If wishes were horses…

I recently read an interesting observation about growth prospects for India. During the first millennium AD, and even before, India was an evolved society. It had world class educational institutions (Nalanda, Taxila etc) which attracted students and scholars from around the world; it had world renowned commercial centers which had trade relationships with many continents, and it demonstrated leadership in area of philosophy, mathematics, literature and astronomy. It was the era of knowledge and reasoning. 

The second millennium was the era of engineering and industrial revolution which practically bypassed India. The colonial suppression would have definitely contributed to this. But, as per the above article it was also a manifestation of how Indian brain is wired, which makes it more comfortable with knowledge and logic than technology and applied science. 

The third millennium again is that of knowledge and learning, which are comfort areas for the Indian brain. In fact the planning commission in early 2000 had set up a task force under the chairmanship of Dy Chairman of Planning Commission to evolve strategies for becoming a knowledge superpower.

I don’t know how correct is this analysis with respect to the competitive edge of Indian society in this knowledge economy. But there can be no argument about the fact the key drivers for today’s growths are information and collaboration. The most important infrastructural requirements for these key drivers are connectivity to link people and capability to use the modern tools that facilitate information flow and collaboration. 

Today India is acknowledged as a powerhouse in the area of Information Technology. We are the back end development center for the whole world. Graduates in every field of science, whether it is engineering, physics, chemistry and mathematics appear to be drifting to computer programming and many more into IT Enabled Services.

Therefore, it appears that we have the aptitude, the infrastructure and the human resources necessary in this most important field and we are well poised to build on this. But when we go a little deeper, we see some underlying weaknesses. 

A global ICT index called “Connectivity Score Card” based on a Study created by Professor Leonard Waverman, London Business School, and economic consulting firm LECG, commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks has been tracking the level of sophistication of ICT infrastructure across the world for last few years. It is a broad based matrix taking into account availability of infrastructure and usage & skills in the area of ICT among consumer, business and government sectors. This study has ranked countries which are segregated into two groups called innovation driven and resources driven as per the categorization of world economic forum. The former contains mostly developed economies and latter more of developing economies. India forms a part of the resource driven countries and with a score of 1,82 out of 10 it ranks 21 among 25. The only four countries which have ranks lower than India are Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Malaysia with a score of 7.14 has the top place among the resources driven econolmies.

What do we learn from this contradiction? We have outstanding strengths in the field of ICT which is one of the key requirements for a knowledge economy. But, this skills and strengths are concentrated in few Islands of excellence. Therefore, we need to have a focused strategy and attention (a little more than that gets wasted in telecom scams1) for wider availability of ICT infrastructure for us to exploit this opportunity. Somebody once asked Dr R A Mashelkar what would be his ultimate wish for India. He had no difficulty in responding quickly. “High quality connectivity to every citizen at affordable cost and skill to use it effortlessly and meaningfully.” Then, as Mat Ridley would say, ideas will have more sex and multiply.

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential. Steve Ballmer