Need to climb faster on technology ladder

Sheel Kant Sharma

Jan 19 2015 

Part-6

Excerpts from the presentations at the Roundtable on National Security Key Challenges Ahead organised by The Tribune National Security Forum in collaboration with the Indian Council of World Affairs See also, www.tribuneindia.com

Half a century of the India-China war prompted exhaustive reviews in 2012 that the war exposed the utter lack of capacity, not only in regard to defence, but also at the societal scale. Former US diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith mentions in his memoirs that even a reliable coaxial telephone line between Delhi and Calcutta was lacking at the time of the Chinese threat to Assam.

India made a determined push after the experience of 1962. As a result, in areas like space, nuclear technology and higher education, its powers grew steadily and culminated, for example, in the success of the Mangalyaan, or the IT miracle around the turn of the century.

The success in space and nuclear fields has been due to advances in specific domains facilitated by the interconnected niche development of science and industry. Imitation of such a trajectory in other areas, say in ICT and biotechnology, has been tried out with a mixed record of success. But the real broad-based science and technology structure has languished in the twilight of assurance and despair. Such a structure rests on a knowledge society, which has been created in niche areas in the country, including select academic institutions and industries. But the unevenness and lack of it is reflective of the overall picture of human resource and technology planning. The enormous size and population of India warrants a far more intensive and coherent march towards technology.

Nano-science

Developments rooted in defence technology alone are so astounding and varied that if you are not smart enough to come to terms with them, the slide that may come upon the nation could well be, in relative terms, worse than 1962. Advanced materials and sensors, nano-science and technology, robotics, metallurgy and chemical technology, bioinformatics and quantum computing, smart maritime platforms, advanced avionics and hypersonic missiles, besides the whole gamut of missile technologies, green energy and efficient transportation are all drivers for research and development, which is critical to security. Ideas and research in these fields have moved rapidly from conception to the production stage over the past decade.

Technology makes a difference to military engagement, as was evident during the first Afghan war with the advent of Stinger missiles. The challenges being faced in low-tech wars in the Middle East have compelled military changes in the approach towards defence and organisation of security in the US and its European allies. China and Russia are hard put to catch up and look for asymmetric options to overcome the wild differential.

Where does India see itself in this evolution in a 20-year timeframe? The pace of change does not leave the luxury of endless contemplation and debate. Vision and planning must move to capacity-building for innovation and a comprehensive bid to go up on the technology ladder.

At the same time, globalisation of production chains and markets offers a scope for harnessing its advantage, for which a smart external interface at the corporate and government levels needs to be found, nurtured, enhanced and sustained. A few examples will illustrate the point. The US has utilised aerial attack drones far more than any other country and its capacity and prowess is unparalleled. The UK and Israel have also used lethal drones in combat. Hezbollah tried them against Israel in 2006. China and Iran are considered to have capabilities for attack drones and have demonstrated their technology and intention to be prepared for their use in a crisis.

As per a US Congressional study, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan are developing sophisticated lethal drone capabilities. The study estimated that in 2012, at least 76 countries had some kind of a drone programme, as against 41 in 2005. India figures in this study in the lower heap among those with an interest in accruing it, namely Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Drones offer capabilities to hover about a targeted area for an extended period and provide an instant strike option with precision. Drones are relatively inexpensive and avoid risks to pilots as these are remotely piloted. The US drones in the AfPak region were flown by pilots from their consoles at the Nevada Air Force Base. It is not for nothing that the Pakistan army and political leaders make such a hue and cry about drone attacks, but in the same breath, demand drones for fighting terrorism.

With a fall in prices and rising sales, drones may become banal tools not only for the military, but also street crimes, drugs and terror. In France, giving a headache to law-enforcement agencies, over a dozen illegal drone flights have been detected over nuclear power plants.

Nano-science is being literally brought home in diverse uses. Advanced material like graphene, which has a unique chemical structure, is harder than diamond and far superior to copper as a conductor. Its commercial applications are being explored in diverse industries, including aerospace, electronics, medicine, and even sporting and domestic goods. James Baker, Director of Business at the National Grapheme Institute in the UK, claims it would one day be used to make super-strong wings for aircraft. This wonder material has a huge potential in areas such as foldable screens, high-capacity batteries and the next generation of superfast microchips.

Military industrial complexes have always taken the lead in reaping the advantage of new technologies. For India, Nano is a car, but has none of the nano-science to justify the name. For a rapid climb up, the industry and government require an unrelenting drive and thrust, as has been witnessed in China.

R&D boost

China’s comparative advantage lay in low-cost manufacturing for the world market, but it has, over the past 10 years, steadily climbed the technology ladder by gaining access to new technologies through copying, buying and cajoling foreign investors to transfer technology in return for greater access to its huge market and cheap skilled labour. Among the industries that migrated to China are Microsoft, Motorola and Nokia.

China did not rest on these gains, but has moved further, letting its professionals partake of the increasing research and development activity of these multinationals. This process has made rapid progress over the past six years. China enhanced its R&D spending from $24.6 billion in 2004 to $45 billion (2 per cent of its GDP in 2010) — larger than the military budget of India. China plans to raise this to $123 billion by 2020. This has resulted in transforming the R&D scene in China. In 2008, China was producing 9,00,000 science, engineering and management graduates, in addition to its expatriates leading the numbers in top US universities. Since then, the tally of Chinese companies in the “Fortune 400” has gone up progressively.

This demonstrates how government policies, corporate culture and higher education can cohere to produce a mammoth R&D drive. There is a synergy at each stage. Higher education provides enormous skill-sets that drive and invite business and get profits, which provide employment and produce greater tax avenues, and thus enable the state to pump in more funds for education and R&D. We had this process in India in fits and starts, but society at large appears to have grown more unfriendly to a knowledge economy due to the downside of a democratic and intrusive polity. 

Chinese success stories should inspire introspection and action instead of anger, hostility or subservience. Since the 2008 nuclear deal with the US, for example, when our intelligentsia wallowed in monumental second thoughts on the virtues or perils of nuclear power, China commenced 10 nuclear power plants and has already commissioned them. We had at least two in our grasp, of which only one is working due to the pressures of our political economy. The contrast applies to every other area of India’s technology climb from medium to high-tech. It must get out of the crunch of sub-critical achievement.