Part 11 (2/2)

We are aware of many foreign companies which are funding academics from Indian universities to record such ancient knowledge. These companies can pay research scholars handsomely to recover this knowledge for them.

What should India's response be? Just to vent our moral indignation and talk about exploitation by the developers? We believe that the most crucial action India has to take is to step up our technology to chart out and understand our biodiversity, to protect it, and above all to forge new technologies out of our rich biodiversity. If we have to play the game of converting materials into intellectual products or actual products to be protected legally, let us do so. Let us these not merely to enrich a few in our country but to create sustainable wealth for all people. Let us also attempt global leaders.h.i.+p in the production of such commodities.

We believe that the newer turns in modern technological advances, be they studies of natural products, biotechnology or information technology, offer a new set opportunities for us to not only catch up with the developed nations but to surpa.s.s many of them.

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How to achieve it?

Technology Vision 2020 doc.u.ments on life sciences and biotechnology contain details of efforts to realize the benefits of india's biological wealth and to channel these for the general good.

We want to share with the readers some of the excitement and opportunities that lie ahead of us in fulfilling this major task.Even those familiar with basic indian geography will be aware of the rich flora and fauna of the Himalayas, of the northeast, the coastal region, and central India. Even the desert regions of the rajasthan have their own special palntsand animals. If we, as a nation, will it, we can organize a systematic campaign to utilize the talents of colleges, schools and several other local inst.i.tutions to record the availability of various bioresources. Thanks to our survey organizations and several other research inst.i.tutions, considerable information has already been collected.

This can be updated and oriented towards an action plan:of protection and conservationof systematic study and utilization then of protecting various rights relating to intellectual property or similar rights and of economic utilization.In addition to these physical surveys, the local knowledge of biodiversity can be doc.u.mented.This is where the involvement of others from the disciplines of lingustics, sociology and so on also comes into the picture . If the teams are resourceful enough, they should not stop at collecting such information alone. They can collect information on local arts, music, crafts and other skills. Modern technology, with its video cameras, laptop computers and tape recorders has made this task easier than ever before. This will also help to identify those sources of knowledge which hold economic potential. People in different parts of the country can share the sights and sounds of a particular region.

Another rich bioresource is our long coast. We have more than 3500 km of coastline on the mainland, including that of Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar islands this increases to 7516 km. India has the unique privilege of an ocean being named after it. Still, many Indians are landlocked. We look forward to a day when all Indian children can happily enjoy a swim in our sea waters. Our neglect of the ocean leads not merely to a loss of enjoyment but to an economic loss. We only minimally harvest our fish. There are many varieties of seaweed which could be used for food or medicinal purposes. In addition, certain marine plants, animals and microorganisms 127.

hold the key to growing plants in saline regions. For example, growing plants to make them resistant to salinity. There are many active ingredients in marine resources which hold good promise as drugs and pharmaceuticals. Already there are some drugs for cancer treatment which are derived from marine sources. This is another rich bioresource India should learn to understand and to use, without, of course, being rapacious.

HIMALAYAN MEDICINAL PLANTS-AN EXAMPLE India is rich in medicinal plant which are available all across the subcontinent. Many 'folk' medicines and practices are prevalent even today. There have been several systematic studies about these, though they cannot claim to be complete or adequate.

Here we will quote a few examples of such studies being conducted in some of the remotest parts of India, in the Leh and Nubra valleys. These are doc.u.mented in the volumes on Cold Desert Plants by Om Prakash Chaurasia and Brahma Singh of the Field Research Laboratory, DRDO at Leh. Here one may add the almost all the climatic regions in the world are represented in India-roughly in the same ratio as the global distribution of such geographical zones. Cold deserts, for example, are found in the interior of Asia and in the intermontane zone of North America. Of the total world land ma.s.s 16 per cent is under cold deserts. In India cold deserts come under the trans Himalayan zone, and are confined to Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir and Lahaul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh.

In India, the history of medicinal plants can be traced back to the Vedic period (45001500 BC). The ident.i.ty of several plants, viz. semal, pithuan and papal referred to in the suktas of the Rig Veda can be fixed with reasonable certainty. While the Rig Veda contains only minor references to medicinal plants, the Atharva Veda contains more detailed information, describing about 2000 species and their uses.

