SPEECH OF DR. R. A. MASHELKAR, FRS, DIRECTOR GENERAL, COUNCIL OF SCIENTIFIC & INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH (CSIR), GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, NEW DELHI, DELIVERED AT TH 25TH ANNUAL CONVOCATION OF IRMA
APRIL 16, 2006
Our most renowned Dr. Kurien, Dr. Vaswani, distinguished members of the Governing Board, distinguished faculty, proud graduates, their equally proud parents here I see amongst us, ladies and gentlemen.
I feel greatly privileged to have been invited by IRMA to deliver the convocation address today. I feel privileged for a number of reasons. First, I have an opportunity to pay a public tribute to an icon, Dr. Verghese Kurien, whom I have admired for several years. Second, I have an opportunity to applaud the very spirit of collective action at a community level for transforming rural India through the cooperative dairy movement, and the third, this is the 25th convocation address of a very special institute, a great institute, one and only IRMA, a national pride. I was looking at a book in the morning and I saw photographs of the first convocation address in 1982, it was given by Mrs. Indira Gandhi – 25 years – it looks like a long time and I feel truly truly privileged to have this particular honour and this privilege. It is also very special convocation, I must say. I am going to take some departures from the speech because as I was coming to Anand so many thoughts kept passing through my mind that I feel like keeping my text aside and say something completely different. So let me say something completely different.
And this is the contrast Sir, between what happened yesterday evening and today. As Dr. Kurien mentioned, I am also the President of the Indian National Science Academy which has around 750 scientists as its Fellows. It is a very special institution and it is a special honour to be a fellow of that academy. Yesterday, we had a meeting where we introduced the newly elected Fellows and there was hardly a clap and at the end when I stood there, I had to appeal to the Fellows to have a clap and here I am seeing this wonderful wonderful celebration (continuous clapping)[1]. I love this spirit of IRMA, and Sir, this is the spirit that you have built in this institution. I would like to begin by saluting Dr. Kurien, as I say he has been, to me a living legend. Great leaders are those who convert a vision into reality and use their inspiration to catalyse transformation. Dr. Kurien did all this and more. I would like to congratulate all the graduates today and there is one message you might want to take from Dr. Kurien as you leave the portals of this great institution. I would suggest the following.
To me among many many things that Dr. Kurien is, he is a great innovator and let me explain it to you. What does an innovator mean? An innovator is one who does not know that it cannot be done. That was Dr. Kurien’s spirit. And therefore, when you leave the portals of this Institute, when someone tells you that it cannot be done, don’t believe it. Because you can always tell them that Dr. Kurien could do it, then why can’t we? That is the spirit. Second, innovator is one who sees what everyone else sees but thinks of what no one else thinks. Even the word rural management did not exist at that point of time, people were trying to interpret it and Sir, at that time you set up IRMA. Because you saw what others could not see. Leadership is all about that and if you take just these two lessons, you would do wonderfully well. I also strongly believe, the legacy of Dr. Kurien has never been more relevant than today when the influence of globalisation is squeezing the space for local and community action.
Sir, you talked about the twilight of the career as we were walking down - as I was walking with Dr. Kurien, I just told him that I will be here when he celebrates his 100th birthday; not only me but all of you, of course. We will all be here.
IRMA has done such a yeoman service in integrating development and management concerns in the rural areas by promoting sustainable and equitable rural development. There are a very few academic institutions in the country which have contributed so many managers to the development sector for such a long time.
Well, organisations, even successful ones, must continuously reinvent themselves. To me, it appears that IRMA which is a role model for India must also have this new challenge to expand its vision so that several other sectors of Indian economy which need outstanding managers imbued with social and communitarian spirit, can contribute to the transformation of rural India.
