दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

For many years, I never had chance to hear and read so many good news about the achievements of Indian men and women on a single day. Do you agree with me?

France to honour Amitabh with civilian distinction Amitabh Bachchan received the perfect birthday present as he turned 64 on Wednesday, October 11, when the French government announced it would honour him with its highest civilian award, the Officer of the Legion of Honour. “France has decided to honour Mr Amitabh Bachchan with the honour for his contibution to Indian and international cultural life,” a spokesperson of the French Embassy said.

Kiran Desai wins Booker Prize LONDON: Indian-origin writer Kiran Desai has scooped the 50,000 pound Man Booker Prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss’ , a story rich with sadness about globalisation and with joy at the small surviving intimacies of Indian village life. The 35-year-old author, daughter of well-known Indian novelist Anita Desai — to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated — is the youngest woman to win the award, eclipsing the works of five other short-listed authors.

India’s power puff girls rule Fortune list LONDON: Three Indian women — ICICI Bank Deputy Managing Director Chanda Kochhar, HSBC India CEO Naina Lal Kidwai and Biocon head Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw — have been named among the world’s 50 most powerful businesswomen by the Fortune magazine. The global recognition for the country’s three businesswomen comes close on the heels of Indra Nooyi, the India-born head of global soft drink giant PepsiCo, being named as the most powerful business women in the US by the same magazine. Her name does not figure in this global list of 50 published in the magazine’s latest European edition as she has been named in the American list.

Manmohan dazzles Cambridge CAMBRIDGE: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the man who presides over the destiny of a billion people on Wednesday assumed the form of an obedient pupil as he returned to his alma mater five decades after his graduation to receive an honorary degree with a stirring speech outlining his vision for a more egalitarian world.

Veeru and Veena Nagpal have a nice way of socializing. Every Monday at 4.30PM, few old and retired gentlemen and mostly ladies get together at his residence, and sing religious songs (bhajans and kirtans). We reached today a little early. Veeru and me were two males sitting in one corner. And as usual, some conversation started. Veeru enquired about my views on the large-scale suicides of the farmers in the country. (Veeru runs a NGO also for waste management in Noida.) I have my own opinion about these suicides that I shared with him:

Farmers are of two categories- the landless ones taking land from the land holding farmers to till on rent against certain cash or percentage of the produce and the others with land of their own. The list of deceased constitutes farmers of the both categories. We are to differentiate between the two categories. The landless tillers never consider the land as their own and don’t bother much to get the best out of the land. They just wish to have yield good enough to pay the rent and get some extra to carry on. However, those with land of their own are ambitious, take to new ways of farming, and do take risks sometimes a little more than what they should.

However, the main issue is the profitability of farming. Can it give earning (output price-input cost) good enough to sustain the family that own the land or till the land at rent?

It is either the government through minimum support price or the buyer generally the traders in business in the open market decide the farmer produce’s unit price. Open market traders normally try to pay the minimum that they can manage taking advantage of the prevailing situation (both of the market and personal urgency of the farmer) when the crops get ready for sale. With no other source of income to run the day-to-day expenses and under the pressure to return the loans taken for the inputs in farming, the farmers are not in position to store the produce to sell it when the price is the best that he can get. Sometimes, even they lack the facilities to store.

The biggest reason of farmers’ miseries is the poor price that they get for their produce. Normally the farmers receive too tiny a proportion of the price their produce gets when eventually sold at to the direct consumers. The more are the middlemen, the lesser is the proportion. Can the proportion be improved by cutting down the middlemen? If the government can find a practical way for that, it can be a win-win situation for both the consumers and the producer farmers. Farmers can get better price through contract farming, when there is a reliable corporate buyer is to lift the produce as soon as it is ready. ITC procurement through e-Choupal is a success story and so are the PepsiCo and other MNCs initiatives for contract farming. However, the interest of farmers must be monitored through some independent agencies so that the buyers of the farmers’ produce don’t exploit them. Farmers may also be trained and helped to do some value addition to their produce to get a better price, if possible. It will also mean some more employment opportunities in rural areas of the country.