After the Vedic era, the works of the renowned physicians Charaka and Susruta, namely the Charaka Samhita and Susruta Samhita, deal with about 700 drugs of daily and specific uses. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries India witnessed great upheavals in the development of medical botany and some of the most widely used herbal 128.

drugs came to light in this period. For this reason the period is also called the Age of Herbal Medicine.

It has been estimated that out of about 2000 drugs that have been used extensively in India, Only 200 each are of animal and mineral origin while the rest are of plant origin.

Since time immemorial, Himalayan flora has been a major source of medicinal plants, and the cold desert is not an exception to this. The people of the cold desert is still prefer herbal prescriptions based on the Tibetan system of medicine.Herbal medicine is practiced by specialized local doctors called Amchis. Herbal plants available in this region have been found useful in the treatment of diarrhea, cold, cough, stomach complaints, headache and skin diseases. Besides certain plant species found in this area such as Peganum harmala and Artemisia spp. have been found useful in controlling problems a.s.sociated with menstruation and as aphrodisiacs.

Information about the growth areas, growth patterns and usefulness of medicinal plants has been gathered. This has been done with the help of Amchis, local tribals and by scanning of available literature.

These examples are only ill.u.s.trative of the immense potential by way of medicinal plants in India. Imagine the possibilities if a detailed survey is done in each village or taluk of our country, and, above all, if we use this knowledge to make concrete value addition, and for commercialization. Can we rise up to this challenge? We believe we can, and with relatively modest investment. Let our vision be charged with the desire to extract the best out of our biological wealth.

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CHAPTER 7.

MANUFACTURING FOR THE FUTURE.

If the three ranges of time, it is naturally hardest to get people to think about the long term vision of a more sustainable world, but it is vial that we overcome our reluctance to make concrete images such a world.

Murray GellMann The presence of traditional Indian skills in medicine, metallurgy, construction, textiles, hydraulics or early s.h.i.+pbuilding was an integral part of our innovativeness in ancient and medieval times. Witness the splendid metal icons and monuments like the Taj Mahal which were created employing intricate human skills and human/animal power. India was renowned for her prowess in skills as diverse as surgery and muslin weaving. We were advanced in the use of fire and in metallurgy. Still, the invention of machines that generate their own locomotive power by burning external fuels eluded medieval India.

The internal combustion engine, the cornerstone of the industrial revolution in Europe, reached India only in the colonial period. India was a latecomer in learning the new manufacturing techniques invented in Europe. It was only in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century that India established a few sugar factories, steel and textile mills and began to think in terms of ambitious projects like s.h.i.+pbuilding and aircraft and automobile manufacture thanks to visionaries like Walchand Hirachand.

THE MODERN FACE OF MANUFACTURING.

Mankind has seen rapid transformation in the last 150 years because of the ma.s.s manufacturing techniques perfected in western nations and later taken to new levels of efficiency by j.a.pan. Ma.s.s production and production for the ma.s.ses became the bases of new business strategies. Largescale consumption by all with the social benefit of removing poverty became the dominant economic strategy.

The advent of electricity and its largescale application to lighting, heating and operating machines added a fresh dimension to manufacturing. By the 1950s came inventions in electronics and transistor devices to be followed by innovations in 130.

microelectronics, computers and various forms of sensors, all of which irreversibly altered the manufacturing scene. It is now no longer necessary to make prototypes in a factory or a laboratory to study an new product. Many new products can be designed on computers, and their behaviour simulated on them. By choosing an optimum design through such simulations, computer programmes can directly drive the manufacturing processes. These processes are generally called Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer a.s.sisted Manufacturing (CAM). These capabilities are leading to newer forms of demands by customers. Each customer can be offered several special options.

Customized product design or flexible manufacturing are other popular techniques currently in vogue in many developed countries.

The tools used in manufacturing today have multiplied greatly: lasers and waterjets are in increasing use. It is no longer specialized steels or even ceramics which monopolize the cutting tool industry. Itr is hard to believe that lasers can be used to cut heavy steel plates are also for delicate eye surgery. Can you imagine that the plain water you use at home can be used to cut steel? Water pumped at high pressures and focused as a jet cuts cleanly. This technology holds a promise for use Underwater, for example for offsh.o.r.e installations.

