Research and Development

Research and Development

* India will by 2020 be as technologically advanced as South Korea is today.

India has a proven manpower base and competent entrepreneurs. Businessmen should now prefer to develop rather than import technology while the Government will need to be more sensitive to promoting scientific talent. As elsewhere, the focus of R&D will move from national laboratories to industry and the IITS and basic scientific research to the universities. In critical areas such as space technology, nuclear engineering, supercomputers and defence production, India has attained qualitative levels that have caught international attention.

The Technology Information, Forecasting Assessment Council (TIFAC) recently produced an 18-volume compendium on what Indian technology can achieve by 2020. That vision is based on the fact that technology reduces the cost of material, labour and, particularly, capital. So, development based on technology is doubly beneficial: it promotes growth and simultaneously lowers real prices. Hopefully, the power of technology to generate growth without inflation will be increasingly appreciated by policy-makers.

TIFAC's Vision-2020 envisages an India which will be technologically as advanced as South Korea is today. The country can have such a technological future in numerous fields such as agriculture, industry and medicine, given sufficient investment and the necessary work environment. Technology futures are, however, quite unpredictable and many past forecasts have proved hopelessly conservative. At the very least, India has a great technological future. How soon this is realised depends on the quality of its political and business leadership.