Perhaps we need to have several IRMAs in different regions of the country, after all, this is a country of billions. Orissa needs one, north-east needs one, may be Uttaranchal needs one - several states are at different levels of development. I found while looking at the Annual Report that from over 10,000 students only around less than 100 actually are admitted that means you (the students) are one out of hundred, so you are very special. But my heart also goes out to those few hundred others who might be as good as you are and they don’t get an opportunity. So I would like to appeal to Dr. Kurien on behalf of those hundreds to set up more IRMAs. Secondly, there is an issue that you see a changing India today. Just last week I chaired a Committee meeting of CII, the Confederation of Indian Industry, which is giving the awards for what they call the triple bottom line. Previously there was only one bottom line for corporates, the economic bottom line. That was all. Financial capital was all that they believed in. They did not look at social capital, ethical capital and so and so forth. But now people are talking about triple bottom lines, the economic, social and environmental, and amazingly, I am not going to declare the winner here, you will have it announced from CII, but amazingly, when we looked at the top companies what one found was that those who were doing well in generating social and environmental capital were also superior in the economic capital – there seems to be a correlation here. And therefore in this new millennium when people talk about corporate social responsibilities and so on, it is not just talk, this transformation is beginning to happen and therefore there is an expansion that is going to take place and there is going to be a demand. Agribusiness is a real business now. Earlier people did not use words like agri and informatics. Agri informatics is here now and so is agri-business, and the whole of India is changing and therefore my mind goes back to seven years ago when I chaired the Committee to look at the Regional Engineering Colleges. As you know, talking about engineering education, we have what is called a pyramid: at the apex are IITs, the exclusive institutions, below that the Regional Engineering Colleges and below that the government engineering colleges and when I looked at those Regional Engineering Colleges - 19 of them, I said. my God, for every 2000 students who are getting to IITs there are 20,000 who are as good but are not getting in because 1 mark makes a difference of several ranks and therefore the recommendation of my Committee was that convert these RECs into National Institutes of Technology at the next level to IITs and let the central government take over the funding and not leave it to state governments. Let their Board of Governors change, their governing structure change, why shouldn’t there be a technocrat leading their governing board and so on. The government accepted that and today you have those NITs. Not that the total process has been completed, certain parts of the process are still to be completed. But the issue is that in a pyramidal structure you do find that there are levels of institutions that we will have to build up because this is a vast country, we are not at a higher level (of development yet), we are not Finland, we are not Singapore, we are India - the vast country with large demands and therefore particularly when we talk about rural prosperity of the new India, I believe IRMA has a tremendous role to play, perhaps more than IIMs and IITs. I am convinced about that.
There are several important revolutions that are taking place in rural India which need to be strengthened through imaginative approaches. Let me list five major challenges that I see:
The first challenge is to harness the creativity and innovation at grassroots level for generating new commercial and social enterprises. The second challenge is to valorise the tremendously rich reserve of traditional knowledge – Dr. Kurien mentioned about my fight for getting patents for turmeric and basmati – there is huge statistical knowledge that is available with the local community and individuals which must be valorised by blending formal and informal knowledge systems. Third, to diffuse outstanding technologies for grassroots applications which are developed in the organised sectors such as my own CSIR, and other research institutions. Fourth challenge is to harness the power of information and communication technologies in bridging the knowledge, technology and institutional divide between rural and urban areas. We had the green revolution and thanks to Dr. Kurien, the while revolution and now we require the next revolution and what is that revolution? That is the connectivity revolution both in physical infrastructure and digital communication and other ways. The fifth challenge is to reinvigorate people’s organisations including cooperatives for mediating the market and non-market transactions within not only the local but also the global market.
While elaborating on these challenges, I will highlight both the leadership challenges and the managerial challenges. My belief is that most of you have tremendous leadership potential. In fact, I think, from amongst you, not only managers but ‘development entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs’ should be emerging and I am sure they would emerge.
Harnessing the creativity and innovation at grassroots
There is a National Innovation Foundation (NIF), you must have heard about Prof. Anil Gupta and his great work[2] and I happen to be the Chairman of its Board for the last five years and I am really inspired by the tremendous creativity and innovation that exists in rural India, be it a farmer, be it an artisan so on and so forth.
Let me just give an example to illustrate what I am saying. Let us look at another innovation on bicycle which is used by the common people of our country. If you are living in eastern India, floods are part of life for almost one third of the year. You cross water bodies with the help of a boat even during the rest of the year. If you are a poor person, you wait till the boatman has sufficient passengers to ferry across the river or the lake. Or else you just wait till enough passengers are gathered. Saidulla, a 70-year-old maverick innovator from Motihari in Champaran, Bihar was not willing to wait every day for hours. He used to go from village to village to sell honey. He redesigned his cycle so that it would work in the water and also on the road. Look at the potential impact of this innovation.
You may recall the flash floods which affected the normal life in Mumbai two years ago. People had to wade through water for 10-15 kms. Children in the schools could not be provided rescue and relief expeditiously. If such cycles were available in fire brigade offices and schools and even with people in their cars or buses, lot of relief could have been delivered much faster.
