Administrative Staff College of India Bella Vista: Hyderabad

Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Lecture (Endowed by MIs National Mineral Development

Corporation Ltd)

Emerging Issues and Future Legacies

Dr Ashok S Ganguly
I consider it a great honor to be invited to deliver the 2004 Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Lecture, by the Administrative Staff College of India.

I first met Shri. Rajiv Gandhi in the late seventies during an Indian Airlines flight from Delhi to Jammu via Chandigarh. During the brief stopover in Chandigarh, we got talking and subsequently met on several occasions, under similar circumstances. He was then a pilot and I was a manager in a multinational company and our paths happened to cross in our normal course of business. Some years later, we met under entirely different set of circumstances. Sanjay Gandhi had died in a flying accident and Shri. Rajiv Gandhi had to give up his professional career with Indian Airlines and start anew on a political course which, to begin with, was to assist and support his mother, Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The occasion of our renewed contact was Rajiv's keenness to be more widely informed about corporat7 India and, given my own background, also about issues related to R&D in India. Ever since I first met him, I found him to be unfailingly polite, caring, trusting and deeply keen to learn and explore a wide variety of issues and subjects. Those were the traits which endeared him to the millions in India and abroad and those of us who had the good fortune to come close to him, over the next decade, until his tragic assassination in Sriperumbudur.

After Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India following the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the unprecedented electoral victory in 1985, he appointed a Science Advisory Committee (SAC-PM) of which I became a member. In this capacity, I had the opportunity of close and frequent interaction with the Prime Minister during his tenure in the office. The last time I spoke to him was ten days prior to his assassination, during his election campaign. At his urging I was preparing myself to be more actively associated with the government, not knowing that an enormous tragedy was to befall India in ten days time.

I am extremely grateful that ASCI have given me this opportunity to reminisce about issues which preoccupied us during my association with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. As is well known, Rajiv Gandhi was deeply committed to the advancement of Science and Technology as the means to transform India from a developing into a developed nation. In a manner this was a commitment he had inherited from his grandfather and his mother. He was keenly aware of the factors and forces, both international as well as national, which were the prime barriers to India's progress, economically and socially. Rajiv Gandhi was determined to overcome these barriers and a key feature was his keenness to promote public-private partnerships in India to garner the strength of all sections of our society to win the battle to usher a new era in development and change. Rajiv Gandhi's vision and goals were extraordinarily powerful because they were so obvious and doable. For example, the process of economic reforms and improvement in governance needed to be accelerated in order to significantly raise the rate of India's economic growth. Without generating higher rates of economic surpluses, there was no other obvious way of combating deep-rooted poverty in India. Without successfully battling poverty, it would not be possible to

empower Indian citizens to become more self reliant and being freed from the stranglehold of the umbilical cord of the State - a legacy left behind by our colonial rulers. These are the important qualities which had been destroyed by centuries of colonial rule and subjugation. Thus, one of the most important initiatives of Rajiv Gandhi was the rejuvenation and reinvigoration of the Panchayati Raj institutions. This, along with the launch of a number of technology missions to deliver the fruits of basic needs for the common people, is the lasting contribution of Rajiv Gandhi's reforms with a human face, in India. The rest of my talk is based on some of the deliberations of the (SAC-PM) in the 1980s, and which now have even greater relevance to India.

Industrial and Knowledge Revolution

Although India is one of the world's ancient civilizations, over a thousand years of foreign occupation were probably the most debilitating; it destroyed the basic instincts of a caring and capable society. Of this, the later phase, as a British colony, was a period of unprecedented human, social and economic impoverishment. Because India was under foreign occupation, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution more or less passed India by. That is, in spheres other than what was needed by the British to govern the country, such as in certain spheres of education, or to fulfill its economic priorities, for example building the Indian railways, amongst others. It is in this context that one has to view the massive post-Independence investment in. the large public sector industries to build massive dams and power plants, etc, which Pundit Nehru christened as the temples of modern India.

In significant contrast, we were indeed fortunate to be a free nation by the time the forces of the KNOWLEDGE.

REVOLUTION started unfolding in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The two pillars of the Knowledge Revolution are INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT)

