In an interview, Pitroda expounds on the need for innovation in India.
By MK Venu
NEW DELHI: Sam Pitroda is the Chairman of the National Innovation Council, in India. He has also served as chairman of the National Knowledge Commission from 2005–2009, a position where he gave policy recommendations for improving knowledge related institutions and infrastructure in the country, to the Prime Minister.
Heralded for bringing the telecom revolution in India, Pitroda founded and served as chairman of C-SAM, a company which has its headquarters in Chicago with offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai and Vadodara.
Pitroda has also served as an advisor to the United Nations. He holds around 100 technology patents.
In an interview to Rajya Sabha TV, Pitroda spoke on the need for innovation in India and other developing countries. Excerpts from the interview:
What is the outcome of global innovation conference that you have been holding for some years?
As you know that government of India has declared 2010-2020 as the decade of innovation. As a result we set up a National Innovation Council to look at all aspects of innovation. This group meets regularly and talks on what need to be done to encourage innovation in the country. So we have set up now state level innovation councils, sectorial councils. We are working on a global fund for seeding innovations in the country. We have innovation activities in school level, college level. We are working with industries, clusters, all of that. Then we thought that it will be a good idea if we learn from others because there are many other countries developed and developing who are further along on innovation in many areas if not on inclusive growth based innovations. So we decided to create a platform called Global innovation Round Table. We meet once in a year. There are 20-30 leaders of innovation from various countries who come. We spent two days together. The idea is to interact and learn from each other. There are so many interesting things going on today because of biotech, nano-tech, materials, alternative energy, stem cell research, research in agriculture, health, energy. The idea is to learn from these experiences and see how can we really create product and services which are affordable, scalable and sustainable because that’s our need. But it’s not only about what corporate people think in terms of innovation. I always tell friends that building a nation is very different from building a company and as a result innovation in a company focusses predominantly on productivity, efficiency, and cost reduction. Innovation at national level requires different approach. So we are really trying to promote innovations at national level.
In a sense you will also need a new type of politics?
We need inclusive growth imbedded in politics, planning, process, programs, priorities, and people.
Essentially, you are looking at the definition of innovation going beyond R&D as most people see in a very narrow sense and you are talking about creating an ecosystem of innovation to make people’s lives more livable?
Take for example our judiciary system. We have 32 million court cases pending today. It takes on an average time of 10 years to get justice, some faster, some slower. Can we create an ecosystem where we began to innovate by using new tools, computers? We take the opposition in video, integrate police, integrate prison, and integrate CBI. But to do all that technology is one piece. Reengineering of processes is another piece. Policy and laws and then say if we do all these things then time to justice would be reduced from 15-10 years to 3 years. That is innovation.
If you see the trajectory of growth since independence, one realization which has dawned not today but 2-3 decades ago under Rajiv Gandhi and even Nehru spoke about the decentralization of our polity. Everybody agreed that the top down growth model does not seem to be working well. But we have not really found a sustainable, a workable, decentralized model. Is there a problem? Is it very deeply linked to innovation?
I will tell you where the problem is. There is a very serious problem and we need to understand that. At that time of independence, we had a very little institutions and infrastructures and human capacities for the kind of nations we had because colonial masters had everything in control and we had no capacity to really deliver distributed planning, development all of that. So our founding fathers rightfully saw, spent lot of time on building institutions like IIT, IIM, power plants, Planning Commission all of that. Now I believe we have enough capacity but we also needed at the same time tools. Web and IT gives us those tools to implement decentralization. We do not have those tools, we do not have process in place, we do not have people in place and you cannot decentralize. Because if we decentralize, it is going to be misused and that’s what have happened.
Do you feel that today that the moment is right to go and decentralize with necessary tools and we have the capacity?
I think we are at a tipping point in India because we are ready to democratize the information. We have RTI, we have web. We have processes in place. So I think we are just about right to take off.
You very rightly said and expressed hope that today we have the capacity to organize a society differently. Decentralization which has been the dream of many of our forefathers and rightly thinking politicians, has not been happening. You mentioned RTI, and various experiments that this government is conducting. UIDAI – collecting information on people basically database of people and to see how we can deliver these welfare schemes better. Now where are all these endeavors?
I think we have a roadmap clearly outlined to build whole new infrastructure for governance. It has started according to me with our experiments on e-governance for couple of decades. We have learned a lot. Hopefully with technology that we have today, we can do lot better. So today we have cloud computing, open source software, high speed network, fiber optics, all of that mainly because today we have 900 million mobile phones. We are a nation of a connected billion. Not too long ago, we had 2 million phones. So if we take all of these into account, we have all the elements in place to build a whole new infrastructure. So we introduced first RTI. RTI is the most powerful tool. Lot of people would understand the meaning of it 10 years down the road. This government was very bold in implementing RTI. And government has even hurt itself. But this is ok. You do it for future generations. RTI will allow you to create open systems, create transparency, accountability. So when all of these corruption things people talk about, it is because of RTI and you should give this government credit for it.
So now that you have RTI, we realize you do not have information organized in the manner people would have sought. So our job is to organize information. So we are now creating two major networks. One network called knowledge network at the cost of about 10,000 crores to connect all our universities, libraries ultimately all over R&D institutions to improve collaboration. This has been going on for three years. It has already been built and is working today with 1100 nods. Now we are creating another network to connect 250,000 panchayats, that will take another year and a half or so. It’s a little bit late because planning took little more time. Then all panchayats will be connected with high capacity broad band optical fiber, so information will be able to come from bottom. For example, in every districts, who are the doctors, how many doctors are there, what is infant mortality, literacy, every kind of data that you need to manage your affairs will be available. Then we are creating ID platforms that Nandan is working on, then the GIS platform, then cyber security, applications, data centers when you get all of these done, then you have information on your fingertips. As a citizen, you can ask anything about anything and you will have that information.