Let me give you another example. Prem Singh, a 10th class drop out boy from Haryana found that farmers have to often go to their farms in the night to switch on or off the tubewell because of uncertainty of power and its quality. Prem Singh was convinced a solution had to be found. After all it is not just the urban people who have the right to sleep in the night. Even farmers deserve the privilege. What Prem Singh has done is, he has invented a simple low cost switch operated by cell phone which can turn the tube well on and off.
What is the challenge however is that these innovations are taking place at grassroots. The challenge is that a large number of these innovations does not get the same attention that many hi-tech ideas may get and yet their implication for improving the livelihood or reducing the treachery could be enormous. The mission of making India innovative that we have taken upon ourselves in National Innovation Foundation cannot be fulfilled without very widespread involvement of professionals, no matter in which sector or region they are working. Can we do it together?
NIF has mobilised 50,000 innovative and traditional knowledge practices from more than 400 districts of India. Unfortunately, very few have become the basis of socio-economic enterprises.
What can we do together? The cooperative movement has a very vast network of community organizations which can become a vehicle for diffusing many of these innovations and value added traditional knowledge.
Is it possible that we can think of new enterprises set up by graduates of IRMA in which NIF may invest its capital to create new social enterprises? Once the demand is generated, a distribution chain can be developed for manufacturing as well as marketing these technologies. The entrepreneurial potential of rural youth can be harnessed for making this possible. The steering teams of Operation Flood had organized the dairy cooperatives in different parts of the country. Today, we need such developmental, social entrepreneurs who will trigger a technological innovation based revolution in rural India.
Diffusing outstanding technologies for grassroots applications
The second issue has to do with diffusing outstanding technologies at grassroots application. Let me share with you the experience of one CSIR laboratory, namely Central Salt & Marine Research Institute (CSMCRI) in Bhavnagar in India. In Kutch in Gujarat, we had a major earthquake on January 26, 2001. There was no electricity and no drinking water for those poor people in the villages. CSMCRI developed the reverse osmosis technology for drinking water. But to operate this technology required a pressure of around twenty atmospheres. Without electricity, how would one generate such a pressure? The villages had no electricity but they had bullocks. The scientists made the bullocks go around and using a cleverly designed helical gear system, generated the required pressure to run the reverse osmosis device. A village with around 300 families got the drinking water. This experiment was done in Kutch, West Bengal and with camels in Rajasthan and so on and so forth. In fact the Intermediate Technology Group in Rugby in England was so impressed with this feat that it featured it in the New Scientist issue of 10 May 2003. While applauding this feat, the article said "The device holds a great promise for 1.2 billion people, who lack electricity and clean water, but who have plenty of oxen”.
Now see the good news and the bad news here. The good news is that the Scientists had their heart in the right place and they used that innovation in rural setting to provide drinking water. But what the Intermediate Technology Group says is that, this is a device which will help 1.2 million people who lack electricity and clean water that means they are sure they will continue to lack electricity and drinking water. This is not acceptable. That I believe is the mindset that we need to change. That is why I said, there is a good and bad news.
How can we make high technology work for the poor is a big issue in India. It is not that formal systems of innovation, such as CSIR, have not done this. Let me give you an example.
I believe that organizations like CSIR, I am talking about CSIR because I am familiar with it, there are many others, what the scientists at CSIR do generally does not get known. For example, when a farmer uses a Swaraj tractor or a Sonalika tractor, he does not know that it was developed by CMERI of CSIR. When a villager has a hand pump, he does not know that it was developed by CMERI again. Malaria is a disease of the poor. Multinational companies would not work on this. It was CSIR, who created drugs on Malaria. However, when doctors prescribe E-Mal for cerebral Malaria, they do not know that it was developed by CDRI of CSIR. When mothers give Amul baby food to their children, they do not know CFTRI’s original contributions in developing Amul baby food. Our challenge is, therefore, to communicate with the stakeholders. And I believe this is where we have a big opportunity. The network that IRMA has with social and developmental organisations can provide a strong platform for diffusion of socially relevant technologies. Most scientific labs, I am afraid, I must admit my failure here, we do not have a machinery to achieve this purpose. And yet, this purpose of diffusion must be served. Let me focus on one issue. Sir, I understand that students at IRMA spend extended time in the field to understand socio-economic problems and learn from local institutional efforts. This is where partnerships can really help. Now this is extraordinarily important. Let me give one example.
