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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. "
What I've been saying all along. We are telling brain-power to stay over there in India, rather than come over here to the United States. I wonder what it would be like if people like Vinod Khosla were told to work over there and don't come here to innovate.
It has everything going for it. Growing economy, a collection of research labs of U.S. and domestic companies, and a desire to pace with and outdo anything the West can throw at it. I'd put my money on China before I put it on India.
A blog like any other.
Maybe is just another mistake, like many that we have seen in the world`s history, as industry India could make progreses but as a superpower ... i don`t think so.
Think like a hacker, act like a hacker, but never become a hacker !
The Indian diaspora, like the China diaspora, is already a knowledge superpower -- as a look at the nationalities of the IEEE Fellows, the US NAS and NAE, and the equivalent academies in other countries will attest. All we're discussing here is the current mailing address of the talent.
It does seem that Money = Arrogance though.
India appears to be doing incredibly well under the American Model. It's developing new technologies and expanding its industry and developing nuclear missiles at a huge rate while much of its population still lives in third world conditions, like Detroit.
I'm just wondering if gross inequality is a nessessary or sufficient condition for a country to undergo economic growth.
May the Maths Be with you!
As long as the corporate funding for R&D in schools is as low as it is now in India, I don't think India (not Indians) will ever become a Knowledge superpower. I'm an Indian who is now in the U.S. It's just amazing on how many new things the undergrads in the US can work on when compared to how little the grads in India can work on. The difference is in extremes. Here in the U.S, even small univs undergrad team builds solar cars, in India, even the grads don't get enough money to work on something useful. Most of it is theory in India. Sad, but true. I wish corporates in India put enough money into R&D in Indian schools.
-ItsME
In my experience (USA working with OEMs doing high tech products) the cost of doing business with Indian Engineers is too high. They have a long (45 day) import delay for prototype hardware. The engineers who hire with companies I'm familiar with stay for training and then jump jobs. The communications difficulties (time shifted from USA offices) and language/cultural difficulties (different holidays, different work culture) make doing business awkward and less efficient than working with rural Americans (for instance).
Eventually Indian companies will run their own engineers and see some efficiencies that way. Then USA OEMs could see some serious competition. The only thing that would hold Indian OEMs back is internal costs of doing business, duties, taxes, crime, limitations on cooperation due to secrecy, government corruption, etc.. . Like here in the USA. The top dog world wide is going to be the country with the greatest efficiencies of doing business. Time will tell.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
Why is it sad? It shows that Americans can live a prosperous life without spending years and much toil in a graduate program. Asians come here becuase it is a way for them to come out of poverty and live a better life.
This I should mention includes inflated costs and bribes for bureaucrats. The Russians do much more and produce very durable space and nuclear equipment for less than one-third of our cost as Americans. This same reasoning presumes that if an individual lives on less than a dollar a day, they must be very badly off. I visited Uganda where a meal costing 4 US dollars was more than enough for me for two days!
Yes, India can and will be superpower whether we like it or not. It's not how much money one spends guys. The latest Russian aircraft costs less than half as much as our most advanced one, yet delivers more power and is even easily maintained. I wish our politicians get this into their heads.
So Sweden paid to provide a valuable learning experience to Indian undergrads?
I like to look at India like my precious daughter. She is growing 5 times faster than I am now, but she will likely not grow taller than I for quite awhile. The fundamental things holding back the USA are taxes, regulations, intellectual "property" restrictions, and just plain too much restrained freedom.
Eventually India will reach these barriers too, and so will the rest of the world until someone finds out how to persue and implement the "next generation" of freedoms. So even though they might eventually outsize the US because of sheer population - they will probably not surpass it per/capita until the next frontier of freedom is reached. (it will probably be ocean based communities in international waters)
Most companies in India are certified CMM level 5 (the highest level) using the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conceptual maturity model. Most companies in the US are certified CMM level 3. This says a lot.
I think India would be less splitered culturally than China. While to most westerners China is just one nation it's really a huge mish-mash of cultures and languages - it's no gross exaggeration to say that in many instances somone living there can't understand the local language of someone who's only like an hours drive away.
Imagine someone from Detroit being totally unintelligible to someone from Chicago? (Ok, bad example).
I took a trip to the south of India (Kerala, Banglore, and Channai (Madras). I spent a month and for the most parts avoided the tourist areas. My inlaws live far away from the nearest town in Kerala.
discoslure:
I'm a 31 year old white male whose worked in the computer industry since I graduated from college.
A few General Observations:
What India has going for them....
1) I've never seen a country so utterly focused on education (remember I spent my time in the South). Education is the only way out for Indians. The pressure is unbelievable for young people to perform in school. Everywhere you go you see signs for schools / education
2) English is spoken fluently among the college educated. English is the language of business in the south (in major cities, white collar type of work) b/c there are 19 "official" languages with an unbelievable number of dialects. Combine with the business process outsourcing (BPO), and you get a lot of focus around English language skills. I tried to learn the local dialect, but everyone wanted to practice English...
3) India graduates over 1 M engineers a year. There schools are extremely competitive. Areas such as Kerala have a 100% literacy rate, this meets or exceeds any Western country...
