Guest post - on building a tech base

Guest post from the Statesman.
All content belongs to the Statesman, Kolkata - but this is worth reproducing here.

From body shop to hi tech

8 November 2011

The tendency of India’s government and its industrial sector to play safe when it comes to technological invention will prove disastrous in the long run if more emphasis is not put on research and development, writes arunabha bagchi

A new controversy regarding IIT graduates made headlines recently in India. It was sparked off by comments made by Mr Narayan Murthy at the IIT 2011 Global Conference in New York while ruing the poor quality of recent IITs graduates. His contention was that the quality of students gaining admission to the IITs had deteriorated over the years owing to overemphasis on coaching classes. Chetan Bhagat, a well-known writer and an IIT graduate, hit back, wondering how could someone, who ran a “body shop and calls it hi-tech”, make such sweeping comments.
While Bhagat’s observations about Infosys were just as candid as Mr Murthy’s take on the quality of recent IIT graduates, the point worth exploring is whether the perception that IT bellweathers such as Infosys are no more than mere body-shops and not really pioneering centres of technological excellence holds good or not. Newspaper articles and books churned out by American and Indian presses would give a layman the impression that Indians are giving a tough competition to Americans in the technology race with only the Chinese still in the reckoning. Japan and Europe already seem to have disappeared from the picture. A glance at an article titled Special Report: Technology in India and China that appeared in the 8 November, 2007 issue of The Economist, made it clear that outside of the pharmaceutical and software sectors, India finds hardly any mention. Our technology handicap in other sectors of the world economy cannot be more glaring. What is also surprising is that while the article lauded the remarkable success of the Indian pharmaceutical industry and had special words of praise for Biocon, to name a few, it pointed out: “Few Indian firms are creating drugs, rather than recreating them.” Furthermore, according to The Economist, exports of indigenous software comprised a tiny fraction of the Indian IT industry’s total service exports. Most telling was the comment of the then head of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), Mr Kiran Karnik: “…companies are either born as product companies or as service companies, not both. Scribes want to become better scribes. To be a poet, you probably need to be born as one”. This is likely what Bhagat had in mind when he had reacted to Mr Muthy’s comments. Why should we then bother about the deteriorating quality of IIT engineers? The truly bright among the IIT graduates should be busy inventing products for companies in the West. Perhaps the not-so-brilliant ones would serve India’s interests better!
How does one then reconcile this scenario with the barrage of good Press that the “India story” seems to be enjoying? Well, it would seem that this had been made possible by a twist in the tale provided by desi and phoren business gurus. They put the thrust on “innovation”, as opposed to “invention” to forecast India’s continuing high growth in the foreseeable future. Roughly speaking, innovation has three levels: “know how”, “know why” and “invention”. “Know how” means learning and tweaking the production process, better quality control, making slight adjustments to the technology already in use and adopting other minor measures to improve business performance. “Know why” involves delving into the technology in use and improving the design by trial and error. This is commonly known as “reverse engineering”. The third level, of course, is genuine technological invention. In fact, a subtitle in the 8 November, 2007 issue of The Economist suggests: “A new way of mixing existing technologies is also innovation.” The argument often advanced is that India has unlimited potential in this broad area of technological innovation.
In fact, the World Bank and other organisations advise India against making large investments in technological inventions. A report put out by one such organisation argues that traditional companies in India are so inefficient that just improving the functioning of a vast majority of them in order to bring them to the level of the few well-run ones would increase India’s production by five-fold. So, the World Bank and other moneybags of the world recommend that India remain in the “know how” stage and protect the impressive growth rate witnessed during the last decade without disturbing the status quo. But, given India’s lack of “inclusive innovation”, this growth model is bound to hit a wall in the medium term. International experts do not advise India to even dabble in the “know why” stage of innovation. The argument is that the “know why” stage does not give much of an immediate return though it is, of course, an essential step to reach the invention stage that guarantees an enormous return ~ something enjoyed by the developed economies. India is warned again and again that any policy favouring investment in invention would be very expensive, highly uncertain and unnecessarily stressful.
So, how does India fare by international standards in the matter of technological innovation? The World Competition Index: 2011-2012 prepared by the World Economic Forum puts India in the 38th place in the field of “Innovation” ~ way above Pakistan but nothing to write home about. A closer scrutiny makes it clear that India would have done far worse but for the economic meltdown of the former USSR and some Soviet bloc countries during the 1990s. But India is advised to remain optimistic. For any country, optimism of such a nature is derived from its level of “technological readiness” or, the current state of human resources in a country deemed necessary for successful absorption of new technologies. Another glance at the World Competition Index: 2011-2012 made it clear that India has very little to be optimistic about for the simple reason that it ranks 93rd under the head “Technological Readiness”. In fact, in terms of both innovation and technological readiness, India is doing no better than Indonesia ~ a country that is rarely mentioned by business gurus.