Naturally, the second biggest problem is about the financing of the inputs for the farming. Most of the farmers don’t maintain a fund for the farming inputs. Neither do they keep a bank account. Less than a third of India’s population is connected to the banking system. In rural India, the proportion will be even worse. The farmers are among them. Most of them are to depend on private moneylenders, who charge huge interest that keeps on accumulating with a little lapse, and it is many times more than the regular banks charge. Why can’t here be a special drive to bring all the farmers in some tie up with the banking system that can separate out the credibility of individual farmers based on the past records and provide credits as and when required by the farmers?

Many things can be done to improve the conditions of the farmers, but they must understand today that cultivation or farming is also a management and it requires the desired skill to succeed. It can’t be any more done in adhoc manner, as was the practice many years ago when the landholdings used to be substantial. Moreover, the extra effort for some additional earning through horticulture, fisheries and livestock farming will also be essential, where all the family members must work physically forgetting the social restrictions and practices.

I am not convinced that the suicides of farmers relate only to failures of crops. As I understand the reasons for indebtedness for the farmers used to be four: family functions such as son/daughter’s marriage or even for the ritual after the death of the family member; legal expenses; child education; and emergency medical expenses. We never heard of indebtedness because of the excessive expenditure in farming. A detail study by some institution with expertise is necessary to understand the real causes and take preventive steps. No amount of adhoc payment as charity to the deceased family can be of any help for the solution of the social problems.

I was amazed when someone suddenly asked me if I knew that it was only in Congress ruled states. I didn’t reply.

PS.Two farmers of Maharashtra -Vivek Mahajan and Maya Lambat-are, in their own little way, trying to ensure that the spate of suicides abates. Mahajan-a qualified architect who divides his time equally between his practice in Chennai and farming in Karanjalad village in the suicide belt of Vidarbha-is trying to bring small farmers together and work towards making agriculture more viable for them. Mahajan grows mangoes, custard apples, sweet lime and amla on his 25-acre orchard. Lambat has helped 24 farmers in her village set up vermiculture systems; and is also advising farmers to explore fruit cultivation and teaching them how to grow seeds at home so they can cut costs.

India is really sparkling. My reasons for getting this inference are simple.

The latest issue of ‘The Economist’ has published a survey on talent. I consider both- ‘The Economist’ and ‘The NewYork Times’ as not very congenial to India. I go by the amount of attention they give to China vs. India, perhaps that is also a business strategy. But the survey that is very extensive is having many favourable references for India; rather China appears along with India. There are eight articles-The battle for brainpower; Everybody’s doing it ; The world is our oyster; Opening the doors; Nightmare scenarios; Masters of the universe; The revenge of the bell curve; Meritocracy and its discontents. (subscription necessary)

I quote from the first article- “The battle for brainpower”:

‘

India and China are adding billions of new cheap workers and consumers to the world economy.’

‘Both India and China are suffering from acute skills shortages at the more sophisticated end of their economies. Wage inflation in Bangalore is close to 20%, and job turnover is double that (“Trespassers will be recruited” reads a sign in one office). The few elite institutions, such as India’s Institutes of Technology, cannot meet demand. India’s Licence Raj destroyed management skills, while China’s Confucian tradition still emphasises “face” over innovation.’

‘The training budget at Infosys, an Indian tech giant, is now well above $100m.’

‘How can India talk about its IT economy lifting the country out of poverty when 40% of its population cannot read?’

‘Over the past decade multinational companies have shipped back-office and IT operations to the developing world, particularly India and China.

‘India and China are trying to entice back some of their brightest people from abroad.’

The article “The world is our oyster” is mostly on India. The survey doesn’t have any such article on China. Some quotes from it are:

“

THE Infosys campus on the outskirts of Bangalore looks like a chunk of the rich world that has been reassembled amidst the dust and debris of India.”

