ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE ANNUAL CONVOCATION OF THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

NEW DELHI, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1994                  

It is a singular honour for me to address the Annual Convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. The IIT's are the advanced bridgeheads of India's scientific and technological revolution. They are not only "institutes of national importance" as was envisaged in the Act of Parliament but centres of excellence acknowledged the world over.

IIT, Delhi, though the youngest of them, has acquired national and international reputation for excellence in academic studies and advanced research. May I take this opportunity to congratulate this Institute for its achievements. I also want to congratulate the students who have to-day received their Degrees and prizes and awards, and wish them well as they stand tip-toe with expectations on the threshold of a new career and a new world, a world of opportunities, challenges and uncertainties. I believe that coming out, as you do, from this Institute, you are better equipped to encounter the new world than perhaps any one else.           

As early as 1937 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had stated that "Even more than the present the future belongs to the science". That future has now taken shape. Nehru's pre-occupation then and afterwards was to use science to "solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstitions and deadening custom and tradition". At the same time he wanted India to climb the peaks of scientific knowledge. "It is true", he said, "these are high peaks which we climb while the general level of our life and achievements is low. But the fact that we are climbing these peaks represents a general growth because the peaks of achievement do not come from the sky." They are the results of the efforts of our own people, of our own scientists and technologists. The IIT's, the atomic energy, space and the defence research establishments of India are not ivory towers irrelevant to the needs of the nation and the life of the people. They have proved to be the basis of our national strength and of benefit to the people in the manifold ways, direct and indirect. It is our scientific - technological potential that has made the Indian giant to move forward.

It has been said that in the new world that is emerging it would be economic, and not political or military power that will be decisive. And the core of economic power will be constituted by science and its applications. Therefore what economic and other policies we may adopt the degree to success will depend to a large extent on our capacity to master modern science and technology. Indeed in the history of the world conflicts mastery of science and technologies has been what often decided the outcome. This has been the main difference between the colonial powers and the subject nations. To-day it is the main difference between the developed and the developing countries of the world.             

The technological and the economic gap between the developed and third world has been growing and under the dispensation of the open and globalized system this gap has become a widening gulf. It is only through a massive effort in Research and Development that this immense imbalance could be rectified to some significant extent. To-day nearly 96% of the world R& D is concentrated in the developed countries, and only 4% in the developing countries. In India only 0.85% of GNP is devoted to R & D. In per capita terms we spend only $ 2.60 whereas it is between $ 100 and 800 in most developed countries and $ 50 in some of the newly industrialized countries. Our effort to double the R & D expenditure remains unfulfilled. It is well known that among the developing countries India is one of the most advanced in scientific - technological development. We boast of the third largest pool of scientists and technologists in the world. A massive and sustained effort in industry, agriculture and, services and in management and marketing is called for if we are to exploit for the benefit of the nation our vast scientific resources and the infra-structure that we have been able to build up. Now that we have liberalized and opened up our economy and our production at home and abroad are subject to intense international competition, R & D has become of a paramount importance. It is no longer enough that it is confined to government laboratories. The expanding private sector will have to share the burden to a substantial extent. Universities and other educational and research institutions will have to co-operate with industry in order to produce the required results. 

I am glad that IIT Delhi is involved with private industry as well as Government institutions, in sponsored projects and consultancies. Collaboration between its Bio-medical Engineering division and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has resulted in developing a single injection for male fertility control. It is a path-breaking event which will have impact not only on our population growth but on gender equality in this country. The Centre for Applied Research in Electronics in this IIT has also succeeded in developing electronically variable phase shifters for radar. I am told that the DRDO has already placed bulk orders for them. I understand that IIT Delhi has substantially contributed to various defence projects undertaken by DRDO. The IIT, Delhi had undertaken a comprehensive review of its undergraduate programme according to which emphasis is to be placed on industrial interaction, identification of national aspiration s and exposure to emerging areas of technology. Such reviews of technological studies and interaction between educational and research institutions in the country with industry, agriculture and the service sector are now taking place in the country on an expanded scale. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated. Only this way can our peak institutions serve our country as well as the entire developing world. Long ago Nehru exhorted the Directors of our CSIR Laboratories that their work should be related to "the vital current of Indian life" and that "we must do independent thinking of our own in relation to what we require here."  

Six or seven years ago I had the pleasure of being entertained to lunch by the Indian Students Association of Columbus, Ohio in USA. The President of Association who was then a recent product of one of our IIT's told me with pride that 80% of his classmates in India India were sitting in that room for luch with us. That was the measure of what is called brain drain. I am not one of those who blame our young people for migrating abroad. I feel that through wise policies the brain drain could be converted into brain banks for India abroad. But I could not but feel concerned about the volume of export of brain to other countries and ponder over the fact that our educational system was so designed that the best and brightest of our youth could fit in like gloves on the hands of research institutions and industries in the developed countries. No doubt that they are blossoming out there in a way that is creditable to our country. But how is it that our own people feel more at home over there than in Delhi or Bombay or Calcutta, not to speak of in the Alipore village or another village in India. True, the facilities for research and scope of financial advancement are much greater over there than here in this country. But are not the challenges and opportunities available in our society and economy not big and gripping enough to attract the attention of our bright young men? I do not deny the innumerable obstacles that they may face in India. One cannot deny that our authorities, our senior scientific establishment and our society, are not as a whole prone to recognizing scientific talents and encouraging them. Nevertheless one cannot but ponder over the phenomenon of bright scientists not only from India but from other developing countries also migrating to the developed countries making the technological gap even greater.