and BIOTECHNOLOGY (BT). Rajiv Gandhi's preoccupation to spread a computer culture to improve governance and social transactions was not a fad or a fashion, as many had criticized in those early years. It was his recognition of the power of information technology, to bypass the arteriosclerosis Indian bureaucracy and deliver the common citizens from the stranglehold of hyper government. Today, India is amongst the leaders in the use, application and advancement of Information Technology, because we had both the political vision and corporate leadership to ride the wave of the Knowledge Revolution, an opportunity denied to us following the Industrial Revolution. As a consequence, the transformation and growth of the Service Sector is generating employment, entrepreneurship and wealth, unmatched by either the manufacturing or the agricultural sectors. However, both the manufacturing and agriculture sectors are also being transformed by the modernizing impact of IT in unimaginable ways. India's advances in IT, which are admired and applauded around the world, are now beginning to be viewed as an instrument of competitive threat, especially in the West. Business Process Outsourcing now makes India one of the most attractive destinations by international businesses, seeking to reduce cost and improve efficiency. Its economic benefits to India and advantages to global corporate are bound to have their political consequences, a scenario which has just begun to unfold. However, the economic logic, of the ground shift, is so overwhelming that the political countervailing are bound to be frustrated in the long term. In the case of Biotechnology (BT) India will also be a major global player one day. In recognition of this, Rajiv Gandhi created a separate Department of Biotechnology in 1986. In the way IT transformed the manner in which value is created in manufacturing, trading and services; BT is changing the whole concept of drug discovery, human health management and agricultural production and productivity.

Identifying the power and opportunities thrown up by the Knowledge Revolution was one of the most powerful vision and commitments of Rajiv Gandhi.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had famously declared, "Our People are India's Wealth". What he had meant and how we interpreted his declaration is now history. India's population explosion has set off an unanticipated chain reaction. Demographic data now confirm that India's population will overtake China's across a much smaller landmass. Our inability to contain population and the impact of climate change, pose grave dangers of unimaginable severity to our people and our country. At the same time, the rise in the number of the educated middle class across the country, is fuelhng the Knowledge Revolution and, in that sense, represents India's real "wealth". In order to spread the opportunities of the Knowledge Revolution more deeply and widely, it is imperative to spread primary, secondary and university education. In this, we have failed due to two primary reasons. Firstly, the shortfall of resources and secondly, gross mismanagement by the State's poor governance of available resources.

India is a land of extremes. The entrance examination procedures of the IITs and IIMs are recognized as the toughest talent filters in the world. So the brightest and best, thus chosen, then sally forth to make their mark in India and around the world. What we don't see is that amongst those who do not make the grade, there are hundreds of thousands of very talented youngsters who have to settle for something far less in life.

For the State alone to be able to provide the resources and opportunities to all, is not practicable, in a democracy, especially in the short to medium term. Private, voluntary and Private Public parh1erships will have to be recognised as legitimate resources, if education is to become a truly equal opportunity in India, as opposed to being socially and economically divisive, disenfranchising and disillusioning, as it has become for millions of our young generation.

The glaring erosion of R&D in Indian Universities, with a few and rare exceptions, is also a consequence of shortage of resources rather than of talent. Until now

Indian industry has not suffered by not investing in R&D. Even the R&D in the CSIR Laboratories is being taken greater advantage of by international corporations rather than by Indian companies. The legacy of "Reverse Engineering" and a sellers market, orchestrated by the licence-permit raj, is not easy to overcome. Even the much heralded R&D by some large Indian pharmaceutical companies is more in the nature of me-too R&D. Leading-edge R&D is mostly taking place in a handful of Universities, a few public R&D institutes some IITs and a few emerging BT companies. Its sheer mass is still extremely sub critical to give India a place on the global R&D map. The erosion of world-class R&D from the days of Bhabha, Bhatnagar, Meghnad Shah and Vikram Sarabhai has been precipitous. That no Indian scientist in India has won the Nobel Prize since 11dependence cannot only be because we are a poor country. In India most of us have yet to acknowledge that R&D is not about building and equipment - it is about a solid foundation in the sciences which helps generate original ideas and dreams. Revival of R&D in many more Indian Universities and the use of R&D as a competitive weapon by Indian industry will only be possible by public-private partnership, given the resources required. Many of our University R&D facilities and those in various other institutions, have outlived their utility and are in a terminal state of disrepair. As they decay, new institutions are not being built with the necessary speed and urgency.

India's population growth poses the biggest threat to India's future welfare and wellbeing. At the same time, the talent of India's younger generation can be the biggest source of generating wealth and social justice. This can only be remedied provided resources can be garnered to ensure universal primary education, hugely expand secondary education, revive and modernize teaching and R&D in Universities. These are after all the basic ingredients to fuel India's Knowledge Revolution by the power of developed minds of the younger generation of Indians.

I would like to conclude this section with a word of caution. There seems to be a growing trend to blame India's achievements in the Knowledge Revolution for the woes of farmers and other poorer sections in the country. Thus a class of politicians has begun to publicly criticize and describe India's technological advancements as being anti-poor and ant rural. Such an articled is a product of extreme ignorance of those who are out of touch with developments around the world. But that does not make such attitudes any less dangerous and harmful.

