It’s India’s Time

Pradeep Gupta

Economists have been predicting it, stargazers have been forecasting it, and now the technology trend watchers are saying it — the coming decade is surely going to belong to India. Jason Pontin, the charismatic editor and publisher of MIT’s Technology Review confidently proclaims that India is going to dominate the innovation space. This is why the 109-year old magazine has launched an edition in the country. ‘‘I want to be the first to tell the world about the action in the labs here,’’ says Potin.

Economists may predict superpower status for India based on its growth figures and the economy’s resilience in the face of global downturn. But the motor of this growth will be investments in science and technology, believe experts.

At EmTech2009, an emerging technologies conclave recently hosted in New Delhi by Technology Review and CyberMedia, the exciting forecast is that India’s knowledge superpower domain is all set to extend beyond the field of IT. Areas where India is seen making major inroads include healthcare, education, biomaterials and nano-technology. From being a service providing nation, India is finally heralding its arrival as a knowledge-creating nation, as befitting a country that centuries ago was the original fount of all knowledge. Tantalizing glimpses of how technology that is developed by Indians is already empowering and enabling millions were provided at the conclave. Pontin talked about how Technology Review’s annual list of technologists who could change the world is increasingly being dominated by Indians.

In 2004, there was Vikram Sheel Kumar, founder of Dimagi — a unique combination of engineering and medicine. Kumar is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Harvard Medical School. His software products have encouraged compliance from diabetic patients and removed stigma from HIV/AIDS testing. Then in 2007, Tapan Pareek’s work, which helped Kerala fishermen keep track of market prices on their cell phones, was highlighted. This year, it is the turn of computer science professor Vivek Pai to turn out a technology that will help store web content to enable poor students in developing nations beat bad net connections.

As can be seen from the examples above, the nature of the technologies emerging from innovation labs around the world today is completely democratic, having the power to touch billions — the literate and the unlettered, the affluent as well as those at the bottom of the pyramid. If the Indian innovators, tuned to the needs of the less advantaged in their country, are coming out with technologies to address this space, then large multinational corporations, admittedly driven by marketing compulsions, are also now focusing on this segment. Companies in the IT, mobile and electronics space, looking to expand their market to the next billion ‘‘non-premium’’ users, are tweaking the characteristics of the new technology so that it is in sync with the needs of their new target base.

It is perhaps fitting that the largest democracy in the world should be the one taking a lead in democratizing technology. Innovations by the people, for the people, are all set to take India to the next level.

(The writer is the publisher of CyberMedia) (IANS) THE SENTINEL