Incremental Innovation

India’s innovation train is chugging along without gathering too much speed due to self-inflicted wounds.

“I was supposed to test and fly that aircraft during my tenure. But it didn’t happen that way. The present generation of my Air Force colleagues may get to induct these fine fighter planes,” remarked Air Vice Marshal (retired) M Dotiwalla when I happened to mention about this issue’s photo essay on Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (see Supersonic Tejas) during one of my late evening chats with him. He retired as the chief of the Eastern Air Command in 1984 without fulfilling his dream to get into the cockpit of this first home-made sleek fighter aircraft.

India’s scientific and some sections of the defense establishment are happy that the nation, in 2009, has joined an elite group that has less than dozen members who can build their own fighter aircrafts. Tejas is also the story of missed deadlines, technical challenges which were overcome with many innovative steps. The aircraft project had been in the works for more than four decades. The Aeronautical Development Agency was set up mainly for this purpose. Another agency, the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) was supposed to develop the engineers for the Tejas aircraft. It has not succeeded so far and so the Tejas took to the skies with imported American engines. However, the aircraft team has won the admiration of the nation for its perseverance in overcoming all the difficult challenges they faced in delivering a super fighter plane. Some more test flights are expected in 2010 and a handful of these are expected to join the Indian Air Force fighter squadrons in early 2011.

Like Tejas, the nation has had several dreams. Even before the nation got its Independence from British, the interim government had looked at ways to promote technological excellence in the country. An expert committee was set up under the chairmanship of NR Sarkar in 1945. “The standard for graduation should be not lower than that at a first class institution abroad for example B.Sc (Tech) of Manchester or B.S of MIT,” wrote Sarkar in his interim report in 1946. India has come a long way since then. However, despite the recent global acclaim for IITs set up on the basis of the recommendations of Sarkar Committee, the country’s higher education sector is nowhere close to the levels targeted by the nation’s planners.

High thinking is often sacrificed for the sake of short term goals and the lack of a coherent policy is the main cause of national set backs. India’s education minister till mid-2009 allowed the colleges that showed promise to convert themselves into universities and emerge as “centers of excellence”. Of course, the over enthusiasm without clearly articulated goals led to the mushrooming of “deemed” universities many of whom are of suspect quality. But the minister’s successor in the second half of 2009 wants to reverse the policy without any debate. The government now wants to derecognize 44 of these “deemed” universities based on a report prepared by an educationist, who did not stir out of New Delhi to visit these educational institutions. In the process, uncertainty prevails over these institutions, many of whom were investing heavily and designing innovative courses to meet the demands for quality education. Luckily for the education system and the 200,000 students directly affected by this inexplicable move, the Supreme Court of India has come to their rescue by putting on hold the bizarre government move.

What is more surprising is the fact that these things are happening even as the nation is grappling with the challenging task of sending more of its citizens to colleges. For the latest Education Survey indicates that just about 12 percent of India’s students passing out of school enroll for college education. This is abysmally low for a nation which aspires to be a global knowledge superpower. Most developed nations, including the closest competitor, China, have more than 45 percent of their students enrolling for higher education. How can India hope to stay ahead of the technology curve, if 88 percent of its eligible citizens are left out of the higher education network?

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Amidst all these turmoil, the government has launched an ambitious plan to tap the sun in a big way and generate over 20,000 megawatts of electricity in the next 20 years. Majority of poor Indians spend nearly 40 percent of their meager earnings on energy. Technology developments are bringing down the cost of tapping solar energy. But as Harish Hande of Selco (see Tapping the Sun) has demonstrated that the nation needs more than technology innovation to spread the benefits of solar power to the people who need it the most. Let me know what you think at sureshn@cybermedia.co.in.

Narayanan Suresh is Group Editor of Technology Review India.