India’s poor performance in technological readiness is a very serious matter and needs a separate discussion. It will be appropriate at this stage to recount India’s efforts to develop innovative technology since Independence. Even before Independence, top Indian scientists had been making plans. The final strategy adopted was two-fold: to develop strategic technologies and to help foster indigenous technologies for both capital and consumer goods through import substitution. The first strategy led to the birth of Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (Barc) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). The success of both Barc and Isro is now well known. The only pity is that the technology developed in these centres did not appear to have much of a spin-off effect on the industry as it happens in developed countries. To implement the second strategy, diverse government-run research centres were set-up under the aegis of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Research undertaken in these centres had only a marginal impact on the private sector. Big companies catering to sheltered markets were not particularly interested. And, import substitution efforts resulted in horrible inefficiency, obsolete technology, shoddy products and the license raj.
There was also a parallel effort by the government to create a technologically-trained workforce by setting up a number of IITs, complemented by National Institutes of Technology and other engineering colleges. India’s best and the brightest were attracted to IITs because of their world-class facilities. Some of the IIT graduates went on to become highly-successful engineers and scientists abroad, mostly in the USA. The opportunities for successful invention offered by the Indian industry were, however, limited. So, in effect, India eventually gave some very expensive gifts to the West. No wonder, IITs received universal acclaim and the attention of multinational corporations.
With economic liberalisation, efforts were undertaken by the government to provide fiscal incentives for research and development (R&D) in the private sector at the expense of R&D in government-run research institutions. As such, one would expect the private sector to invest more in R&D in the new economic climate. Expenditure on R&D as a share of the gross national product (GNP) is an important indicator of a country’s level of innovation. In the case of India, this share steadily increased from 0.17 per cent in 1958-59 to 0.98 per cent in 1987-88 and thereafter started declining before settling around 0.8 per cent. This confirms the general perception that India’s technology remains primarily in the “know how” stage, despite the fact that huge profits made after economic liberalisation by Indian companies have given them the wherewithal to move into the “know why” stage. We know that Japan, and later South Korea and Taiwan, deployed the “know why” strategy extremely successfully in the years following World War II. It would seem that the only exception to the rule has been delivered by India’s pharmaceutical industry that has clearly crossed over to the “know why” stage.
While writing this article, I tuned in to the BBC World Service just when the presenter was announcing that Europe’s first satellite-navigation (sat-nav) spacecraft, developed as part of its Galileo mission, had been launched into orbit. This sat-nav system is Europe’s answer to the GPS system ~ developed originally for defense, and now used widely for civilian purposes all over the world ~ put into orbit earlier by the USA. I recalled that at the planning stage of the Galileo mission, the USA had put every conceivable pressure directly and indirectly through Great Britain, to dissuade the European Union from going ahead with the mission. The argument advanced was that the GPS system was available to everyone for free and to try to develop an alternative system would be very expensive, highly uncertain and unnecessarily stressful. Sounds familiar? The stance of European Commission’s Vice-President Mr Antonio Tajani, as reported on the BBC website could not have been clearer. “Galileo is at the heart of our new industrial policy,” Mr Tajani said once the separation (of satellites from rockets) confirmation had come through. “We must commit very strongly to Galileo. We need this; this not entertainment. This is necessary for the competitiveness of European Union.”
When will policymakers and business leaders show the same determination in India? To not move our focus beyond the “know how” stage in order to play safe with economic growth will prove disastrous in the long run. Our nuclear and space research must find a resonance in the industrial sector. Even more important is to develop an indigenous defense industry with a strong research base. The civilian spin-off of defense technology would give a big boost to new inventions and the private sector can play a major part in this endeavour. Indian business houses must spend far more on R&D than they do at the moment. The ultimate key is in forming a research triangle involving universities, government-run research institutions and the private industry so that India’s “Innovation” ranking climbs steadily. Only then will India be able to shed its “body shop” sensibilities and put its economy on the “hi-tech” track.