Challenges and Opportunities

The memories of poor agriculture outputs and food shortages of the 50s and the 60s have gradually receded, following the Green Revolution and has now become the stuff of distant history. That the availability of WATER would become a major national crisis in our life time, most of us could not have anticipated. It is in this context that the WATER MISSION launched by Rajiv Gandhi, needs to be recalled. Water, or rather the lack of its adequate availability, is gradually acquiring the shape of a national crisis. In spite of advances in meteorology, long term weather forecasting is fraught with enormous uncertainties. The vagaries of the annual mansoon precipitation over the sub-continent have not been improved by various forecasting models and algorithms. This is not a uniquely Indian failure but is an uncertainty with which the rest of the world is grappling as well. Global 'varmint, now considered to be the greatest threat to the future of the world and the human civilization, is the principal unknown which lies at the root of all the uncertainties.

To deal with vagaries of the annual monsoons, the river interlinking plans always seems to be a great idea. Regrettably, the plans have languished on the drawing board for more than fifty years and even its revival by the Suresh Prabhu Committee was short lived due to environmental, resource and other considerations.

In this context, the incentivisation of traditional practices of village communities maintaining natural catchment formations, building step wells and other ancient methods of water conservation and storage, are indeed a welcome initiative.

However the lack of availability of potable water to the vast majority of our citizens, the rise in the incidence of water riots and disputes, the interstate rivalries in sharing water resources remain a major threat to the unity and integrity of the nation. The urgent need to revive Rajiv Gandhi's water mission cannot be overstated in this regard.

The other challenge we as a country face is the renewed and unproductive debate about the nature and shape of economic reforms and issues related to it, such as foreign investment, privatization, role of the public sector, etc. In this regard, the most relevant comment was recently made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Given the reality of globalization of trade and com11lercc~ the need to accelerate India's rate of economic growth to meet the demands of social justice and to sustain civil society, the postures of those who oppose change must be seen as counterproductive. Some sections of the Leftists in India now seem to be in the pitiful company of North Korea and Cuba, harking on policies of the old Soviet economic planning which have failed resoundingly. In India there are, in addition, those sections of vested interest who have thrived in the regime of the 'licence-permit raj' and continue to resist reforms for their own selfish ends. Both these extremes of Left and Right thinking lack the confidence in reforms and are unable to provide alternatives for India to grow aggressively economically and utilize the surpluses to tackle the burgeoning problems of poverty, illiteracy and unemployment. While not underestimating the corrosive power and determination of the opponents of modernisahon and reforms, such opposition must nevertheless be comprehensively rejected by the sheer logic of the greater good. The opponents to reforms must be exposed for their antediluvian posturing and the long term harm that they can cause.

Finally, we need to recognize that Indian economic advancement is in stark contrast to its immediate neighbors.

This state of affairs has set forth political chain reactions whose consequences are damaging and can be long lasting. While international terrorism is a more recent phenomenon, Pakistan has been raging proxy terrorism against India via Kashmir for a very long time and this has intensified in the past decade. In the meantime, Pakistan continues to suffer from slower economic growth and growing social unrest. Bangladesh poses a similar threat in the eastern part of the country by providing shelter to various rebel groups from India, while its poverty stricken population enters India daily in droves and melts away across the country. The Maoist rebellion in Nepal, although more recent in origin, poses no less a danger, exacerbated by its backwardness and India's failure to spur development across our own eastern regions. Finally, the long drawn out strife in Sri Lanka, which eventually led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by LITE terrorists, continues unabated and also poses a threat to India.

Within the country, the challenges to India's secularism, one which distinguishes us from our neighbors, has been facing severe challenge and strain from the overt rise of Hindu extremism, which is both abhorrent and unnatural to the very idea of India. India faces a great danger from the rise of such religious extremism, further exacerbated by caste, community and cronyism in our electoral politics. These are the very same behavioral traits that foreigners made use of to divide and rule India in the past and these are the very same forces which pose a danger to our future.

Concluding Remarks

In remembering Rajiv Gandhi and the legacy he left behind in his tragically short but memorable leadership of India, there is so much to be proud of our achievements and advances. At the same time, the dangers we as a country and

people face, are indeed grave and contain the seeds of some dangerous legacies for the fu ture.

India's achievements in economic reform and globalization are indeed outstanding and thankfully consistent. India's prominent role in the Knowledge Revolution is now well entrenched and recognized around the world. But some of the challenges that we face are indeed grave. Our population growth, the dwindling availability of water, poor access to education, slow progress in poverty alleviation and employment generation, have become even more acute, primarily due to the burden of ineffective governance and in the failure to advance individual empowerment. A great danger arises from the corrosive intrusion of our neighboring countries, combined with the rise of religious fundamentalism of India's political right. Unless we deal with each of these dangers in an open and aggressive manner, our dream of future could sadly turn into a nightmare. While there is a hierarchy in what we may wish to achieve, there is a collective threat in the dangers we face as a nation. Rajiv Gandhi recognized the opportunities as well as the threats; but was felled in his prime, depriving the nation of his leadership, dynamism, determination and vision.