“The software giant now has annual revenues of $2.2 billion and 58,000 employees. But it is just one of a hundred companies in Bangalore’s Electronics City. Bangalore is India’s software capital, with 140,000 software engineers (more than in Silicon Valley, the locals boast). The signs are a list of the world’s biggest IT companies, from multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard and Motorola to home-grown giants such as Infosys and Wipro.”

“Every year India produces around 2.5m university graduates, including 400,000 engineers and 200,000 IT professionals. India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) calculates that the country has 28% of the world’s IT offshore talent.”

“Almost 400 of the companies ranked highest by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University are in India. Now they want to become world-class and get into more sophisticated areas such as “integrated solutions” and consulting by adopting the latest productivity-boosting techniques, such as applying lean-manufacturing techniques to software development, a favourite strategy at Wipro.”

The article “Opening the doors” mentions as below:

“There are an estimated 20m Indians living abroad, generating an annual income equal to 35% of India’s gross domestic product.”

“NASSCOM estimates that in 2001-04 some 25,000 Indian techies returned home, and the number is rising rapidly. A survey of Indian executives living in America found that 68% were actively looking for opportunities to return home, and 12% had already decided to do so; and a survey of graduates of the elite All India Institute of Medical Sciences who were living abroad found that 40% were ready to go home.”

“The brain drain is giving way to brain circulation, and returning émigrés are turning into economic dynamos. One example is Dr Prathap Reddy, a returnee from America, who established the Apollo Hospitals Group, one of Asia’s largest and the first to attract foreign investment.”

The article “Nightmare scenarios” starts with: “INDIA’S high-tech enclaves exude euphoria. Proud techies take their parents on tours of company campuses. Proud parents boast that their children earn more than the rest of the family combined. Mr Nilekani of Infosys says that his company’s greatest achievement is not its $2 billion turnover but the fact that it has taught Indians to redefine the possible.”

 Vir Sanghvi wrote an article- ‘The Indians Are Coming’ in ‘Hindustan Times’ on Sunday, October 8, about his impressions on the Frankfurt Book Fair, where India was the Guest of Honour this year. 700 literature/culture people from India were present there. Sanghvi writes, ” When they (Germans) asked me in Frankfurt if I thought that the power of India’s educated middle class represented a threat to them. I said, quite honestly, that it did. And when they asked if they should be frightened, I was as honest. Be scared, I said, be very scared. The Indians are coming.
 
 And then I read two news items one in Telegraph about Hollywood in India that reads as below:

Calcutta, Oct. 7: It’s raining Hollywood in India this year. After Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in autumn, it’s all set to be Nicole Kidman in winter.

The second one appeared in ‘Express India’ as well as Times of India of Sunday about a possibility of Jagdish Bhagawati getting the Nobel for economy this year. I wish he could do this. It is an overdue honour that must go to Bhagawati. How nice it would have been if the Western power had helped Shashi Tharoor to get to the top position of UN? India will have to attain supremacy in knowledge and convert its strength to become a real economic power as China has already done. Rest will automatically follow.

Is not India sparkling with achievements, and hopes for achieving the goal?

Latest
And, unfortunately like Shashi Taroor, Jagdish Bhagwati also could not make it to Nobel.

I could resist the temptation of writing on a subject so dear to my heart. I remember my love for fresh milk in childhood unlike the children of the present generation who like everything but milk. I also remember the comings of ‘Punjabi’ cows and buffalos from the cattle fairs in the village in later years and hordes of villagers coming from the nearby habitations to see them. Now all those desi cows have gone, and we get to see only ‘Jersi’ cows. It was only very late that I came to understand that they are named so after a state in US. When I saw today this table comparing organic and conventional cows in Business ‘Week’, I thought I share this with my readers. Some may get inspired to switch over to organic cows.

Organic and conventional cows have one thing in common: They produce milk. Rest of the features establishes the difference.

While the average life span of a conventional cow is 4-5 years that of organic cows are 10+ years.