To digress, anything focused, and focused sharply, becomes a good cutting edge or a welding source. A laser is a focused and coherent source of light. A waterjet is a sharply directed high pressure jet. If we also, as a country and as a people, focus our efforts to eradicate poverty and to develop in a sustained manner, we don't think any obstacle could withstand the force of that collective, coherent, and focused will!

According to the TIFAC Task Forces on Technology Vision 2020, India stands to gain enormously by the coupling of computers and the manufacturing process. Here we have many success stories, albeit small compared to the potential, which encourage us to share this vision.

What are these? First and foremost is, of course, the fact that India is being looked at as a source of software the world over. Bangalore has become sysnonymous with the software prowess of India. Now Hyderabad is also being called Cyberabad to symbolize 131.

its emergence as a software and information technology city. In fact, it is not only these two cities but all of India which contributes to software export. How does this happen?

The fullest credit goes to the many youngsters from Indian schools and colleges. To earn a livelihood, they have adapted their skills to suit the demands that have arisen, and performed splendidly.

The real issue before us is how to draw out the great potential of our people, their ability to work hard, and their motivation to learn more in order to excel. We will address this aspect elsewhere too. But suffice it to say that Indians have to be triggered by a vision, a supportive environment and some personal benefits to them and to their families. Many of those who left the country in the past fifty years were motivated by these requirements. When our own country did not offer a challenge or an opportunity for a better life, they sought it elsewhere.

Let us come back to the discussion of our software strengths. There are some in our country who casually dismiss it as mere 'data entry' strength. This si taking a very narrow view of things. No big economy can survive only with activities which demand highly intellectual inputs. The economies of America, Germany, j.a.pan or China will bear this out. But, in the long term, there is one element which should make us feel concerned. Can this boom of software export and application last for decades, merely based on software developed in other advanced countries which is operated by our people, as application support personnel, data a.n.a.lysts and market developers? Also, as it happens nowadays those who create the original design very often reap most of the benefits, due to the nature of technology and often because of various forms of protection-trade contracts or intellectual property rights. Microsoft's success is a cla.s.sic example of these trends. Microsoft has world rights to many software packages.

Therefore, there is a definite need for India not only to derive benefits from the present software boom and demands, but also to prepare itself for the higher end of the market.

India should dream of becoming a software business bidder in a decade.

What is the nature of this higher end software? Here we may quote from the Report of the National Critical Technologies Panel, USA in March 1991.Software is the basic of countless applications in information handling, manufacturing, communications, health care, defence, and in research and development . . . Increasingly,the development 132.

of advanced software is an important limiting factor in the introduction and reliability of new military and commercial system. Software requirements, . . . expand at a dramatic pace as automated systems proliferate and increase in sophistication. Despite these growing demands, the generation of advanced software programmes remains largely a painstaking, labourintensive market. As a result, the ability of US industry to provide high quality, reliable software is in jeopardy . . .

In 1990, a 'minor' programming flaw resulted in a ninehour shutdown of the major US longdistance telephone network . . . Advanced software therefore poses a paradox: a fundamental source of technological progress, it is also going to be a growing source of technological vulnerability. It is this labourintensive phase in software which has created an immense opportunity for India. But advanced economies would not like to live with a vulnerable prosperity the US report quoted above describes many efforts required as well as those under way to resolve these problems. 'The essence of software is in its design. . . software requires no extensive fabrication or a.s.sembly. . . However, it is frequently difficult for the programmes to antic.i.p.ate all of the circ.u.mstances that may arise when the programmes is executed'. Innovative concepts being developed are softwarebased design tools as well as new management concepts for software design development.

The report concludes that these new approaches 'have strong potential to transform software development from labourintensive craft to more highly automated production process. With such advances, the writing of the software can give way to the manufacturing of software.' Thus, one can see that not only has the face of manufacturing physical products changed beyond recognition, but the computer software which has made this revolution possible is itself in the process of radical revolution.

TECHNOLOGY VISION FOR SOFTWARE.

India should start making a concerted effort to capture a share of the market in the newly emerging processes of reliable software for manufacturing, healthcare and other applications. We have certain innate strengths: CAD/CAM packages developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), and required for the LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) project have found applications in major civilian markets and are now being 133.

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