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Can India Become A Knowledge Superpower?
krsmathews writes "
New Scientist, in its latest issue, has a special report on India.
It provocatively calls India the next knowledge superpower, though in a
introductory
story the caveats are laid out. It's
a reasonably comprehensive look at India's high-tech
research, pharma, bio-tech, space, and nuclear
industries. The U.S. R&D expenditure is bigger than the next five
countries put together, and India is
nowhere in the picture. "
The US R&D expenditure is bigger than the next five countries put together, and India is nowhere in the picture.
Granted, that's impressive spending, but how much of this has to do with a higher overall cost of living in the US, and therefore, higher salaries for your workers? Also, how much of that spending is directly related to the military?
Just wondering how much overall dollar output directly relates to one's place on the R&D totem pole.
The one area where the USA has excelled over the decades is in cooking up innovative ideas and turning them into profitable businesses. The basic model of education in the USA has been based in large part on creative thinking. As tax-cut mania takes over and US schools do less and less educating, we can expect to see other countries start catching up in the area of innovation. However, since most places, India included, prize rote memorization as the best way to educate, I can't see them ever turning out large numbers of innovators the way the US has.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
You are forgetting that China doesn't fit in the traditional Communist model, at least not economically. How many Communist governments have had economies growing at the pace that China is experiencing at this time? Maybe the Soviet Union in the first couple of decades, but clearly China is an exception, in that it mixes a Communist government with a quasi-capitalist economic system. And trends seem to indicate that China will increasingly become more democratic and capitalistic.
A blog like any other.
Talent knows no geographical boundaries. The key is that it is a diaspora, not an Indian or Chinese institution. For example, despite the vast talent pool in the Chinese population, no Chinese citizen has ever won a Nobel Prize, Those prizes have gone to members of the diaspora working in western institutions.
Until India and China build institutions comparable to the best in the west they will never become true knowledge superpowers.
But how much of that US R&D expense is being spent in India, and how much of the produced knowledge will stay in India?
--
make install -not war
You are ignoring the fact that yeah, things are going great now, but what is going to happen when things start to go south? They cannot grow forever, and nobody knows how the system will work when things aren't so rosy. Also, if you look at Chinese history, you will see a dizzying cycle of amazing highs where China really is the "Middle Kingdom" and dominates the region, and then almost instantaneously crashes and looks only inward.
Time will tell if this government is any different.
Monstar L
I agree with you totally.
We have a culture where anybody can innovate. Look at all the companies that started out in someone's garage. There is the idea that anyone can do anything, the idea that a kid from the worst ghetto might someday become the president. Other cultures don't have that idea. It's a precious idea. The greatness of our culture and economy are based on it.
Having said the above, innovation requires certain conditions. People need enough economic surplus to be able to devote their time to something that may not pan out. People need a good enough education to be able to innovate. If we have a society where you go to school and then have to work two jobs to pay off your student loans, you don't have the surplus (time, money) to innovate; you have become a wage slave. If you have to sell your business to pay your doctor, you can't innovate. If you can't get a decent job because you grew up in a ghetto and the cops made sure that everyone had a criminal record, you can't innovate. If the Microsofts and Walmarts crush your budding business, you can't innovate.
The bottom line is that while I agree that we out-innovate the rest of the world, I sure wouldn't take that for granted in the future.
Because, as the Economist points out, they are only nominally communist. They're actually fascist- fairly free markets but centralized, authoritarian political control- although the Economist (looking at the glass as half full) says that's a good thing, since fascist countries can make a successful transition to a Western model. Spain made the transition for instance. As awful as it sounds, cracking down on the students may have been necessary. Russia broke down the old system, but with nothing to replace it, oligarchs and crime lords took over and people have generally been worse off than under communism. Likewise, the American attempt to knock down Iraq has proven to be misguided, since they had no plan for what was going to follow it. Destroying the old order is easy. Building the new one is what's hard. China's changing, but in a stepwise evolutionary fashion rather than an all-at-once revolutionary fashion. The result is that freedoms will be slow in coming- but the problems that accompany transition to a more Western style government can be taken one at a time, instead of all at once.
"As awful as it sounds, cracking down on the students may have been necessary. Russia broke down the old system, but with nothing to replace it,..."
I'm sure that is what the chinese government had in mind when they ordered the student revolts put down brutally.
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Crudely Drawn Games
YS Rajasekhara Reddy (the new CM in power after Naidu was ousted) is no better. Ask anyone who is living in an AP village.
He promised free electricity, free water, more rural funding (via loans and such), and so on. He delivered nothing. It was just two days ago that I spoke with a farmer from Ongole who was forced to move to a city into a life of manual labour. The suicides have not stopped, they have just been hushed up.
Naidu did not discourage rural AP. He has, in fact, done more for them than any of the previous CMs. He has never ignored it.
How is this relevant? Naidu's policies affected everyone in the state directly (positively) through a "trickle down" effect (as I have heard it called). This can be done at the national scale. All this requires is a bit of backing from the government in making the country more lucrative to investment, and encouraging education at all levels. Do not ever make the mistake of putting someone in power who claim they want the best for rural India. History has shown that they are lying. Oh wait, it's too late. We already voted the Congress into power.