The writer is ex-dean and professor of applied mathematics at University of Twente, The Netherlands

Rain

Shohorebrishti, the name of this blog means "rain in the city". It relates to a song by Suman Chattopadhyay, from his album 'Jatiswar'. I want to present here, this guest post from today's Statesman, where this writer (Tanya Ghosh) remembers the rain. At times reminiscent of Gerald Durrel and also Anita Desai, this is a wonderful little article.

One monsoon day

Tanya Gupta
Memories are funny. Of the billions of experiences, only a handful remain embedded in our grey matter. If they are pleasant, they are a source of comfort on difficult days. If the memories are not really wanted, they continue to haunt us, casting a shadow on happier days.
A remote small town somewhere in West Bengal. The skies darken, the clouds rumble and women scurry to remove clothes hung out to dry.
Children, asked to help their mother, are excited at the urgency of the task. Those too small to reach the clotheslines are asked to shut the windows. In older houses that have seen better times, women and children put pails in areas where the roof leaks.
Even the breeze seems to anticipate what is coming and its quality changes, carrying smells that become sharper and travel quickly. The smell of rajnigandha with a boring English name, tube rose, the night blooming jasmine (raat ki rani) fill the air with their strong scents. And then, without waiting for the mass of humanity to be fully prepared, thunder crashes somewhere and large drops of water fall on the dry earth. As the ground starts to grow moist, it gives off a smell that is elemental and primordial. Wet patches quickly grow and the ground becomes wet and sticky.
And the rain now comes down in all its fury. In the open field, boys take off their shirts, and a ball appears from nowhere, they kick it back and forth casually; and then someone shouts, two teams form and the game starts in right earnest. Players run across the field, with bare muddy feet, exhilarated to be fighting the elements and playing the good game. It is a moment perhaps they will remember and cherish later on in their lives.
In most houses, the focus is also elemental, but it is on food and not sport. “Monsoon snacks” are prepared. Young girls sit in the veranda and chat; then one sings a line of a song, the other runs in and gets a harmonium, and suddenly there is song, and if spirits are high, then even dance. Hot snacks arrive and for the moment all the senses are satisfied!
A little girl visiting her grandmother’s looks wide-eyed at the torrents of rain falling on the earth. The rain falls and falls and it does not seem that it will ever stop.
The boys finish their game and go home triumphantly to a scolding from their worried mothers (“if you fall sick now you can take care of yourself”), the girls finish their chai and singing and pack their instruments up and go inside. The buckets holding rain water have been replaced twice.
And yet the rain continues to fall. The girl wonders what will happen if it does not stop! She goes to sleep. When she awakens, the rain has stopped. The girl peeps outside.
The street is flooded but the rain water has stopped just short of the first step to their house. Any more rain and the house would have been flooded!
Her grandmother tells her what a good idea it was to build their house a little higher than everybody else’s ~ it was built for the monsoon.
The girl doesn’t pay much attention; instead, she imagines the house floating away in the sea, for miles and miles, she imagines building a boat and exploring the huge garden, which is now a large lake; she imagines monsters lurking in the water, the “monsoon monsters” she calls them.
He grandmother sees her looking out and forbids her to go outside. Putting the little girl in her mother’s charge, she goes off for her afternoon bath. As soon as she is gone, her mother turns to her, and says: “So what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
The girl’s eyes open wide. She says: “Really?”
And off they go! The little girl has never been in a swimming pool and this is so much better! Her mother tightens her sari around her and holding the girl’s hands firmly, steps into the water.
Water is up to the girl’s neck. Perhaps the next twenty minutes are some of the most blissful moments for the little girl. From imagining underwater monsters, and walking around the once-familiar garden to “Mum, I am swimming!” It is an unforgettable monsoon day.
Soon, it’s over. They hold hands ~ a woman who is still a girl at heart, and the little girl ~ and return to the house.

Pirates again!

