दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

As reported, finally IIT comes to Bihar. Looking back in history we find Bihar has waited for nearly six decades for an IIT. It happens in Nitish’s reign that couldn’t happen in 50s. Shri Babu lost against the personality of Dr. BC Roy. Dr. BC Roy influenced Nehru and got the first IIT established at Kharagpur, West Bengal instead of Sindri (earlier in united Bihar, but now in Jharkhand).

However, only the time will tell what Bihar gains by having an IIT. The location of IITs till date has not changed the region as Stanford and Berkley have done it for the Silicon Valley, USA. IIT of Bihar must concentrate on encouraging research and entrepreneurship.

Though Bihar was not having an IIT, but it didn’t affect any way the students of Bihar who right from the first batch started entering IITs in good number because of their merit. Individual zeal and assistance of institutes such as Super 30 Institute of Patna has helped the ambitious students in their pursuits to enter into IITs.

Let the location of this IIT not be decided by politicians. Interestingly, as reported, Fatmi, MOS, HRD already wishes to have it at Darbhanga, his home constituency.

I have some different views.

Let IIT of Bihar be the first seed institute of world-class higher learning in the premises of Nalanda International University as gifted by the government of India. Let IIT be located somewhere near the International Airport of Buddha Gaya with a 6-lane expressway between the two. Connectivity of the location will be the deciding factor. The concept of Nalanda International University must be pursued with a missionary zeal. That one project can bring a revolutionary transformation in the economy of the region.

As wished by many faculties of IITs let there be 50% reservations for the foreign students, particularly from the South East Asian councom/OPINION/Editorial/COUNTER_VIEW_An_IIT_cannot_clean_up_Bihar/articleshow/1085480.cms”>An IIT cannot clean up Bihartries including China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. It must try to have good teachers also in large number from the South East Asian countries. And one can dream of the day, when many specialized institutes of higher learning sponsored by different countries and the reputed universities of the world get setup in the premise of Nalanda International University.

Let this IIT become unique in some way and serve the whole of the region.

I wish the local politicians didn’t spoil this ‘crown jewel’ institute by their foolish demands and moves.

As reported, before polling in the last Bihar elections, Jagdeep Chhokar and Trilochan Sastry (an IIT, IIM and MIT-educated operations research expert who also taught at IIM-A) met Nitish Kumar. He said since some with criminal records were already in the fray, he could not help. But “he promised that in the event of his becoming CM, none of them would be made ministers,” says Sastry. He adds, ”Nitish Kumar kept his word. Today we have in Bihar, ministers who don’t have criminal records, at least on paper.” This is what the most Bihar watchers think. Nitish and his team are bringing some change. It may be slow but is coming steadily.

Bihar that used to be in news earlier for all wrong reasons, is taking some steps that are coming as ‘first’ time in any state. Bihar was the first to allocate 50% reservation to women in village and district councils. As reported, it wished to employ 50% women teachers in its drive to fill up the vacancies of teachers, about 1.5 lakh in number.

From January 2, 2007, Bihar has switched over to the five day working in the government offices. Mission is to improve for better efficiency. Working hours are more on regular days to compensate the loss of Saturday and the casual holidays have also come down from 16 to 12 days. Even the CM reaches his office well ahead of the time (and with his lunchbox) and so do all top bureaucrats.

Interestingly, is Nitish Kumar trying to run the government as CEO, and to introduce corporate culture in government functioning. He is credited with some more firsttimers. He appointed retired army men on contract in the state police force and formed Special Auxiliary Police. He has also appointed retired CBI officials on contract to form a special anti-corruption cell. Let these innovative out of the box solution bring efficiency and change the image of Bihar.

And very soon, RTI will just be a phone call away in Bihar for all the people. “The government has planned to set up a call centre where a person can ring in to seek the information required by him. The call centre will then write a formal application which would be forwarded to the concerned department through fax or internet and, on getting the information sought, would pass it on to the person. It will cost the person just Rs 10 as call charge.”

I wish he took up some more tasks on prority. Can Nitish Kumar arrage a monitoring of some of the central projects of immense importance to the state- East-West Corridor and Golden Quadrilateral Expresswaya passing through the state, seven new road projects of NHDPIII that are included for Bihar, taking the length of roads in the state from 113 km to 890 km, and rural electrification and road work under Bharat Nirman?

