If India's contributions in basic sciences have seen only sporadic brilliance, our track record in developing new technologies is even more dismal. Says P.V. Indiresan, former director of IIT Madras, "Indian governments never encouraged indigenous technology, despite the much-advertised slogan of self-reliance." Not surprisingly, then, there are any number of examples where a technology developed by an Indian lab has been passed over in favour of an imported one.
Take for example the c-dot switches used in telephone exchanges that cost about Rs 2,600 each. "They worked perfectly well but then I heard the government had decided to buy 8,00,000 switches from a foreign company. Guess what? Each cost about Rs 5,600," says Indiresan.
The embarrassing story of the Swaraj Tractors underscores Indiresan's point. In the '60s, the CSIR's Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute in Durgapur designed and developed an indigenous tractor to meet the growing demands of the green revolution. But instead of commercialising it, the government decided to import a Czechoslovakian tractor. The entire team that developed the Indian prototype resigned and offered the technology to Punjab Tractors, today, a successful firm.
In 1998, India's first incinerator plant to convert 300 tonnes of municipal waste into 4 MW of energy was set up in Delhi with Danish aid of Rs 33 crore. It was closed down in 1992, without producing a single megawatt of power. Reason: Indian engineers overestimated the calorific content of the garbage as they didn't take into account the fact that Delhi's ragpickers pick the landfills clean of highly combustible waste like plastic and wood.
In the absence of marketing, even useful innovations have failed. A cycle-rickshaw designed by Amitabha Ghosh, the current director of IIT Kharagpur, required 44 per cent less pedalling force to get going, besides reducing the energy spent by pullers by 38 per cent. Despite the obvious advantages, it failed because most pullers rent their rickshaws and owners had no incentive to spend Rs 2,400 for retrofitting.
Or take Taraloom, an improved handloom developed in 1990 by an ngo, Development Alternatives (DA) in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology. The robust steel loom, which improves productivity by 60 per cent and costs about Rs 19,000, has attracted only about 1,000 buyers for lack of marketing.
The Indian private sector's apathy for research and innovation is also legendary. Industry, the major beneficiary of most research, accounts for only 15 per cent of the nation's total spending on research. Indiresan has the last word: "Indian industrialists are nothing but traders."