We have been forging unusual local partnerships by reaching the unreached in the remote corners of India. A village called Athaoni on the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka is the place from where Kolhapuri chappals come to us. Until recently, they were made by age-old traditional technique. Our scientists from CLRI studied this and helped reduce the processing time from 30 days to 10 days through some application of very good science, the stamping process was standardized by them, certain innovative changes in design which were based on computer aided techniques were also made to give more comfort to the wearer. But this was not a top down process. The oldest man in the village was consulted, he was convinced that the age old traditions must change and this new technological innovation should be incorporated. Today several hundred artisans have been trained by CLRI under the national labour development programme. This has not only enhanced the family incomes of the villagers but also changed their perception of science, development and change – in short, it has brought about a kind of micro social transformation. For CSIR, it has a great lesson that it is not techno-economics alone, but also socio-economical and socio-cultural aspects, that it needs to be conscious about. This has been our weakness in the past that is where I see a great opportunity that a partnership with IRMA would have helped CSIR enormously since your understanding of the socio-economic problems and local institutional efforts, socio-cultural issues in villages is so preformed. I would therefore suggest that we take this idea of partnership forward. We can draw out a valuable pool of solutions that exists for social applications. The students can do market research, develop business plans and in some cases, even help in deploying these technologies in cooperative or small-scale sector.
May be it is the fault of CSIR, because of which, a large number of NGOs and cooperatives with which IRMA graduates work are not fully aware of the technologies available with NIF or CSIR labs. This is a gap which we need to urgently bridge. We have another challenge also. CSIR has to realise that it is not technologies alone, but also socio-economical and social-cultural movements, that it needs to understand and deal with.
Bridging the knowledge, technology and institutional divide
As I said earlier, we had Green Revolution and White Revolution. We need a ‘connectivity revolution’. Now we must appreciate that it was the ‘White Revolution’ that empowered the small cattle owner through the launch of the cooperative movement. Now, the farmers, artisans and craftsmen need to be empowered in cyber space through information and communication technologies.
One of the ways in which information communication technology applications can transform rural India is by linking rural supply and demand with the markets at national and international level. I am very happy to note that one of the most outstanding ICT based projects has been led by IRMA graduates. I am referring to the model of e-chaupal in which Shiv Kumar (an alumnus of IRMA) and his team have shown some remarkable results. I understand that more than 1200 crore worth business was transacted through e-chaupal last year. Of course one can look at the positive side as well as something that needs to be corrected. That is a separate issue. But it is an innovation - reducing the transaction costs of buyer and seller makes both competitive.
Ashok Jhunjhunwalla from IIT Chennai has demonstrated the power of wireless loop technology linked with village level kiosks. Apart from the tele medicine or eye diagnostics, knowledge transfer, he is also now trying to deploy low cost ATMs in the rural areas. DRISHTI has provided very efficient e-governance solutions through ICT kiosks. Government of India is setting up 100000 common service centres all over the country. It is obvious that one would need local language databases of useful innovations and traditional knowledge having applications at grassroots.
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in collaboration with SRISTI has supported the creation of databases of 1500 multimedia practices in four languages besides, 4500 traditional knowledge examples and 300 medicinal plants based knowledge applications. We need to create more and more content in local languages.
Every dairy cooperative could announce to local members one or two innovations and traditional knowledge examples every day. It might offer another reason for people to come to dairy centre and discuss ways to reduce the cost and improve the productivity by using various mechanical and herbal innovations. A knowledge network developed around grassroots innovations could be very helpful for connecting cooperatives and other social organisations with each other to promote lateral learning.
Revitalising people managed local institutions such as cooperatives and other support organizations
Let me come to this issue of local institutions such as cooperatives and other support organisations. One of the essential conditions for growth and development is to ensure continuous learning at different levels in society. While we have achieved reasonable success in assimilating global knowledge, our achievements in the field of incorporating local knowledge and best practices are not so outstanding, with a few exceptions apart. Rural institutions therefore can benchmark their understanding by developing a robust system of learning from each other. There is no doubt that the cooperative movement might have developed this capability extraordinarily well in the emerging challenge of globalization. We will have to develop new approaches now. Perhaps, apart from having managers to manage rural institutions, one would also need to produce social entrepreneurs to reinvigorate the creative, collaborative and compassionate environment for social learning and development triggered by the Operation Flood in the earlier years.