From the Statesman, Calcutta, yesterday's report:

Navy foils pirate attack, 23 captured

Statesman News Service
NEW DELHI, Dec. 13: Striking another blow against the pirates infesting the waters off the Horn of Africa, an Indian Navy warship not only repulsed an attack on a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden, but nabbed 23 Somali and Yemeni sea brigands.
The pirates, in three boats, were attempting to hijack the Ethopian-flagged merchant vessel around noon today, when the destroyer INS Mysore intervened and repulsed the attack, a Navy spokesman said here.
The incident took place about 150 nautical miles off Aden.
After the Mysore picked up a distress call from the merchant vessel, MV Gibe, at around 11 a.m. saying it was under attack, it immediately lauched its helicopter and headed for the scene
On sighting the helicopter and the Mysore, the pirates broke off their attack and attempted to escape, but the warship chased them down. Marine commandos boarded two of the pirate vessels to nab 12 Somali and 11 Yemeni pirates. Nine assault rifles, a grenade launcher, 13 fully loaded magazines and a GPS receiver were seized from the pirates, the Navy spokesman said.
The larger boat, a 10-metre dhow, is named the Salahaddin. It had a smaller boat, a skiff, under tow, Navy sources said.
The INS Mysore later escorted the MV Gibe to safety.
The pirates are being held on board the Mysore and will be handed over to appropriate authorities ashore, possibly at Djibouti in Ivory Coast, the warship’s next port of call.
Today's operation is the fourth successful offensive by the Navy in the heart of the pirates' zone of operations. Last month, the INS Tabar, a missile-frigate, had sunk a Thai trawler that was being used as a mothership by the pirates and also rescued two merchant vessels that were under attack. The Mysore, a 6,900-tonne destroyer, replaced the Tabar on patrol in the region about a fortnight ago. Dozen of warships of several countries are also patrolling the shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden.
India's recent pro-active approach against piracy reflects the concern of the maritime community over a new surge in hijackings off Somalia. The International Maritime Bureau has reported that pirates based in the lawless African nation were now “out of control”.
New Delhi had taken a serious view of piracy-related incidents in the region following the hijacking of MV Stolt Valor, with 18 Indian sailors on board, by Somali pirates in September this year. On 23 October, the government gave a go-ahead to the Navy's request for a pro-active approach against the pirates.

PhD=Yes, Kids=No => Divorce!

A guest post from today's Statesman, this is material not written by me, it is put here just to disseminate the content wider, with all due credits to the Statesman and Mr. Sen.
Let me know what you think about the matter...

Special Article

Wedded to work

Indian Men Find Career Women Difficult To Handle

By Suhit Sen

The Supreme Court passed final orders in a divorce case early this month. The story behind the suit and the court’s judgment raise interesting questions about conjugal relations in a rapidly changing urban society.
The story, as reported in the media, is as follows. A man filed for divorce from his wife who was, at the time they got married, pursuing a doctoral degree in biochemistry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The man alleged that his wife was refusing to bear a child because that would jeopardise her career and had had three abortions in 1984, the year they got married, 1985 and 1989 without his knowledge. He further alleged that his wife had deserted him and left for the US in pursuance of her career.
The woman refuted all the charges. In her defence, she said that the first two abortions had been necessitated by medical conditions ~ the first caused by exposure to radiation in her laboratory and the second by a kidney inflammation ~ and the third had been a natural miscarriage.
As for the trip to the US, she had been awarded a fellowship, which she had taken up. While the husband further alleged that his wife had told him several times that he could remarry or adopt if he was desperate for a child, the impugned woman said in her defence that she was highly educated and wanted to deploy that education in service of society.
The court ruled that the denial of a child, the husband’s legitimate conjugal right, constituted torture, and, while dismissing the charge of desertion, granted the divorce sought by the man.