Conventional cow produces 54 pounds as average daily milk output, while the organic cow produces only 43+ pounds. Organic output can be 20% less, in part because farmers often don’t push the animals as hard.

The conventional cow’s primary diet is silage, hay, and commercial feed that can include corn, barley, fish meal, and potato waste. For the organic cow the primary feed is grass from pastureland and hay with some organic feed.

And the additives/medicines for the conventional cow is bioengineered growth hormones, antibiotics, whereas that for the organic cow is occasional vitamins and herbs.

Conventional cows are kept in dairy “feed lots” or barns, sometimes in stalls where they are machine milked; the living quarters for organic cows spacious barns or stalls, lots of outdoor time. For conventional cows, the artificial inseminations are used for breeding. For organic cows, breeding is through mating with bulls.

Can India try exploring the huge organic food market of US, as it is the topmost milk producer of the world and can further increase, if like the attempt of second green revolution it goes for second white revolution too?

China has tried for entering the US market, and has been discarded till date. The critics say it’s simply hard to reconcile chemical-free farming with a nation that continues to make DDT and use pesticides on a mass scale. And China’s organic farms aren’t exactly the small, family-run enterprises many consumers expect.

I wish some Indian farm enthusiasts took the challenges to enter US organic market that is growing fast and succeed.

As a consumer, we feel like replacing the old TV with the latest in market. Naturally, LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and Plasma TVs would have been the choice, but for the price. Plasma is costlier. The shop owner, the other day, suggested us to buy plasma, as its performance is better. But then a gentleman there suggested us to wait for a year when the price would come down considerably. And then I read about Toshiba’s surface-conduction electron-emitter display, or SED televisions. SED televisions are similar to traditional tube televisions. Electrons are fired at a screen to create images. However, instead of coming out of a large electron gun, the electrons are fired from several thousand nano particles. One advantage is that SED televisions are much thinner than tube televisions. The performance and picture quality will also be far higher than LCDs or plasmas. The contrast ratio is 50,000 to 1, far higher than LCD or plasma. The response time is a millisecond, thus the image blur or ghosting that can occur with some LCDs doesn’t occur. SED televisions will also last for 30,000 hours, putting them on par with traditional tube TVs. Power consumption of SED televisions is about half that of plasma. I am sure the other manufacturers will soon follow. Should we wait for it? Can we afford to replace our TVs every year to take advantages of the best technology? Perhaps, those who are in good jobs with fat salaries can do that in plastic card era.

And when we returned home undecided, we were looking to some old photographs taken from my first Yasica- a box camera that I bought when I was in UK in 1966. Many cameras came in after Yasica. During my visits to Japan in 80s and 90s, I kept on buying cameras, particularly the auto focus ones. We have seen revolution taking place in camera technology. Films are gone. Development cost has disappeared. Digital cameras, one gifted by Anand, with my PC and laptop have made the life so easy. I was thinking of enhancing the pixels of my camera or replace it with one with higher pixels. And then I read about Single Pixel digital camera. This digital camera records pictures in the infrared and the ultraviolet as well as the visible range could work using just a single-pixel light sensor, as opposed to the million-pixel sensors digital cameras now employ. This single-pixel camera could drain less power and take up less space without sacrificing image detail. And perhaps very soon, I shall be hankering for a single pixel camera.

However, the most alluring will be the researches in solar energy, when I think about our villages and the lethargy of the government in rural electrification. I keep on thinking why can’t our IITs, IISc, CSIR, and DRDO labs give the rural India a very cheap and reliable source of energy. The sun radiates about a kilowatt of energy per square meter on the surface of earth. There are 2.6 million square meters in a square mile. Thus, every square mile gets about 2.6 gigawatts. (A million kilowatts equals a gigawatt.) Can CISG replacing silicon be an answer? With the limited resources of oil and coal, why should not our best brains try to explore ways and means to exploit this never-ending source of energy? Will it also not end the supremacy of some countries and make the mother a peaceful place to live without Iraq?