Bihar had earned a bad name for law and order. With the Nithari episode caused because of the totally negligent police system, UP has become a Rakhash Rajya, where the life of even innocent little ones are not safe. And funniest of all, the chief minister still claims that he is the king of this jungle. He has lost the ability to even understand what he says and what it means. And he has many sycophants who clap on the statement.

When the whole of the country is shocked by the deeds of a Rakhasha of Noida, the CM of the state, his party is busy in organizing ‘Black Day’ for protesting against the execution of Saddam Hussein. And what type of protest was it that I could see on TV channel. Even perhaps the pro-Saddam Iraqis would not have dared to do that and would even feel ashamed to stone and hurt the innocent tourists visiting Iraq knowingly.

Surprisingly, the whole of India feels like going to Nithari to show sympathy with the very poor parents of those kids who were killed for no fault of theirs. But the chief minister doesn’t think it necessary to visit and share the pain and mental torture that the parents are undergoing. On advice of some of his sycophant advisors, he has been sending cheques of Rs 2 lakhs, and now Rs 5 lakhs to make them forget the memory of the kids that they have lost as compensation. UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother and PWD Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav today described the murders of children in Noida as “small and routine incidents.” Is it not shameful of a democracy that can tolerate such a chief minister?

Interestingly, most of the victims are from West Bengal, and are from the poorest class, working in Noida as domestic help or rickshaw-puller. I thought some political leaders from Bengal would have visited them to console them. But this is the tragedy today that no one wants to help the poor unless they form the part of their vote bank. And these people confess that their names are not in the voters list.

What a shame!
Read more>
‘Noida killings a blot on society’
Nithari minor incident, says UP minister
‘Such small incidents keep happening’
Is it a Noida jinx that’s stopping Mulayam?

It was interesting to go through the coverage in ‘Indian Express’ on RA Mashelkar on December 30,2006 done by Sonu Jain.

CSIR Mashelkar retires, and heads for Pune to work as chemical scientist, ‘full-time, not just a weekend one’

He goes on to become the President of Global Research Alliance formed by nine CSIR-like institutions from Asia-Pacific, Europe and USA of 60,000 scientists and engineers with a budget of 6 billion dollars. “It’s a challenge to do what I did with CSIR on a global scale,”

“I have committed to only four weeks in a year. Rest of the time, I want to become a full-time scientist from being a weekend one,”

A decade ago, Mashelkar was the first to show attributes of synthetic hydrogels that mimic life. “This area of science fascinates me and I want to dedicate more than my weekends on it,”

How would he like to be remembered? “As somebody who brought pride to India as a scientist but as someone who is worried about the affairs of science,” he said wording his words carefully.

In his unfinished agenda is “autonomy for CSIR. To be able to set up enterprise and spin-off companies, the headquarter should only act as facilitator”. For the government to give more autonomy to the CSIR and CSIR, in turn, gives more autonomy to the labs. This will bring in more funds for science. He cited the example of how a Harvard research body has access to funds to the tune of $23 billion. “Year 2006 is the best ever both in terms of science and business. CSIR had the highest number of scientific research papers. In terms of earnings, we touched the highest figure with private sector earnings touching the highest ever,” he says with pride. From ‘SARAS’ aircraft and TB drug to a 100-dollar computer, CSIR has had several breakthroughs that are actually reaching the market. And it all happened when Mashelkar was the head.

After reading this, some questions cropped up in my mind:

Why didn’t the other national newspapers cover some similar story on Mashelkar’s retirement?

Media, particularly all national and metro newspapers, must give due coverage to the scientific works being undertaken at different institutions of national importance and the people who are making significant contributions to the image building of the country. Let them not live with myth that the readers don’t like to read those stories.

The national economy is touching 9% growth rate. Manufacturing is growing at about 12 percent. But it is small and medium-size manufacturers that are growing at about 15 percent and some small-company stars are going for the triple digits.

 Between 2001 and 2006, companies with net turnover of Rs 1 crore-50 crore saw a rise of 701 per cent in net profit, compared to 169 per cent for large companies with turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore.

 Companies with a turnover of Rs 50 crore-100 crore did even better, raking in profit growth of 961 per cent over the five years.