Changing roles

Let us note at the outset that there are three actors in this drama and we shall look at their actions one by one ~ the husband, the wife and the judiciary, specifically the Supreme Court, though the case came up from a lower court through the high court.
Let’s begin with the petitioner ~ the husband. While, from within a certain frame of reference, one may be critical of a certain lack of sensitivity, of which more in a moment, one cannot fully fault the husband, especially since the bareness of the narrative available in the media makes it impossible to reconstruct the context, for wanting a child. Nor can one fault him for wanting a divorce after having been denied fatherhood. Let us assume, charitably, that he tried to prevail upon his wife and convince her of the depth of his desire to be a father and only after having failed did he take recourse to the divorce option.
Fine. But a digression is in order. In this particular case the wife alleged that her husband was “jealous” of her professional success ~ “progress” ~ when she got her fellowship and went to the US instead of being happy for her, which was the proximate cause for filing the divorce suit. Without going into the merits of this allegation, if for no other reason because we are in no position to, some general points can be made. In India’s rapidly changing urban society, the social and professional space for women is opening up virtually with every passing day. This enlargement of space and the consequent liberty and freedom that women are increasingly enjoying is also being diffused more widely across social classes and reaching women from more diverse, hitherto traditional, backgrounds. Men, especially those from more traditional and conservative backgrounds are finding it difficult to cope with the new social and professional roles and aspirations of women in general and their wives specifically.
There is another aspect to this. The new social and professional freedom in the public space that women are beginning to enjoy is mirrored in the private space ~ that of the family and the household ~ by an increasing rejection of traditional roles. Thus women not only have different expectations, say, about the division of household responsibilities, but also about the control of their bodies, their selves, their destinies which in traditional contexts they were denied, especially within the ambit of the concept of the joint family and the responsibilities that entailed (whether or not the actual household was nuclear or joint). These claims to freedom are even more problematic for men in traditional contexts. That is the lesson of the husband’s story, whether or not it applies in this case.
Now to the woman. Much of the foregoing applies to the wife. She wanted a career and was well within her rights not to have a child if she felt that would impede her career. Motherhood may not be the ultimate epiphany for all women, whether married or not ~ marriage, in other words, does not have to come with a promissory note inscribed with the promise of a child or children, even though a majority of men may think it does. The woman’s allegation of professional jealousy is plausible in the broader social context, whether or not it is true in this particular case ~ given, as we have argued, that men find both the new public and private roles of “their” women and women in general difficult to negotiate. If there is something both inexplicable and to an extent indefensible, in this particular case, however, is the wife’s desperate attempt to deny the husband a divorce. If their registers were so very divergent, from the outside and given the limitations of our knowledge of the full story, it would appear logical to agree to a parting of ways ~ she to pursue her career and he to find a wife more in tune with his expectations and, crucially, willing to bear his child.
The most interesting action was that of the third actor, however ~ the judgments passed seem to encapsulate the still hugely dominant social consensus about the public and private roles of women and the relations between men and women, specifically the relation of conjugality. In its order, while upholding the lower and high court judgments, the apex court dismissed desertion on account of the woman having taken up her fellowship in the US on purely technical grounds ~ the couple had not lived apart continuously for two years.

Rights and duties

The grounds on which the divorce was in fact granted in the lower court was that the wife’s refusal to bear a child ~ and in this the husband’s version of events was accepted ~ constituted cruelty, a view at least tacitly endorsed by the high court and Supreme Court. The Supreme Court threw out the desertion plea, but, as cryptically reported in the media, ruled that the continuous cessation of “marital intercourse” constituted “legal cruelty”.
In the absence of context the phrase “marital intercourse” is difficult to interpret, but at the very bottom there seems to be the notion that bearing a child is an inalienable conjugal duty a wife undertakes upon marriage and conversely it is the husband’s inalienable conjugal right to demand compliance. The woman argued that even if the charges ~ the three abortions ~ were true, the issues involved were part of the “normal wear and tear” of a marital relationship ~ in other words, having or not having a child should have been a matter of negotiation within the marriage.
By refusing to buy that, the Supreme Court gave the “marital” duty of bearing a child an absolute, non-negotiable, legal imprimatur, which, while being in line with the dominant social consensus, hardly accords with an equitable, enlightened and just construction of the relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

The writer is Senior Editor, The Statesman

Guest post: Manmohan Singh - the premier who failed expectations?

From today's Statesman, about the man who would be India's new Nehru..it is a sad day indeed when all of Indian politics seems to be either about caste politics aka Mayawati or the edicts passed from 10 Janpath. Have we completely lost the ability to rise above such pettiness? Is there no one left who speaks not just for a tribe or a community, but for the whole country? This article talks about the failed story that this the prime ministership of Manmohan Singh, once considered a man of bedrock integrity. Perhaps the fault lies in us, for expecting too much from one who obeys the diktat of the Congress' Italian Grande Dame.