4) Motivation and drive. It's amazing what people will do to better themselves. This motivation and drive provides the foundation for the above. Spending a week in Bangalore was absolutely refreshing (and the food was great). To see all the young people full of life and excited was contagious... I can't wait to go back. I love seeing all the tech companies signs....
5) Economics. The largest middle class in the World, in sheer numbers. In India, it takes 2,000 USD a year to achieve a middle class lifestyle, that's ~1,500 EUR and ~1200 UK sterling. This middle class will drive the world's manufacturers to provide low priced quality goods, and the whole world will benefit.
6) Politics. Democracy works, although its not neccessarliy the kind the US imagines. A diverse group of cultures / languages get a long in a basic sense. Is it perfect no, but it gives me hope for places like Iraq.
What Challenges are ahead for India
1) Education: The focus on engineering has led to a culture that is not entrepreneur focused. It takes a diverse set of skills to move out of the BPO / Manufacturing mindset. Take Apple's IPOD. It took American design and a world wide supply chain to make this happen. The key is the design. That's what makes a product sell, manufacturing is important, but if you don't move up the chain, you will always have difficultly. Note to engineers: Get jobs that are customer facing and can't be outsourced...
2) Gaps There are 100's of Millions still in dire poverty and extreme education. If the middle class and the rich get too far ahead of the rest of the country, I think there will be a lot of social unrest.
3) Environment. India is a shit hole to put it nicely. If they don't clean up sooner rather than later, India will face a lot of health care cost for the population. Also, in Kerala, fresh water is an issue.
It's the old problem of changing mindsets. The tech version is a company that sold hardware and now wants to sell software or services only. Its huge change and most fail.
That's it I look forward to replies to others who have been to the south and I'm curious what your opinions are...
I loved it and I can't wait to go back......
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
The above mentioned countries have a population of 53 million and generated 12.7% of papers, while America, with a population of 288M, published 34%.
One might speculate whether the social democracies with their high taxes and well-funded universities do more hardcore research. Here in America it seems that research is aimed more at the low-lying, commercially-viable fruit.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It could be very interesting to know how much is used for non-military R&D, and compare that to the rest of the world...
Most of the bigger companies have research centers based in India.And HUGE onnes.Most of them are based inthe south, in or around Bangalore.Theres GE,IBM,HP,Microsoft etc..
Not only does the American company benefit from these R&D centers due to the cheap & skilled labour(does research count as labour?) but so does India as it takes almost as much from the R & D as does USA.
Lord of the Binges.
And if you have ten statistics and only pick the favorable one you will never see or solve your problems.
And conversely if you pick only the unfavorable statistics derived from a standardized test of questionable relevance you will chase problems that don't exist.
Once the American citizen enters the work force it appears he is very well prepared indeed - his productivity is absolutely world class. Isn't that the most important measurement?
Earlier and even now, all the smarties come to US and contribute to US advancement in technologies. These technologies were invented by Americans+Indians+Chinese+Minority and not just Americans alone. In order for US to become a superpower, it trapped all these smarties, made their life comfortable, relaxed visa regulations, gave them green cards, etc. Even now, there is a special quota, around 20,000, for US employers to hire International MS/PHD students only besides the normal 65,000 quota reserved. Now, more are staying back and contributing to India's advancement in technologies. America is recoginizing India's power and not just cheap labor. So, it is setting up R&D's in India, to save cost and make the smarties still work for them, which again contributes to US advancement in technologies. Comparing China and India, China will become the superpower in hardware, while India will become in Software. Even though we are nowhere in position to compete with China in Hardware, but, by 2035, when India's population will be greater than China's, we will be a serious competitor. But, India's role exists in both the countries. So, does America's.
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.
I live in India. I can't begin to describe how much I agree with this. Our education system turns us into machines. Computers. By "education system" i mean not only the official curriculum part of education, but also the way the teachers teach us, and how kids and parents approach learning (parents play a big role in the education, employment and general future of their children. rather too big.)Once we are taught something our minds become completely confined to whatever is taught to us. We can process the input given to us and give output very well. But we can't do anything beyond that. I'm struggling for words here... It's like education is like software development for us. We are computer programs, we are programmed to do certain things. We do that very well, but we can't do any thinking or innovation of our own. And if we have to do something new, another software module has to be added to our brains to handle this new task. If something needs to be done for which a module hasn't been developed yet and it can't be implemented using the logic of the computers that are our brains, then we fail, we can't do it. Softare development (the kind done by Indian offshoring companies) has now developed to a large extent. There already rules and methods on how to do it. These rules are taught to us and we can succefully use these rules and thus offshoring industry is blooming here. But things that require a lot of innovation haven't reached India yet. Sure R&D will reach India (it's already started) but only because the rules have started to develop. I suppose "true" innovation will never reach here, since you can't really make rules for 'innovation'.
A lumbering democracy is much preferrable to a draconian system which can take drastic steps in any direction. The key is debate. It takes time. I want to be able to live in a livable country, not necessarily in a superpower.
And did you overlook the small fact that Iran is an oil-rich country?