 Smaller companies have also outperformed larger ones in the growth of net sales and operating profits. Operating and net profit margins of smaller companies, too, have expanded more than those of the larger ones. (Although there is no agreement on what constitutes an SME, private and foreign banks define SMEs as companies with turnover between Rs 10 crore and Rs 700 crore.)

 As the Economic Survey points out, “During 2000-01 to 2004-05, the SSI sector registered continuous growth in the number of units, production, employment and even exports. The average annual growth in the number of units was around 4.1 per cent, while employment grew at 4.4 per cent. Further, the average annual growth in production, at current and constant prices, was 10.6 per cent and 7.6 per cent, respectively.” Remarkably, this growth was achieved over a period that has seen a steady dismantling of reservations for the sector.

 SMEs will invest up to $1.2 billion on their Internet infrastructure and solutions this year, about one-sixth of the total IT spend for all companies at $7.7 billion this year.

RSB Transmission of RK Bahera was declared sick in 1979. Behera was not able to repay the Rs 1.65 lakh loan taken from the Bihar State Financial Corporation, and he could not even pay back Rs 10,000 that he had borrowed from his father. However, the company turned around in 1982 when the company became the sole supplier of sheet metal components to Jamshedpur-based Telco (now Tata Motors). The company moved to Pune in 1995. The company grabbed the clientele of other OEMs. The company going for a turnover of Rs 600 crore next year and has also acquired Michigan-based Miller Brothers Manufacturing for $19 million recently. Behera has today eight plants across the country.

Consultants Dun & Bradstreet have identified auto components, textiles, food processing, pharma, engineering and chemicals as sectors in which Indian SMEs could become globally competitive.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, SMEs in the textile sector, for instance, expect an average growth rate of 32 per cent over the next two years.

Nitin Mandhana, managing director, Indus Fila, took his company from a turnover of Rs 14 crore in 2004 to Rs 247 crore in 2006. The company set up a centre of excellence in 2006 in Nelmangala on the outskirts of Bangalore for Rs 60 crore. Here, the best global brands – such as GAP – connected to Indus Fila would be given space to set up design studios and help his team manufacture the latest fashion trends for the US and Europe. “By teaming up with German apparel manufacturers such as Bornemann and Bick in 1992, our reach to foreign markets has been easy. This has tremendously leveraged the way Indus Fila is reaching foreign markets,” says Mandhana.

The auto-component companies studied by Dun & Bradstreet grew at an average 35 per cent over the past two years and expect the momentum to be maintained.

M. Radhakrishnan started his auto-ancillary business, Autolines, in 1996 with turnover of a mere Rs 11 lakh. Bankers wouldn’t even look at their business plan. Somehow, Radhakrishnan managed a working capital loan from a local co-operative bank and pumped in his own money to survive and expand. The company reached a turnover of Rs 50 crore and bankers started beating a path to their doors. Autolines today is an Rs 125-crore company, a tier-1 supplier of sheet metal to the Tatas.

Precision Camshafts is another success story, a company manufacturing at least 3 million camshafts a year today. The Rs 75-crore company has gone on to become the sole supplier of camshafts to firms such as Ford and GM in Europe.

The auto ancillary units in the industrial areas of Chikrapur, Bosri and Alandi around Pune are flourishing. Banks are assisting the entire supply chain, because of the link to the larger OEM. I had written about Involute Technologies, a Rs 70-crore company with many tier-3 suppliers of auto components connected to it. Banks are funding them because of the link to larger OEMs such as John Deere and Tata Motors.

Everest Kanto Cylinder Ltd. has taken less than a decade to become the world’s second largest maker of cylinders for high-pressure, compressed natural gas. Rico is planning to acquire a Thai and a Turkish auto-parts maker. Orient Craft bought a failing Levi’s plant in Spain for $15 million, dismantled it and reassembled it at its Gurgaon plant. Everest Kanto already has a cylinder plant in Dubai and is building a $50 million plant in China. Iran and Pakistan, two of its best customers, are pestering the company to build factories in their countries.

Are these stories that I collected from the various places in media not the great going-ons in Indian manufacturing?