And BTW, it was during Naidu's tenure that my grandparents in Rajahmundry (small rural town near visakhapatnam) had access to the internet for the first time. I've stayed there for a while, so I'm not talking nonsense. Now all the place has is 8-hour-long blackouts and a severe water shortage (even though they have recorded the highest rainfall over the past few years this year)
What is exciting in their design is simplicity, and maintainance. With lack of resources, their design had to be robust. You may laugh on Ladas, but Lada Niva, Russian SUV is a good car. Russian mechanical watches, optical devices were pretty robust.
Their military equipment followed these rules, too (and I am officer in reserve). Unfortunately, it does not mean that their devices are efficient (as they always had a lot of cheap fuel - there is even a joke in Serbia told for someones who spends too much - "to spend like Russian vehicle"). It does not mean they are ecological - all their eqiupment has NiCd batteries, but NiCd batteries are best (exluding being highly toxic).
Compare AK47 (ok, it is a bit old design - from '47 as its name says) with M4 (I had both of them in my hands). M4 is subtle, but AK is robust. It means that it can be mass-produced with inexpirienced technicians. M4 requires a lot of maintance, AK does not. Result - M4 is less heavy, which is good for its purpose, but most typical problem with AK can be solved using your boot or even hammer (ok, handle, not the head). Don't try that on M4.
Unfortunately, I think that these two design patterns will tend toward each other, ot more precisely, that Russian model will follow Western one. Lack of some resources, with cheap other resources (in Russian case, metal and oil) gives inovative ideas. But now, when resources cost everywhere more or less the same, designs will everywhere be the same.
I would still suggest, just as a part of education, every engeener to take one standardly built device with one comparable device developed while resources were expensive. Just like AK - M4 comparison. Or, for instance, study all devices made by soldiers on front lines, or ilegal devices designed by prisoners. There is a lot to learn.
No sig today.
Whoa there. Caste-based discrimination was outlawed back in 1950 when independent India's new constitution was adopted (less than three years after independence) and has in fact nearly vanished in the cities (except in some things like marriage), though it persists in many rural areas. Now check out how long after independence the US persisted with slavery, how long after that the US failed to extend civil rights to blacks, how long after 1950 it took for the civil rights movement to have an impact, what the current state of racial relations is in the major cities of the US, leave alone the rural south. Then come back and comment on India's Dalits.
As awful as it sounds, cracking down on the students may have been necessary.
They machine gunned crowds of unarmed civilians and ran them over with tanks...Would you consider that to be a prudent and necessary step?
Democracy and free markets seem to be better, in the long run, at fostering growth than totalitarian regimes, IMHO
Unfortunately, much as a I want to agree with you, there is no strong correlation between democracy and economic growth.
For example, 40 out of 48 African nations have held multiparty elections since 1990. At election time, they mostly swap one corrupt bunch for a different one. There is little sign of any democracy-dividend there.
At the other extreme, there are prosperous, sort-of-free-market, definately authoritarian places like Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. In Europe in the 1930s, the fascist countries delivered much more impressive growth than the democracies.
The real drivers seem to be low levels of corruption and proper law enforcement. It isn't particularly related to how often people go to the polls.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
This is slightly worse than Tianamen Square.
Was this prudent? Different countries evolve at different paces. We in the US have a fine history of enslavement, genocide ( Indians ), child labor,dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, firebombing civlians etc etc etc.
At the time it was felt nessasary to enslave Africans to lower labor costs. Prudent business practice?
We are in no position ever to judge other nations.
Our President only now speaks to invited supporters with no protesters allowed near. The police brutally beat and suppress dissent. Is this prudent?
We in the US have a fine history of enslavement, genocide ( Indians ), child labor,dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, firebombing civlians etc etc etc.
You have absolutely nothing on totalitarian regimes. They kill civilians by the tens of millions while pacifists cheer them on (well, politely ask them to stop).
The police brutally beat and suppress dissent.
So, are the cops knocking at your door right now, or you just spouting the usual rhetorical histrionics?
2 years. How long did the same process take in Japan and Germany after WWII? How long did it take for the Soviet Union/Russia to move away from pseudocommunism to whatever it is they have now?
When do YOU think the elections should have been held? What day would have been acceptable to you?
If it had gone much faster, people would be bitching that the Iraqis were not given enough time to hold the election.
I do not agree with how this second half of the 13 year long conflict got started. But now that the US has gone down this road, it must be seen to completion. Anything else would be far more cruel than what is going on now.
You see in the macro position, your position makes no sense. Millions have died in the Sudan but there is no Oil. Zimbabwe has much death and repesssion but there is no Oil. Both were/are worse in terms of human suffering than Iraq was.
The Sudan was not threatening to sell products in Euros ( not thet they have that much to sell). Your current living standard depends on the world using the Dollar as a reserve currency. Oil is denominated in Dollars. Iraq threatened the US not with Weapons but with ripping asunder the preeminent position where Saudis sell Oil in Dollars not Euros or Rubles.
We are not in Iraq for Democracy. That is the fig leaf you choose to buy into.
You rambling about democracy and war are that....ramblings. We as Americans have a fine history of using war to impose our desires on other nations.
When it became clear that Ho Chi Mhin would win a democratic vote in Vietnam, we pulled out of supporting any vote and forced the division of the country and propped up a corrupt leader (Diem ) and called this abberation democracy. We then killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians to prop up our distortion of democracy.
You need some new history books.
India and China are using trade to defeat us. If we are threatened with economic defeat we will use military force.