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15 August 2007 -
News Updates
India nurturing homegrown ideas - Chicago Tribune
India's rise is business as usual - TIME
India's Jews - Forbes magazine
We cant afford to miss New Delhi express - Australian
India nurturing homegrown ideas
6 August 2007, Chicago Tribune, By Laurie Goering
IMPHAL - Uddhab Bharali wanted to be a mechanical engineer.
But before he could get a college degree, his father developed asthma and
could no longer work. The youth decided to start manufacturing plastic bags
to support his family. But the machine he needed cost $12,500, five times
what he had in savings. So he built his own.
Twenty years later, he has invented 65 machines designed to
do everything from peel garlic to extract the fleshy seeds from
pomegranates. Orders -- and appeals for new inventions -- have poured in
from as far away as
Los Angeles.
"After I made that first machine, I knew I could do anything," said the
diminutive 42-year-old, who still lives in
North Lakhimpur, a modest town in
India's remote northeast.
"Now there are a lot of problems people want me to solve."
India may be better-known
for its high-flying entrepreneurs who have turned the nation into a
high-tech center and outsourcing mecca. But the still largely rural country
also is gaining a name as a center for smaller-scale innovation. In farm
sheds and machine shops and on small rural plots, India's back-yard
inventors are coming up with creations that their backers hope will make it
big, solve a few of the world's problems, boost India's exports and continue
cutting the country's dismal poverty rate.
In northeast
India alone, inventors
have come up with a solar-powered motorboat, capable of whisking fishermen
or eco-tourists silently and pollution-free through river backwaters, and a
bicycle that drives added power to the gears when it bounces over a rut.
There's an ultra fuel-efficient engine, and a low-cost alarm system designed
to alert pedestrians to oncoming trains in foggy weather. There's even a
mechanical speed bump that generates electricity every time a car passes.
"Not many societies emphasize the need to learn from common
people," said Anil Gupta,
India's guru of
grass-roots innovation and a leader of the government-backed National
Innovation Foundation. But "we're generating the pool of ideas for people to
invest in," he said. "Gandhi said, 'Let the breeze come from any
direction.'" Over much of the past 20 years, Gupta, an academic and
anti-poverty activist, has traveled around
India
scouting for rural innovations and helping inventors patent their work and
find venture capital to get their projects to market.
The effort has had a few big successes. A penniless cotton
farmer in Gujarat
state eight years ago invented a machine to extract cotton from unopened
bolls, a tedious task women and children had long done by hand. Gupta's
innovators network -- a constellation of Indian projects and institutions
designed to fund good ideas -- invested $15,000 in developing the
technology; today, it is patented in the United States and India and earning
its inventor a half-million dollars a year.
Another product, an herbal eczema cream developed with
input from nine Indian herbalists and traditional healers, has had sales of
300,000 tubes since its launch on the Indian market nine months ago, Gupta
said.
A tree-climbing device, fashioned by a coconut harvester in
Kerala state, is now sold across
India and used as far
afield as the United States by biologists studying trees. The device
tightens around a tree when a climber steps on it, creating a stable
platform. "We've sold technology on all five continents," said Gupta, a
gray-bearded, soft-spoken professor.
Still, turning a good idea into a marketable product
remains a challenge. At a recent inventors workshop in Imphal, part of an
isolated region near the Myanmar border beset by more than a dozen
small-scale insurgencies, a share of the devices on display turned out to be
things already invented, including an inverter, designed to store electrical
power for use when the power is out.
Other participants, many of them with minimal formal
education, took old ideas -- like hatching eggs in a temperature-controlled
machine -- and worked out ways to achieve them using local materials, such
as kerosene lamps instead of electrical power. "This is science of the
people, by the people and for the people," said Mahendra Sharma, a deputy
secretary in India's
Ministry of Science and Technology, as he walked among the exhibits.
But plenty of ideas were new, including Uddhab Bharali's
electric pomegranate de-seeder, which he devised after kicking a pomegranate
across the floor in frustration and seeing the seeds fall right out. His
sleek, silver machine, the first in the world to extract pomegranate seeds
without crushing the casing -- he says -- can process 18 pounds of
pomegranates in five minutes. But to improve the volume to make the machine
marketable, he needed to get to a ton a day, he said. That would cost
$20,000 to engineer, a challenging amount for a poor man to raise in
India.
Slowly,
India's government is
realizing that the country's poor might be not just consumers but producers
of good ideas. Since 1998, the government has given prizes of up to $24,000
for top inventions, and the president in recent years has handed them out
personally. Gupta's network has helped the most promising projects with
commercialization grants of $250 to $20,000 and with assistance in patenting
the devices or processes. That has helped spur a flood of grass-roots
innovations, from bicycle-powered washing machines and drill presses to new
varieties of cardamom, a bulletproof vest made of chewed wheat -- the
inventor let the Indian army shoot at him wearing it -- and an amphibious
bicycle capable of pedaling through streets and across rivers or flood
zones.