Assessing Manmohan
The Doctor Of Deficit Finance Should Realise The Currency Is At Stake
Subroto Roy
The best thing that may be said of the Manmohan Singh premiership is that when it began in May 2004, it seemed, for a short while, refreshing in comparison to the dysfunctional arrogance and brutality displayed by its predecessor. By the last months of the Vajpayee-Advani Government, there were party appointees who had ended all pretence of purportedly Hindu values and were raking it in shamelessly. The Golden Rule of Democracy is “Throw the rascals out”, which is what Indian democracy upheld as it has done time and again. By 2009, India’s electorate will have the chance to decide whether the incumbent government deserves the same fate.

Lok Sabha

Manmohan Singh was seriously discussed as the Congress’s putative nominee for PM as early as 2001. The idea brewing at the time with the party’s next generation of wannabe leaders (in their 50s and 60s, where Manmohan was near 70) was that they needed to maintain good relations with the Great White Queen and wait out one term of an inevitable Singh premiership before having a shot at the top job themselves.
What is surprising is Dr Singh appeared never to feel it necessary to educate himself privately on how to retool himself for the necessary transformation from being the archetypal bureaucrat he had been in his working career to becoming the national statesman he wished to be after retirement. It is doubtful, for example, if he ever stood in front of a mirror and practised an extempore political speech in Hindi in preparation for the highest executive post in the country, let aside writing a clear-headed, original vision or mission statement of substance as to where he wished to lead it. As Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister, he could meekly take orders from his PM; it seemed he wished to continue in the same mode even when PM himself.
Jawaharlal Nehru is supposed to have been a hero of Dr Singh’s ~ but Nehru was a thorough parliamentarian, among the finest anywhere, and someone who always respected the Lok Sabha immensely. Dr Singh, after he lost to VK Malhotra for the South Delhi seat in 1999, made not the slightest effort to enter the Lok Sabha again, even when the Akalis indicated they might not oppose him in a Punjab contest. When asked specifically at a large press conference about not entering the Lok Sabha, Dr Singh murmured words to the effect he had better uses of his time ~ a display, if anything, of the misplaced arrogance of many New Delhi academics and intellectuals. Dr Singh may be the first PM in any parliamentary democracy never to have won a seat in the lower house nor felt a need to do so.
Dr Singh’s bureaucratic expertise assisted him well in the first national crisis that came his way, which was the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. There appeared to be an air of efficiency about the Government’s response and he seemed in his element as commander of bureaucratic forces while working with Pranab Mukherjee in enlisting the military. George W. Bush (not a great geographer or historian) was apparently impressed to see on a map that India had naval forces deployed as far as the Andamans.
By 2005 though, Dr Singh’s bureaucratic mindset had its negative impact. Montek Ahluwalia had been his Finance Secretary when he was Finance Minister. Mr Ahluwalia’s spouse had been a main supporter of Dr Singh’s unsuccessful Lok Sabha attempt. During the Vajpayee Government, Mr Ahluwalia remained a Planning Commission Member for several years before moving to Washington. With Dr Singh as PM, Mr Ahluwalia returned from the USA in mid 2004 to become Deputy Chair at the Planning Commission. Simultaneously with his return, the idea that the American nuclear industry would like to sell “six to eight lightwater reactors” to India arose.
That is as much as is presently known in public. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia may in the national interest want to frankly and precisely explain to the Indian people the full story of the sudden origins of this idea. Certainly, none of the lessons of the Dabhol fiasco a decade earlier seemed to have been learnt, and the Maharasthtra Government (and hence the Government of India) ended up paying some $300 million to General Electric and Bechtel Corporation for Dabhol before any nuclear talks with the USA could begin. Nor had any serious cost-benefit analysis been done or discussion taken place comparing nuclear energy with coal, hydro and other sources in the Indian case.
Indian foreign policy became frozen in its focus on nuclear negotiations with the USA, swirling around Dr Singh’s fife-and-drum welcome at the White House and President Bush’s return visit to India. At the same time arose the issue of Paul Volcker’s UN committee mentioning the name of India’s foreign minister. As The Statesman put it, regardless of the latter’s involvement, “the damage to India's diplomatic reputation in the world” was done and it was inevitable a new foreign minister would be necessary. After dilly-dallying and much 10 Janpath to-and-fro, Dr Singh followed Nehru’s mistake of becoming his own foreign minister. The idea was that this would be temporary but it became almost a year.
Instead of transforming himself towards Indian political statesmanship, Dr Singh advanced other retired bureaucrats’ ambitions on similar career-paths. Foreign policy went out of the MEA’s control and seemingly into the control of the new “National Security Adviser”. Dr Singh, sometimes with MK Narayanan beside him, travelled a large number of countries from Brazil to Finland and Uzbekistan to South Africa and Japan. Dr Singh also found time and willingness to accept honorary degrees from British and Russian universities during these short months.
While Dr Singh seemed thus preoccupied, two of India’s main neighbours underwent massive democratic revolutions (leave aside magnificent Bhutan). Nepal’s people practically stormed their Bastille while Dr Singh and Mr Narayanan visited Germany to discuss BMWs. Pakistan’s democratic forces could hardly believe the cold indifference shown to them by a New Delhi merely following Bush’s support for Pervez Musharraf. While Pakistan and Nepal, and to lesser extent Bangladesh, saw movements towards better governance, Sri Lanka descended towards civil war ~ India’s PM remained obsessed with the magic wand that the nuclear deal was supposed to be.