Let me just mention something that struck me. When we look at the Amul pattern of which we are so proud, some times we fail to understand what a difference it has made beyond what we commonly understand and I am just going to give you one example before I close. In fact let me end by saying that the leaders like Dr. Kurien can influence in an unimaginable way, several movements. Let me illustrate one. Perhaps it is not very well known. I am referring to the Aravind Eye Care system
As you know the Aravind Eye Care system does 200,000 cataract operations per year, a very large number. The cost is around 30-50 US dollars per surgery compared with US where it costs around 3000-4000 US dollars per surgery. And you know 50 percent of the surgeries they do free for the rural poor and others who cannot afford. You would say, ‘My God! So many operations done per year at such a low cost! That means quality must be a casualty.’ Not at all. When one compares the Aravind Eye Care system with the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in UK and then compares the adverse events during the surgery, twenty of them by the way are listed as measurables, you will find that in all twenty indicators, Aravind Eye Care system beats them. It is absolutely unbelievable. Do you know that Aravind Eye Care systems closely follows the ‘Amul Pattern’? Let me explain.
In the case of Amul, the collection of milk is done from individual farm families of tens and thousands of villages. Quality is guaranteed by inspection at the point of origination. In the case of Aravind Eye Care system, they use more than 1000 eye camps around the catchments areas drawing thousands of patients. There are very detailed routines for the conduct of eye camps and the section of patients is then taken for treatment. That is their collection point.
The next similarity with Amul pattern is in terms of transportation to a central facility. In the case of Amul, the milk is transported to the main processing facility by refrigerated vans and so on. In the case of Aravind Eye care system, patients are transported by buses to Aravind hospitals.
Now the third similarity is in processing. In the case of Amul, specialized world-class processing facilities are used to convert raw milk for retail consumption and for milk by products – powder, butter, cheese, ice cream, etc. In the case of Aravind Eye Care system, specialized world-class facilities and highly trained doctors and nurses use some of the most innovative processes for eye surgery. And the comparison does not end here with regard to Amul pattern.
Let us compare the post processing operations. In the case of Amul, there is a national and global marketing of the Amul brand of products whereas in the case of Aravind Eye Care system, there is postoperative care and counselling. The follow up research centre focuses on preventable eye disease around the world. What a remarkable sort of a pattern as you can see. When India looks at innovations, it can’t keep on copying others. We have to create our own models. And you can see how these models are different. Aravind Eye Care system for example discards the model that a patient will go to the doctor. Several patients are gathered together and the doctors examine them. So innovation is all about not only doing different things but doing them differently. That is the issue and when you leave the portals of this great institute that is what you have to continuously think about. Amul was not copied. Amul pattern was not copied from anywhere. It was generated by Dr. Kurien here. Challenge is in doing things completely different and that is what we need to do. And particularly in a resource poor country like India, we have the challenge of creating ‘more from less’ and if you see both these models what they do is combining and processing less to create more, so to say. This illustrates that when you lack resources, you can make up for it through resourcefulness. I think this is the issue - people continuously talk about lack of resources. Look at Japan, it did not have resources; they did not have the raw materials they needed. But they are resourceful and that is how they have become a leading nation. So this is the secret message that we need to carry forward.
Let me re-emphasise that no doubt outstanding institutions only can take up transformative steps to revolutionise the pace of rural development and this is the responsibility that we have. Let me end my little talk with a poem of Tagore about a tree which captures the spirit of what Dr. Kurien has given to all of us.
O profound, Silent tree, by restraining valour
With patience, you revealed creative
Power in its peaceful form. Thus we come
To your shade to learn the art of peace,
To hear the word of silence; weighed down
With anxiety, we come to rest
In your tranquil blue-green shade, to take
Into our souls life rich, life ever
Juvenescent, life true to earth, life
Omni-victorious.
My young friends, it is Dr. Kurien who has given life to millions, would we not wish life that is ever juvenescent, life true to earth, life omni-victorious? All that you ought to do, my young friends as you leave the portals of this great institute, is to have a vision to bridge this gap that was referred earlier on between Bharat and India. That is, to carry this message forward to carry forward IRMA’s spirit for celebration that you demonstrated. Let me tell you something, I am very proud to be an Indian. It is a great time to be an Indian today but equally importantly, it is great time to be in India.
Thank you very much.