Top of the page
Rising Star - Why
India's
rise is business as usual
2 August 2007, TIME magazine, By William Dalrymple/ Michael Elliott
(Editorial)
The
idea that India
is a poor country is a relatively recent one. Historically,
South Asia was always famous as the richest region of the globe. Ever
since Alexander the Great first penetrated the
Hindu Kush, Europeans
fantasized about the wealth of these lands where the Greek geographers said
that gold was dug by up by gigantic ants and guarded by griffins, and where
precious jewels were said to lie scattered on the ground like dust.
At
their heights during the 17th century, the subcontinent's fabled Mughal
emperors were rivaled only by their Ming counterparts in China. For their
contemporaries in distant Europe, they were potent symbols of power and
wealth. In Milton's
Paradise Lost, for example, the great Mughal cities of
Agra
and Lahore are revealed to Adam after the Fall as future wonders of God's
creation. This was hardly an overstatement. By the 17th century,
Lahore
had grown even larger and richer than Constantinople and, with its two
million inhabitants, dwarfed both
London
and Paris.
What
changed was the advent of European colonialism. Following Vasco da Gama's
discovery of the sea route to the East in 1498, European colonial traders —
first the Portuguese, then the Dutch and finally the British — slowly
wrecked the old trading network and imposed with their cannons and caravels
a Western imperial system of command economics. It was only at the very end
of the 18th century, after the East India Company began to cash in on the
Mughal Empire's riches, that Europe had for the first time in history a
favorable balance of trade with
Asia. The era of Indian economic decline had begun, and
it was precipitous. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded,
Britain was generating
1.8% of the world's GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By 1870, at the
peak of the Raj,
Britain was generating
9.1%, while India had been reduced for the first time to the epitome of a
Third World nation, a symbol across the globe of famine,
poverty and deprivation.
In
hindsight, what is happening today with the rise of India and China is not
some miraculous novelty — as it is usually depicted in the Western press —
so much as a return to the traditional pattern of global trade in the
medieval and ancient world, where gold drained from West to East in payment
for silks and spices and all manner of luxuries undreamed of in the
relatively primitive capitals of Europe.
It
is worth remembering this as India aspires to superpower status. Economic
futurologists all agree that China and India during the 21st century will
come to dominate the global economy. Various intelligence agencies estimate
that China will overtake the U.S. between 2030 and 2040 and India will
overtake the U.S. by roughly 2050, as measured in dollar terms. Measured by
purchasing-power parity, India is already on the verge of overtaking
Japan
to become the third largest economy in the world.
Looking back at the role Europeans have played in South Asia until their
departure in August 1947, there is certainly much that the West can be said
to have contributed to Indian life: the Portuguese brought the chili pepper,
while the British brought that other essential staple, tea — as well as the
arguably more important innovations including democracy and the rule of law,
railways, cricket and the English language. All contributed to India's
economic resurrection. But the British should keep their nostalgia and
self-satisfaction surrounding the colonial period within strict limits. For
all the irrigation projects, the great engineering achievements and the
famous imperviousness to bribes of the officers of the Indian Civil Service,
the Raj nevertheless presided over the destruction of
India's
political, cultural and artistic self-confidence as well as the
impoverishment of the Indian economy.
Today, it's well known that economically, India is going places. "Western
businessmen who have been losing sleep over China may be worrying about the
wrong country," says TIME’s senior editor Jim Erickson, "It is Indian
corporations that are proving to be formidable competitors in the global,
information-driven economy."
Today, things are
slowly returning to historical norms. Last year the richest man in the U.K.
was for the first time an ethnic Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, and Britain's
largest steel manufacturer, Corus, has been bought by an Indian company,
Tata. Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more
than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no
longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead
reverting to their traditional role: that of eager consumers of the much
celebrated manufactures, luxuries and services of the East.
Top of
the page
India's
Jews
13 August 2007, Forbes magazine, By Gary Weiss
This
country of 1 billion people, home of the second-largest Muslim population in
the world, still manages to maintain a sturdy system of democracy based on
respect for religious and ethnic diversity. In the U.S., diversity is a
politically correct slogan. In India it is a historical fact. Much as we in
the West may resent it, India has a lot to teach us when it comes to
religious tolerance.
To
my mind, the best example of that can be found in the remarkable story of a
tiny minority--India's
Jewish community. India may be the only country in the world that has been
free of anti-Semitic prejudice throughout its history. As the Jewish
genealogical journal Avotaynu recently observed in an article on one Indian
Jewish group, "The Bene Israel flourished for 2,400 years in a tolerant land
that has never known anti-Semitism, and were successful in all aspects of
the socio-economic and cultural life of the people of the region."
That's really a bit astonishing, if not ridiculous, when you think about it.