The New Generation
Mistake-proofing
Autoline plans Rs 75 cr initial share sale
Indian entrepreneurs have learnt to think big

Autoline bullish on design capabilities

In seventies power outages in West Bengal was horrible. Hindustan Motors was under very tight financial conditions. However, it had to make its first investment on huge Japanese diesel generators of about 20MW capacity. We really felt bad as we wanted instead to investing on production machinery to de-bottleneck certain operations in its manufacturing process. As I find today the power outages are not that frequent in West Bengal, may be because of the closures of most of the manufacturing companies. But in rest of the country particularly in Delhi and NCR region, it is still the biggest of the worries in manufacturing companies and even for the service providers’ facilities.

For the whole country, the current demand of power exceeds supply by a factor of 1.2 times. However, one may be puzzled to find that manufacturing that is heavily energy intensive sector is fastest growing today at 11.2% to boost the GDP growth to respectable level of 9% or more. It is happening because the manufacturing sector has more than 30,000 MW of captive power generating capacity. It’s costlier but at least keep the production facilities running.

The companies are doing its best to find innovative ways to conserve energy and use it in most efficient way. According to a study by the India Brand Equity Foundation, in five years between 2000 and fiscal 2005, sales grew at an average of 11.5% per year, while power and fuel expenses grew only at 7.3% despite steep increases in the price of both utility- supplied power, as well as in price of fuel for in-house generators.
Even the steel sector that is highly energy intensive, despite the presence of large and inefficient pubic sector units, managed to bring down the sales-to-fuel ratio down by nearly 3% during this period.
The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum points out that ‘India’s energy intensity vis-à-vis GDP growth has been falling and is about half what is used to be in early 70s. Energy consumption per unit of GDP in purchasing power parity term is only 0.19-kilogram oil equivalent per dollar as compared to 0.21 of the world average. And this is what that has made India’s manufacturing sector globally competitive even with very poor infrastructure.

However, it doesn’t say that India can keep on doing the expected growth without solving the power shortages and distribution losses. It must build its mega power plants fast. It must go ahead and exploit the potential of hydropower such as the 3,000 MW Lohit hydel project in Arunachal Pradesh from its river in all the northern states. It must cut down its distribution losses. (A whopping 33% of electricity that is generated is lost or stolen during distribution and transmission. On a world scale, even countries like Cameroon and Nicargua lose less electricity. And according to estimates only around 60% of the power produced is billed, while 45-50% of the overall amount is paid. The losses tripled from about 9% in 1971 to nearly 30% in 2003 when even in Bangladesh, for instance,losses fell from 31% in 1971 to 12% in 2003, almost a third of the losses recorded in neighbouring West Bengal.)

However, the good news comes from the result of the recent bids for the two mega- power projects at Sesan and Mundra. Private companies have own both the projects and not the NTPC that repeatedly fails to meet target set. And very soon the private players will enter in the most economic and preferred source of energy, the hydropower. Unfortunately, the share of hydropower in the total power output has declined from about 50 per cent in 1962 to about 26 per cent now. Of the estimated 1,50,000 Mw hydro- power potential, only 33,600 Mw has been developed so far.

The solution is known. Indian project managers are to act. India needs many more effective project managers such as Sreedharan in Delhi Metro. It must create a world record in completion of power and distribution projects to leave the power problems behind in next five years.

Read “The road ahead”
News ‘Increase in power generation pushes up infrastructure performance’

But let me share with you all the reasons of my happiness today that our great President wished to all the Indians in his greeting for the New Year. I was really happy to find Sushmita as the first to send us an-email greeting from New York. And then I got my usual stuff of happiness from coverage in ‘Newsweek’. The door bell giving the message that Jai has come as promised yesterday to help Yamuna in household works, made me dance It assured that on the first day of the year I shall not be wasting my time on some thing that I don’t relish though I never show it. But the sight of the decorated Shakti Temple gave me an excitement. I first enquired if today happened to be some auspicious day as per Hindu calendar. No, it is only the first day of the year 2007. It is the flexibility that is coming because of globalisation. We are participating in the festivals and enjoying for all and every reason. I wish people keep their faith very personal and don’t be rigid in following the rituals or manifestations. The milk counter of mother Dairy was closed. The attendants had gone to join Bakr-eid prayer. But they were smart enough to outsource the task. I could get my milk from the bread vendor there. Are these not the reasons for great happiness, when right in the morning we faced power outage and a dense depressing fog?

And now my wish list for the year!
 