Why should not our scientists work on those issues that can change the world forever? Unfortunately, perhaps the scientists or technocrats solving this problem will not get the Nobel Prize.

PS- Big-TV Battle: LCD vs. Plasma
Some Interesting News
IIMs and IITs among world’s best
Economy on a roller coaster

I don’t know how many of metromaniacs know that the changes in rural India are coming pretty faster than what they would have even dreamt of. The life style of the rural people is changing too. There are hardly any cattle now in households. Both, the bullock-drawn carts and ploughs are gone forever. So no one is required to look after the cattle. In my childhood, we, as even a small landlord, used to keep some 6 persons as the whole timers for the whole year. Harvester Combines have taken over even the highly manual harvesting- reaping and thrashing that was a time taking operation too. Houses are today bricked ones, so the ritual of annual repair work before the rainy season requiring the manual labour has gone.

My cousin who looks after the farming in our village says, the farmer today is hardly required to be engaged for a maximum of 30 days. There are some significant social changes too. Some persons, generally women, used to be engaged for drawing water from the wells for household requirements. Presence of a hand-operated tube well in each house has done away with that work. Women of the village hardly anymore work for even the paddy transplantation in the fields. The operation is now a totally male affair with expert gangs coming from other region of the state to do that work on contract. They do it better and fast too. All these changes have meant loss of jobs for the people of the village. Naturally quite a large number of them are immigrating to towns and metros or to other states with all the associated problems for the urban development. And the population in the villages consists more of the aged ones.

If the rural India wish to keep its children engaged in the village itself and the rural economy flourishing, a new approach is necessary. Some out of the landless households are leasing the land of those landowners who don’t farm themselves. But others are still in need of useful and paying engagements. Villagers own today a number of mechanical, electrical and electronics appliances- tractors, motorcycles, diesel pumps, harvesters, oil, rice and flourmills, music systems, cookers, cooking gas stoves, electrified households with solar plates or grid electricity and colour TVs. Presently, the villagers generally go to the town for the repair. One can see hordes of these repair shops while entering or exiting from the road going through the towns. Young persons from the village don’t get themselves properly skilled in repair of these appliances. If they get trained, they can take up this work as profession, become self-employed and remain in their own village. Some more may be required to maintain solar plates and household electrical fittings and appliances with rural electrification spreading in rural India.

Some may also go for some new work. One such work is to produce compost that can replace costly fertilizers effectively, if marketed well. The task can engage some men on regular basis, if understood properly. Unfortunately, there is hardly any move for that, even though many of the farmers know by now that the chemical fertilizers are spoiling the soil of the agriculture fields and making it gradually less fertile.

Can’t the government and the manufacturing company such as M&M or Escorts for tractors, Bajaj Auto and Hero Honda for motorcycles, open these skill- building facilities in rural India? Will it not be helpful in growth of the manufacturers’ business further? Can’t some affluent or educated among these rural young men become the dealers of these companies and its spare parts?

And then how can the rural economy afford to keep the women folks without any productive work? The women are talented and knowledgeable in many skills such as stitching, different types of rural art and craft, rural food processing, dressmaking, and nursing from their childhood. A formal training enhancing the talent can make them employable? We require these skill-building centres in every village for every child that can’t pursue higher education. This is an absolute necessity for building a strong economy. Once some one even without much formal education gets trained as mason, carpenter, or electrician properly, his employability improves. He can earn in his own village or outside the state or even in countries abroad where many are immigrating to build a better career.

No amount of NREG (National Rural Employment Guarantee) plans can improve the rural economy on long term. Some sort of manufacturing bases are essential in rural areas to engage more and more local people that are entering workforce. With expansion of rural electrification, manufacturing can take base in rural India as it did in China. I still remember a story from China’s rural area where a teacher took a lead in starting a shock manufacturing facility and in very short period, the village was a cluster for shock manufacturing supplying millions of shocks to the domestic market as well as for the export. India will have to emulate the Chinese model of manufacturing. Every household will have to be a manufacturing unit however small it may be. That can only provide employment and bring real long-term prosperity in rural India.