Compare that with any Western nation, be it France or Russia or even the
U.S., where discrimination against Jews in housing was a fact of life as
recently as the 1950s. But in India, from the beginning, the Jewish
communities have not only been free of discrimination but have dominated the
commercial life of every place where they have settled--something that has
fed traditional European anti-Semitism.
Why
has India remained free of this scourge? Various reasons have been advanced
for that--such as, the Hindu religion does not seek to convert those from
other faiths. What we do know is that anti-Semitism seems alien to the
Indian character. And if you don't believe me, I suggest you take a trip to
a southern Indian town called Kochi, in the state of Kerala. There you can
find the physical evidence of this glaring historical anomaly. Kochi,
formerly called Cochin, is a former European settlement with a large
Christian population and a seafaring heritage. It is a town of enormous
charm that reminds some visitors of the Caribbean more than India. On a
shabby lane in Kochi you can find a complex of four 439-year-old
buildings--the Paradesi Synagogue. There you have Exhibit A for India's
tradition of secularism and day-to-day tolerance of religious diversity: the
fact that this synagogue exists at all.
Kochi's
Jews trace their descent back to 700 B.C., and lived in harmony with their
Muslim and Hindu neighbors until--well, I guess I’ll have to backtrack a bit
on my claim that there was never anti-Semitism in India. There was quite a
bit in the 16th century.
Kochi's
Jews were indeed persecuted--not by Indians but by the Portuguese, following
in the glorious traditions of the Inquisition. With the help of the Hindu
maharaja and the Dutch, Kochi's Jewish community rebuilt its synagogue,
burned by the Portuguese, in its current location near his maharajah's
palace. It has remained there, unmolested, ever since.
It's
pretty much the same story elsewhere in India. Separate Jewish communities
were established over the years in Mumbai, where the Bene Israel arrived
over 2,000 years ago, and in Kolkata, where a more recent community of
Middle Eastern "Baghdadi" Jews became established. In the northeast of India
is the Bnai Menashe, who trace their origins to the Israelite tribe of
Menasseh.
The
Indian Jewish community has never been very large, with the Bene Israel
numbering just 35,000 at its peak in the 1950s. Yet Indian Jews have
achieved distinction far beyond their numbers. Indeed, the most well-known
Indian Jew is an eminent soldier: Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, who commanded
Indian forces in the invasion of East Pakistan in 1971. Other Indian Jews
achieved distinction in Bollywood, such as the pioneering actress Sulochana,
queen of the Indian silent movies.
Indians are
sometimes accused of being condescending toward Westerners, and of being
excessively preachy in their attitude toward other nations. That accusation
is sometimes correct. But when it comes to India's treatment of one of its
smallest and most vulnerable minorities, there is ample reason to be both
condescending--and proud.
Top of
the page
We can't afford to miss New
Delhi
express
20
August 2007,
The Australian, By Greg Sheridan
AUSTRALIA'S turn towards
India
is as important and nationally defining as were the pioneering of a trade
relationship with Japan in the 1950s and the opening towards China in the
1980s. It
is the new frontier of Australia in Asia, and its potential is vast. Unlike
Japan,
India is not a former enemy. Unlike China, India is a parliamentary
democracy. Then there's cricket.
India
lies at the heart of all the great issues of our time -- globalisation, the
fight against entrenched poverty, global warming, the fight against Islamist
extremism, nuclear weapons proliferation, democracy in
Asia, democracy in poor countries.
Geographically,
India's surging economy, military strength and huge
population -- it will in a few short years overtake
China as the world's most
populous nation and its age profile is substantially younger than China's --
makes it a strategic player in South and Central Asia. It is increasingly
engaged in the Middle East and, of course, in
East Asia.
If
India, already a global leader in IT, pulls off its peaceful nuclear
co-operation deal with the US, it will leap ahead even further in technology
transfer. India has undergone a domestic and foreign policy revolution every
bit as profound as that which China has undertaken since 1979. But there is
less intellectual glamour in studying the open, accessible, necessarily
untidy processes of Indian democracy than there are in apparently unlocking
the gnostic secrets of Sinology, so the Australian foreign policy
commentariat is way behind the curve on India and its growing economic and
strategic importance.
This
is why one of the federal cabinet's most promising decisions is to fund a
full-scale Indian studies centre at an Australian university. There are
already some good university resources devoted to studying India but they
need a massive infusion of resources if
Australia
is to have the intellectual firepower to match its national needs.
Similarly, the Government has decided to increase consular resources in the
southern Indian city of
Chennai,
and to increase diplomatic resources to
India
generally. This should be followed by an immediate decision to make Hindi a
priority language in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The most important
part of our new engagement with India will be selling India uranium for its
peaceful nuclear industry. Anachronistic opposition to this, on the mistaken
basis that it will weaken nuclear non-proliferation even though India has
never engaged in any nuclear proliferation to a foreign nation, puts it
against a fundamental interest of Australia in Asia. But the Indian express
is leaving the station. The only good place for us is on board.
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