Noida becomes cleaner, and by some magical power, Mr. Sreedharan gets the metro link of Noida with New Delhi completed in a year breaking ell records.

Golden Quadrilateral and major portions of NSEW Corridors of NHAI get operative and I drive up to my village home on the metalled road promised under Bharat Nirman.

A tough and missionary regulator takes over power sector, cuts down the distribution losses by putting every one behind that by persuasion or the imprisonment, expedites the capacity building through fast track execution of power plants, mega or hydro, and doubles the subsidy to those using alternative power sources of biomass, solar, and wind.

IITs and IIMs open extension centers in capitals of the rest of the states including that of Bihar till new ones are established. Each district headquarter of Bihar establishes an education Hub or SEZ with at least one engineering and medical college, 10 Industrial training Institutes, and 20 good Higher Secondary Schools.

My village gets a healthcare center, and so do the other villages of the country.

India attains 12% GDP growth rate.

India, Pakistan, and China get into a no war treaty, and form an economic block

USA gives up its Dadagiri. Peace returns to Iraq. Let Sadam soul rest in peace.

News: South Korean Ban Ki-moon, the new U.N. secretary-general on Monday, announced his first two appointments.Vijay Nambiar of India, a special adviser to Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, will be his chief of staff

Jayant Narlikar, astrophysicist has written in ‘Truth Imitates Fiction’ how the good fiction writers predicts the things to come in future:

“Fred Hoyle, well known for daring ideas in astrophysics, once proposed that the space between stars is not empty but contains vast clouds of chemical molecules. His research papers on this topic, sent to reputed scientific journals, were rejected. In the 1950s, most astronomers believed that the interstellar space contains hydrogen atoms only.

They could not reconcile their beliefs to the idea that molecular structures can survive in space. Hoyle, faced with a blackout of his ideas, wrote a science fiction novel called The Black Cloud, in which he proposed the concept of vast clouds of molecules occupying interstellar spaces. The novel was immensely successful. Through the 1950s, however, technology had advanced to a level where astronomers could probe the interstellar space with millimetre wavelength radiation received by suitably designed dish antennas.

Analysis of the radiation revealed that it had been emitted by specific molecules in the interstellar clouds, precisely as Hoyle had anticipated in The Black Cloud. Today, the existence of giant molecular clouds is taken for granted. This was a case of sci-fi anticipating real science.

There are other instances of science fiction anticipating real situations, if not contemporarily, at a later stage. Jules Verne’s novel, From Earth to the Moon, anticipated by a century, the reality of Apollo 11 Mission of 1969. Writings of H G Wells, and later by Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury contain perceptive references to situations that developed later.

In a futuristic essay written in 1945, Clarke looked at the possibility of geostationary satellites playing a role in communications technology. This became a reality some three decades later, when man created rockets that could launch satellites in such orbits.”

And it’s heartening when I found Sashi Taroor writing in his lead article ‘Looking to the future with Brand IIT’ about the contribution of Vedas in the scientific endeavour of our ancestors. “After all, the roots of Indian science and technology go far deeper than Nehru. The Rig Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together 24 centuries before the apple fell on Newton’s head. The Vedic civilisation subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth at a time when everyone else, even the Greeks, assumed the earth was flat.”

Should we not consider our ancient sages who wrote about the ‘Puspak Viman’ and sophisticated weaponry in ‘Maha Bharat’ in the same manner and give credit to their foresights? Why are our leftists intellectuals shy of talking with due respect to those great ancestors as if they only belonged to the families of a particular political party?

Indians must take pride to prove the supremacy in knowledge sector and must never get into trap to be complacent.

With no one at home in evening I switched on TV, as usual the news channel. Footage of Saddam Hussain, the former head of Iraq getting executed was just depressing for any sensible person. He refused to put the hood. His facial expression was calm. It is difficult to imagine what must be going in his mind. A ruler for years, a leader of the nation must not get executed like this. It reminded me of Bhutto’s execution. What an end!

Mob violence over serial killings
Hunted, Hanged
Saddam buried in his hometown: Tribe, family
Hussein Video Grips Iraq; Attacks Go On
On the Gallows, Curses for U.S. and ‘Traitors’
Around the World, Unease and Criticism of Penalty
In Hussein’s Last Minutes, Jeers and a Cry for Calm
Vengeance of the Victors<