Some great News
Govt OKs $9 bn road project: FM

In one of my write-up I suggested that the education department should prepare a must reading book for the school students of Bihar. It must not include the stories of the living political heroes such as Laluji or Nitishji that the sycophants will try to do or had been doing.

I tried to prepare a list of ’10 Great Sons of Bihar’, and came out with the one as follows:

Mahavir, Chanakya, Ashoka, Vidyapati, Shershah, Veer Kunwar Singh, Dr.Rajendra Prasad, Jagjivan Ram, JP Narayan, and Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’. I felt like including the names of two more persons about whom I had heard from my advocate maternal uncle- Shri Gorakh Prasad, and Shri Basisth Narayan Singh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get some references, and so dropped for the time being.

I know many may not agree with this. However, I made it a point that none of them are living ones, and they must have impacted the nation. I also tried to pick up those who would be least controversial. I had also decided to exclude non-historical names. I wished the members of ‘bihariyahoo’ or ‘worldbihari’ group to suggest some names that they opined as better candidates for the list giving their reasons too. One of the members pointed out that my list doesn’t include any ‘daughter’. Another member, in the reply to the response, suggested including the name of Sita. I am still not convinced to zero it on a name.

Should the project be expanded in three categories based on the time periods: Ancient Bihar (up to 1000 AD), medieval Bihar (up to 1001-1600 AD), and modern Bihar 1601-2000)? That might be a way out, but with the increasing number, the consensus will be more difficult.

I thought many of my friends would help me in getting an agreeable list. But the responses were not satisfactory enough. And suddenly I thought of drawing the information from the knowledge banks that I use very often: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and www.answers.com. I could get a fairly well done listing.

However, the whole lot of names mentioned in them can’t be part of the book that I thought we must have for the school children of Bihar. Surprisingly, both the sources gave the name of one immigrant politician of Bihar origin Faz Husain too. I wish my NRI readers confirmed this. Can they provide some NRI names with some details in industry, medicine, management, politics or social sector?

I wish the intellectuals of Bihar debate and come to agree to a list.

And through patnadaily.com, I wish to get some useful comments on the subject to complete the task for the school children. However, I am nor sure even after the agreed list is arrived at, if the minister in charge of education will agree to it.

PS I have revised the number of great sons from 10 to 13 and included Gautam Buddha, Aryabhatt, and Guru Govind Singh.

Many players in this game- the entrepreneur company, the landowners, the middlemen- environmentalists, human rightists, politicians- both of the ruling and opposition, and many other sympathizers, are creating confusion and social conflicts. And we are to tolerate in the name of the largest democracy.

Let us take the case of Singur. First of all, why is Tata Motors not coming out with technical logics behind the necessity of 1000 acres of land for an assembly plant for 1,00,000 mini-cars (known as Rs 1 Lakh car) per annum? Is the location technically necessary or politically dictated? Why Tata Motors can’t, on its own, move to a land that is not in use for agriculture? Why is Tata Motors using some sort of threat for handing over the land? Why is it not coming out with its plan for rehabilitation or benefits of the people affected? Why is it not participating with the government officials to convince the farmers to hand over the land?

West Bengal government, particularly the CM is doing a wonderful job of convincing the people and obtaining the land by negotiations and quick compensation delivery. However, perhaps in eagerness to get Tatas in Bengal at all cost, Buddha Babu is not demanding some necessary clarifications mentioned above.

As reported, over 70 Trinamul leaders and supporters of the Singur Krishi Jami Bachao committee were arrested, when they were protesting handover of farmland to the Tatas for their small car project. The chief minister can claim that he had gone the extra mile to accommodate the Opposition in the drive to re-industrialise Bengal. The CPM leader ruled out shifting the Tata unit site in Singur to nearby marshy land. But then can someone say ‘why’? Hindustan Motors located near Singur, came up in a marshy land some 60 years ago. Fortunately, there are still no environmentalists, nor middlemen as the CPI (M) cadres in the area are already playing that role. However, the farmers losing their landholdings must get good compensation, as they are getting in Haryana and Punjab.