But these things take time. But the point is that this government has the guts to lay out a plan, spend the needed money, get the systems in place and really look at far beyond narrow interests and look at the future of country.
Do you feel that there is bipartisan political support for this whole new way of organizing society and do you think our regional leaders belonging to regional political parties are up to speed or appreciate the benefits of these methods?
No, I do not think people appreciate the benefits of this. People do not comprehend yet what it means but young people irrespective of where they are understand the power of it. Young people recognize that this is what they need and it is not about just transformation in governance. It is also about transformation in education, health, agriculture, banking, delivery of public services. You know in a sense everything we do today it basically obsolete because with internet you can do the same thing differently. How do you get your birth certificate? How do you get your land record? Do you really need to go to the doctor every time there is a problem. You can use your cell phone to consult any problem with your doctor. All of these things will have a different meaning going forward. So I think governance is one piece of puzzle. But the transformation of education, health and all of that is another major piece of puzzle.
Coming to education, I feel that this has probably the greatest potential in transforming the way we educate our children. For instance one of the biggest problems today faced in rural areas particularly is that there are no teachers in schools. So may be the students through these new medium of learning can reach several teachers at any given time?
You can get content delivered anywhere at any time from the best of the rest of world. You do not need at all the local teachers to create content and deliver content. But I need a mentor. Anyone, be it my uncle, neighbor or teacher can be my mentor. So I think in the future, education will really require motivation, time and content.
Do you envisage a public-private partnership in reaching may be 900 million people with tablets which would give them everything, kind of an Indian IPad. Indian applications, Indian way of doing things. Do you visualize Indian applications happening in next 4-5 years?
This is already happening. When we lay fiber, government is paying money but private parties dig, private parties provide cable, private parties implement, that’s one. Once the network is built, all the devices are produced by private parties – cell phones, tablets, laptops, computers, servers all that, then we need to develop the applications, relevant applications, applications in local language, applications which are Indian and those things will be done by private industry. So if you are going to teach mathematics in Bengali, some local guy is going to teach in Bengali or Odiya, or Hindi or Gujarati or whatever. So there will be novels from local authors on the net. So all of that work will be done by private. So there is huge business potential.
Do you see some similarity in problems that developing countries face? Do you see the necessities that these societies need to organize themselves in a very different way the western societies organize themselves in 20th century or before that? Is there any cultural thing at play and how does culture deal with innovation?
First of all we must recognize that today everybody is trying to copy the American model based on consumption. The Western world has dominated global thought, global conversation. They make the news. Everybody wants all the things that Americans have. That model based on consumption is not scalable, sustainable, workable, desirable for many countries, including India, because the cost structures are very different.
So you are saying that evolving our own consumption trajectory is also a part of innovation? Where do you begin doing this?
Let’s take one piece at a time. So, for example, in the US, you pay 35000-40000 dollars a year for tuition to get a college degree. That model is not sustainable in India. You have to pay 70000 dollars to do a quadruple bypass surgery. It is not sustainable in India. A cataract surgery may cost you 5000 dollars. We do cataract surgery for 2 dollars. We do heart surgeries for 2000 dollars.
So one, we need to create our own models of development which are cost effective in a sense affordable, scalable, sustainable. Two, if it is useful in India, it is also useful in Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific because everyone is trying to reduce the cost and ultimately it may be useful even in advanced countries because the way the cost has gone up in many of these areas, health and education for example, is not sustainable anywhere and not even in the US. The US spends 18% of GDP on health, so that is a bigger piece that we really need to create; new models that are not only applicable in India but also applicable in other parts of world and ultimately may be in advanced countries. But we also need to realize that we cannot measure people based on western standards, GDP, GNP, per capita income, foreign exchange reserve, exchange rate which are great parameters. But you cannot judge wealth of a nation based on balance of payment. Because in that equation, you don’t have your Taj Mahal plugged in, you do not have your Madurai Temple, all the gold in everybody’s home plugged in. There are different equations. So do not judge us based on your parameters. And I think we will have to create new economics in the 21st century.
This cost factor you spoke about, the innovation, it is workable if only it is cost effective. You have discussion on anything, climate change for example, cost becomes a problem or in WTO negotiations when the West tells us you must allow certain systems of customs, clearance, cost becomes a problem. Then the West says OK we will fund those investments. My point is why developing countries can’t evolve their own cost-effective systems.
I think cost is a major factor. Technology is equally important. For example in agriculture you want to improve productivity you need to use genetically modified seeds. Now there is a mental block in some places here. That’s going to happen. We can wait for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. But that’s the way of life. What happened with cotton? Our productivity went up substantially. So we may have to do that in many other areas of agriculture.
Initially there is a criticism that technology is often used by the West as a means to keep their lead over the rest of the world and also keep their profit motive going. Getting new technology comes at a higher cost which then creates a problem in terms of affordability.
So we have to find our own solutions. We do spend lot of money on research, but what do we get out of it. We need to begin to ask that. Are we really targeting our research for our problem solving or for different problem solving. We are spending fair amount on R&D. It is always good to have more money. But the point is that what we are getting from what we are spending.
Do you subscribe to what Bharat Ratna winner CNR Rao said that IT industry is no science. It just makes money for few people, it has nothing much to do with science?
Science is different definitely. IT is IT and science is science. There is a big difference. We need to solve our problems differently. We need in research to focus on our problem solving. What problem are we actually trying to solve? How is it going to affect the country. And that is what innovation is all about.