladiator, Ice Age and Lord of the Rings drew their visual effects from the computers of young Indians. Today, we are becoming the frontier territory for mobile gaming— the size of which would be around $10m. Recent full-length feature films such as Hanuman and Vikram Betal, have created waves in the world of animation.

All of these initial knowledge drivers will fail to leapfrog into an exponential growth trajectory, unless we introduce an Act similar to the Bayh-Dole Act of the US, which revolutionised research and knowledge creation in 1980s. It is this Act that provided the strong incentive for a collaborative university-industry research with a win-win revenue model for both the researchers and the entrepreneurs. Similarly, to be a partner in Kurzweil’s world of the future, we will need to introduce critical thinking skills, right from primary school and up. We must debunk rote-learning and learn to challenge existing paradigms. The Argumentative Indian must blossom from the very tender age to ignite minds and push the frontiers of knowledge.