Among the developing countries India has the greatest potential to emerge as a modern scientific - technological power of significance if only we could organize and galvanize our resources and talents. If we desist from doing this, we will not only be missing out on our destined position in the world but letting down the third world some of whom may be more economically better off than us but not endowed with the same degree of technological infrastructure and talents. The third world to-day is at a greater disadvantageous position in relation to the developed countries both in economic and technological capabilities. What is alarming is that their position is deteriorating further. There has been a great deal of talk about South South co-operation, but very little concrete achievements have come out of it. The third world seems to have chosen the easy path of depending on the science and technology of the developed countries. Technological colonialism may taste in the beginning sweeter than the old political colonialism, but it is necessary to warn that it could enmesh the developing countries in a suffocating embrace of dependence. We will have to get rid of what Nehru once called "the colonialism of the mind" and feel as much at home in Alipore village or in an Asian and African capital as in New York, Paris or London. What we call globalisation should not end up in alienation from our own roots and our own problems crying out for solutions and in mere westernisation or blind imitation of the West.

One important by-product of the advance of science and technology in the west has been the growing phenomenon of unemployment. This trend is still in the incipient stage. 8 to 11% of unemployment is the current level in America and Europe. A special issue of the "News week" wrote recently: "Millions are out of work. precious talents are being wasted, and dreams are dying. What can be done?" Apart from this growing unemployment very nature of work is changing, resulting in the paradox of the "jobless growth". I should like to quote from the London "Economist". It said: "In the work place  the traditional career will die as firms scramble to respond to growing international competition and technological innovation. Every one will retrain constantly, changing professions not just jobs three or four times during their working lives. Permanent full-time jobs will be scarce. Engineers, marketing specialists, will have to accept temporary or part-time employment." If this trend continues as it is bound to, we may be heading for a society not based fundamentally on work, certainly not manual work, with lot of time for leisure. One is reminded of Karl Marx's Utopia where due to advance technology manual job and the working time will be radically abridged and there will be a super-abundance in the production of the necessities as well as the luxuries of life and with mankind leaping from what he called "the kingdom of necessity" to "the kingdom of freedom". Nobody will have any exclusive sphere of activity - but each one can become accomplished in any branch of work he wishes. It would be possible for him to do one thing to-day and another to-morrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticise after dinner without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. Marx envisaged that each individual will enjoy the maximum free time to develop and enjoy the arts, sciences and so forth. In advanced societies and in advanced sections of some developing societies wealth and leisure have become a problem. Jaque Delors, the former Secretary General of the European Union, has said that "a new challenge of the relationship of the citizen and his leisure time" has already emerged.

But has the cultural development of man, of society, kept pace with the rapid and spectacular technological advance? What is emerging seems to be a new technological Brahminism when the brain and the automatic substitutes of the brain do increasing volume of work. Cultural pursuits are not the things occupying people liberated from drudgery, manual work and even work by their natural brain. In this context I cannot but recall Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy. He held that certain amount of manual work is essential for the health of the human body and mind. He asserted that whatever benefits mechanization would bring to mankind it would not give full employment. He once said: "But if by some chance one man could plough up the whole land of India, control all the agricultural produce, and if millions had no other occupation, they would ...... being idle become dunces, as many have already become." At another time he said that if "30 people can produce enough for 3 million people, he would not mind it provided the others could be given employment and some useful work.   

Gandhiji posed the problem of technological development without limit, without social objectives and regardless of social and human consequences. We in India are far away from such a predicament of utilising leisure and dispensing with work. But unemployment is there and the problem is beginning to afflict the West to-day might come to afflict us to-morrow. Technological advance without cultural advance is posing as dangerous a situation as the misuse of technology for destructive purposes. It is producing not men with culture, enjoying the arts, music and sciences but indulging in drugs, sex, violence and crime.    

In this new predicament perhaps India with old civilization can offer something to mitigate the ills of pure scientific - technological growth: Jawaharlal Nehru in his "Discovery of India" wrote some reflective lines. "Eienstein, the most eminent among scientists tells us that `the rate of the human race was more than ever dependent on its moral strength to-day. The way to a joyful and a happy state is through renunciation and self-limitation everywhere'. He takes us back suddenly from the proud age of science to the old philosophers, from the lust for power and the profit motive to the spirit of renunciation in which India has been so familiar." But India has been fast losing that familiarity. In any case I am not advising you all to become Sanyasis after passing out of this great institution. Neither Eienstein nor Nehru would have wanted you to do that. But I should like to tell you what Louis Pasteur used to exhort his students to: "The future will belong to those who shall have done the most for suffering humanity. First ask yourselves, what I have done for my education? Then as you advance in your life, what I have done for my country? So that some day supreme happiness may come to you, the consciousness of having contributed in some measure to the progress and welfare of mankind."