In case of Orissa and that also of Kalahandi, it is just some people with vested interest are trying to misguide the people there. The land is not fertile. The region is famous for draught and deaths. If the farmers are getting good compensation and are getting assurance for employment or participating through share offers, there can’t be a better option than leaving the land for the factory. However, when the country celebrates Dussehra, Kalahandi in Orissa will witness a huge protest against the Vedanta industrial project. Villagers and environmentalists fear (as claimed) it would do more harm than good without any logic. The local leaders with vested interest will collect a crowd of thousands of tribals and will take to the streets to demonstrate their strength for bargaining. An organization named Green Kalahandi has been opposing the plant on several grounds. It claims, it would divert water of the Tel River away from irrigation, causing destruction of environment, cultural degradation and pave the path for droughts. And this is when Vedanta has already spent over Rs 3,100 crore on the construction, and the project is likely to be commissioned by the year-end.

Why can’t these protests be avoided and an agreed policy be followed that takes care of the interests of those who are losing their lands and residences? All these developments may be very much democratic, but ultimately the poors are losers too.

A Good Writeup
How not to displace people by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

In last few years, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) unlike other government institutions changed its policy and initiatives to improve its image. It was due to its director general RA Mashelkar’s personal initiatives and wonderful leadership from the front. Its 38 laboratories have changed from patent-poor to patent-prolific. CSIR could get 543 US patents in the last four years, more than the number granted to its counterparts in Japan, Germany and France combined. This is something unique and happened for the first time. It would have got some special laurels from the scientific community, in particular.

Naturally, it has happened at some cost. According to CSIR itself, on an average, each US patent costs Rs 6 lakh to obtain and Rs 6.3 lakh to maintain over 20 years. And the total amount may come to Rs 18-20 crore. Though it can also mean revenue in return. This year, CSIR expects returns exceeding Rs 25 crore from some of its licensed US patents. The revenues will certainly depend on the commercial utility of the patents and vary in amount from year to year.

As reported, Indian scientists are divided on the issue of public spending on obtaining US patents. Some, such as Knowledge Commission vice-president PM Bhargava and former IIT Kharagpur director Professor KL Chopra have apprehensions about the exploitability of the inventions and want to have stringent screening. While some are more critical, “CSIR is wasting taxpayers’ money. I myself hold US patents and know it means nothing.” Is it not a little too harsh a comment for a country that wishes to be globally recognized for its R&D capability? With most of the scientific researches going on in government laboratories, naturally CSIR is the institution to provide the lead.

CSIR director general RA Mashelkar and many others think the criticism is unjustified. US patents are important as a key technology achievement index of the UNDP. On allegations, he argues: “When people call us a patent factory, they should see that CSIR with 20,000 people and 38 labs is only producing about a 100 patents a year. The University of California alone produces over 400 a year.” Scientific Advisory Council chairperson CNR Rao justifies CSIR initiative to take international patents and wants India to have a target of “at least a couple of thousand patents a year”. National Knowledge Commission chairperson Sam Pitroda thinks patents’ initiatives as a correct to be in ‘the global game’.

Why should the scientists of repute start this unnecessary dispute and bickering on so trivial an issue? Is the cost of patents involved are so high that the country can’t afford? How much are wasted in so many unnecessary procedural formalities and unnecessary staffing? Why is China spending billions of dollars to get its universities in the world’s best university list?

There is nothing wrong in spending for getting American patents, if it is being done after proper screening. Papers published in world-class research magazines and patents are certainly the recognized index of the R&D prowess. I do also believe that other R&D institutions including IITs and even DRDO with huge drain on national exchequer must also have some similar achievement index to show that some real good research works are being done there. It will make them a little more accountable and respectable to the nation and the people.