Inflation

Then suddenly the magic vanished ~ Dr Singh seemed to finally come to a silent private recognition that the economics of the nuclear deal simply did not add up if it meant India importing “six to eight lightwater reactors” on a turnkey basis from the USA or anywhere else. Dr Singh seemed to come out of his self-imposed trance and return a little better to reality. By the time he visited China, although he was as deferential to Hu Jintao in his body language as he had been to Bush and Musharraf and even accepted an indoor guard of honour, he also seemed willing to stand up for India. The Arunachal visit was a reality-check.
Now there is inflation ~ and one year left in the UPA’s term. What the country needs is tough sensible macroeconomics and clean public finance. A pandering profligate budget in February was not a healthy sign. Instructing Mr Ahluwalia to close down the Planning Commission and make it a minor R&D wing of the Finance Ministry would be instead a good step. Instructing the RBI to clean up its bureaucratic wastefulness and prepare itself for institutional independence from the Finance Ministry would be even better. Getting proper financial control over every Union and State government entity spending public money and resources would be most important of all. Such major institutional changes in the policy-making process are what an economist might expect of an economist prime minister who wishes to lead India in the 21st Century. India’s currency is at stake.
The writer is Contributing Editor, The Statesman

Corruption at the core: the seamy side of a resurgant India.

From today's Statesman editorial.

Canker at the core
How Corruption Permeates The Critical Sectors

By YP Gupta

Corruption has been spreading at all levels of society. It has permeated academic institutions, public personalities, high-ranking officials, doctors, scientists, engineers, and academics. Transparency International’s global corruption report (2007) has revealed that bribes amounting to Rs 2,630 crore are being paid every year to officials of the lower Indian judiciary. Its earlier report had described India as one of the most corrupt nations in the world, with a dubious distinction of ranking among the top 55 nations in terms of corruption.
The unethical practices and the decline in moral values have corrupted a greed-based society. A number of IAS, IPS, MCD, DDA and bank officials have been arrested on charges of corruption. Also, illegal gratification by some judges has had a damaging effect on the judiciary.
The Central Information Commission recently came across a case of forgery, impersonation and falsification of documents against the holder of a fake MBBS degree from Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati. He had managed to obtain the MD degree in paediatrics from AIIMS by submitting false documents. He also duped the University of Maryland Medicine Centre (USA) and the American Board of Paediatrics. This alleged doctor was exposed when he was experimenting with viagra on children, resulting in some deaths.

