Prof. Balasubramanian: I will spend about five minutes giving a presentation of my own as a scientist, as one who has been involved in bit of the development of technology in this country and also briefly summarize what the panelists have talked about and throw it open for all of you.

This marks also the centenary of an outstanding scientific institution in India called the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. That was an institution that started way before India promoted or India even understood all the implications – the plus, minus, all the points with respect to the acquisition and utilization of scientific knowledge. A great idea by one Parsi gentleman and that institution has grown from strength to strength. It is a scientific institution. Unfortunately it doesn’t have Humanities and Social Sciences what they call the ‘Soft Sciences’ in it and one of the recommendations, one of the pleas that several of us had on the occasion was indeed precisely what Haragopal was talking about and that is we need therefore to get these areas of human endeavor also involved in this.
 
Something very interesting happened at that time and I thought I will share that with you. In one of the panel discussions, an outstanding technologist who is claimed to be the richest woman in India, a Bio-Technologist, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, talked about innovation. We constantly talk about Science, Technology, Invention, Innovation, Application and so on…and she analyzed, what’s the kind of innovation that we have had, what is the kind of innovation we need to have in order that we really extend ourselves in the application of science, technology, engineering, medicine, for human good.
If you look at the kind of innovations, there are four kinds. One is what you will call “incremental”. Really you build on existing models - incremental improvement or changes happen in that and the driver for this incremental innovation is really that you cut the cost – lowering the cost. We have plenty of examples the entire bio-tech industry in India is by and large based only on this. This city provides apparently close to 40% of the entire childhood vaccines across the world. Three or four companies in Hyderabad alone – they tie up with WHO, Gates Foundation, UNICEF, so on and so forth and they produce – but this is really incremental innovation of a kind where you improve just one particular process but you have produced a lot of public good. How long will this go on is not very clear.

The second kind is what she calls as “evolutionary” innovation where you build on what is known but you create new value. The example of the Tata Nano car – the Rs.1, 000, 00 car that is going to come… or you move for example from the Pentium chip to the new Core chip and so forth. The driver here is not just the low cost alone, but you want to capture the market. Market leadership is something very important.
 
“Breakthrough” innovations where you create something radically new product hasn’t come to many countries across the globe. This is where I think there is a knowledge deficit with respect to even science and technology. Some interesting examples say the iPhone that I use or pen drives – that kind of a thing – the driver here is generating new technology. You have utilized science in a particular manner that enabled to actually generate brand new products of value. We haven’t done that. As I said, many other countries haven’t done.

The last which I think is really where there is perhaps some hope because the field is wide open for all across and that is what you may call the “experimental innovation”.  You find actually new, in other words you invent something now where the driver would be – what will be the practice in future – in other words the “next practice”. One example is Nano-technology. Remember Nano-technology is practiced in exactly the same level of technological advance, new ideas and so on across the globe at least across many scientifically proficient countries and therefore we have a chance in that one. So if you were to think in terms of science policy, public policy, and all in India there will have to be far more emphasis on this Nano-technology or what we ourselves practice at our institution the Stem Cell. Field is wide open, ideas are wide open. This is also another area where I think developing countries are no less qualified than developed countries. The Rand Corporation talked about 20 or 22 scientifically advanced countries, about 25 scientifically proficient countries, 40 odd scientifically developing countries, and the rest 80-90 as scientifically lagging countries. Ultimately I think it will have to be this improvement from the ‘scientifically proficient’ into ‘scientifically advanced’ that might be able to produce some newer development for public good in India. I thought this was a rather interesting analysis and I thought I will share that with you.

We have had five outstanding speakers each one producing a theme asking questions and so on which I think will engage your attention for the next one hour. Shiv Vishvanathan talked about science-democracy dialogue. He also made the point that we think of tribals as yesterday, or past heritage, and people that are essentially only in the museum whereas they produce equally interesting knowledge they already have and I think we need to engage them in that. Is the western model that has been talked about the best one? Where the knowledge, science, democracy, how do they all confluence?
 
Balaji took on the point about agriculture is being talked about increasingly but not engaging the farmer. That will not work. So you really need to have like the STS system, the SAS system.
 
Brian talked in terms of the EU’s point where the role of the public coming in the way as it were for making Europe as the best knowledge centre – that there is this idea that you must produce/expend at least 3% of your GDP in science and technology. It is not happening and also that there is a stereotyping of science and technology ALONE as knowledge and the uneasiness of the public towards certain aspects of science that has not been addressed very well.
Sheila talked about the right to imagine for other people. I speak for everybody and I use this claim towards my access to power. She talked about three interesting points – the democratic deficit: the experts know and the public does not. So the experts teach the public what is to be done. Unfortunately in India it seems to be the other way around. They wouldn’t listen to us otherwise we wouldn’t have Rama Setu, we wouldn’t have many other dams, we wouldn’t have the 3G auctioning and so forth. We know it very well. So there it seems the policy makers know …we don’t know. The second point that she made was with respect to countries and communities look at knowledge, science, technology, advancement and so on…using different prisms and different lenses, each one at that based on their cultures, social practices, traditions and so on. So that this is an aspect that repeatedly has been talked about by several of the panelists here and the third, is to understand how nations operate and how does one reconcile possible international, regional, global discords and how does one resolve this.

Haragopal talks about the ‘politics of knowledge’ and we still do not understand how knowledge grows in other disciplines. At least science, proceeds on an incremental basis. You build on what you had before and there is a particular vectoral way you can do this. It is not completely so clear in the case of other…and he also talked about the subordination of political systems to science and technology management. And an interesting point that he raised was that we seem to get a feel for how someone like Bill Gates came about. How do we understand Bin Laden? These I think are questions that we need to ask in a knowledge derived society and I hope I have summarized your points at least reasonably.