Medical admission

A medical admission racket through a coaching centre has been recently unearthed in Kolkata. Earlier, a verdict by a Delhi court convicted an individual of selling fake “medical degrees”. It was detected that around 40,000 such fake degrees were issued by him across the country. The Indian Medical Association had described such doctors as quacks. A principal of a public school was arrested for selling fake CBSE marksheets to failed students in connivance with board officials.
There is a fool-proof racket in the leakage of questions. It operates like a professionally-run business with a nationwide criminal network. The leakage of an MCA question paper of IGNOU, that of the AIIMS entrance examination paper and that of the pre-medical paper of the central board form only the tip of the iceberg. The leakage of question papers for the Common Admission Test (CAT) for the premier management institutes has undermined the credibility of our centres of excellence.
A chairman of the Maharashtra Public Service Commission along with former UPSC members and the controller of examinations were arrested and chargesheeted for taking bribes and replacing the answer papers of unsuccessful examinees. A chairman of the Orissa Public Service Commission was once suspended for irregularities. And the Bihar State University Service Commission’s office was sealed because of irregularities in the selection of lecturers. Also, a former president of the Medical Council of India was held guilty of corruption by Delhi High Court.
A former vice-chancellor of Himachal Pradesh University was arrested for corruption. A former vice-chancellor of Utkal University was indicted for financial irregularities. The former Kerala chief secretary and ex-vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit was sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment on corruption charges. A senior computer programmer of Delhi University along with her husband and the candidate’s father were held guilty of criminal conspiracy and forgery by a Delhi court for increasing the candidate’s marks in the MBBS entrance test.
A former vice-chancellor and registrar of Visva-Bharati University were arrested in a fake marksheet case. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had sought a probe into the omissions and commissions in respect of financial irregularities by the ayurvedic colleges in Bihar. The CBI had chargesheeted a former Meerut University vice-chancellor, his daughter and two officials for forging certificates to get her a job.
Bihar universities have the dubious distinction of issuing fake degrees. BR Ambedkar Bihar University (Muzaffarpur) is notorious. Many of its degrees, including medical, have been found to be fake. The two vice-chancellors of BN Mandal and LNM Mithila Universities (Bihar) were arrested in the fake BEd degree racket. The BN Mandal University is reported to have been selling post-graduate degrees in science for Rs 50,000 each even to those who were not admitted to any of the colleges. The vigilance department has estimated that more than 10,000 persons from Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh obtained such post-graduate degrees.
Professional ethics are brazenly violated in certain institutions of learning. There are serious allegations of corruption and financial bungling against the vice-chancellors of UP universities, and that of Rajasthan and Pondicherry universities. Marks or admissions are often manipulated. The credibility of Delhi University’s examination system has been under a cloud because three senior professors were removed from service for grave misconduct. One of them was indicted for manipulating the admission of his son to the MBA course.
An inquiry into admissions to the post-graduate medical courses in the seven state-run medical colleges of UP exposed a huge racket. Indeed, the examination system has become defective and is open to manipulation.
At least 30,000 quacks are thriving in Delhi. They claim to be practitioners of alternative medicine, and have been prescribing spurious drugs as indigenous medicines. The Delhi government is contemplating suitable action and an anti-quackery bill is on the anvil. The Medical Council of India has revoked the licences of 12 fake doctors with forged certificates. The Karnataka government has initiated action to prosecute quacks who claim miraculous cures for chronic illnesses.

Armed forces

The armed forces have also lost credibility owing to widespread corruption in their ranks. Twelve senior defence officers have been chargesheeted for corruption, going by a reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha. There has been an erosion of values and conduct within the defence services.
It is unfortunate that there is hardly any deterrent effect on corrupt officials as the process of conviction is slow, and has not made an impact. Consequently, corruption has been flourishing with more and more instances coming to light. It is difficult to visualise a corruption-free society because those who profess probity in public life and proclaim to curb corruption are not serious in introducing reforms.
Drastic changes and reforms are imperative to weed out unethical professional and corrupt practices from our academic and public institutions. The process of conviction needs to be speeded up. Apart from recommending legislation to protect whistle-blowers, the Administrative Reforms Commission has suggested a new piece of legislation ~ Corrupt Public Servants (forfeiture of a property) Bill, to curb corruption. The recent landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that public servants can be prosecuted without mandatory government sanction should have a deterrent effect on corrupt officials and politicians. There is need for transparency and accountability in our academic and public institutions, including the judiciary.

(The writer is ex-Principal Scientist, IARI, New Delhi)