The story nesting inside
(May 02, 2008 - Financial Chronicle)Subroto Bagchi
Gardener & Founder, MindTree Limited
Science, technology and business have the capacity to make a lasting impact on any society. In developed economies, their significant difference to the transformational process is quite evident. Where engaged collectively, they have helped to alleviate economic inequalities and gone on to tackle issues of identity and individual freedom. For the harmonious engagement of the three, they must exist and evolve in an inter-dependent manner and not be subservient to one or the other.
In developing societies, usually it is business that is the front-runner among the three and it controls both science and technology because it has all the resources. This is a flawed model because, devoid of thought leadership and the attendant long view of time, business usually has a self-serving agenda; quite legitimately so.
It sees science and technology as matters of competitive advantage, beasts it employs for its own good.
Science and technology learn to live under the subservience of business. That is how meaningful diabetes research happens in a pharmaceutical company and breakthrough alternative fuel research takes place inside the automotive labs.
India is not a science-led country. Being science-led means having a scientific bent of mind. A scientific mind is inquisitive, devoid of dogma. It seeks to explore and then push the boundaries and thrives in the quest of knowledge. It requires freedom.
The place where it is cradled is the educational system of a society. That educational system is inevitably shaped by the prevalent social thinking, that too, sometimes with a lag factor.
It seldom changes radically within three, four or five generations. When I look at what I learnt in school and what my children will soon teach their children, there is little substantive difference. That said, science by itself is pure knowledge. By itself, it does not build anything useful for life and living. For that, it depends on technology.
For historic reasons, India is also not a technologically generative society.
Technology is applied science, it brings usable, and sometimes, useful things to society.
Its capability to create anything usable requires capital and its disbursement depends on channels of distribution. Thus, if technology is capable of creating environment-friendly energy, it requires investment to make it happen. This is followed by channels of trade that would bring such technology to people who would have to pay for it.
Production of a vaccine requires technology, which calls for capital. Once the vaccine is created, it must then be delivered through a distribution channel. Both access to capital and the distribution channel are monopolised, quite legitimately, by organised business. As a result, the cultiva tion of both science and technology become largely determined by priorities set by business.
In some sense, the situation reminds me of the aphid. The aphid is a 260million-year-old creature in its current form. Ants colonise them for their capability to secrete a sugar-like substance. The ants tend to them and actually carry them with the ant colony when they shift residences.
This tiny insect has multiple ways in which it can reproduce. In its basic form, it is female.
The female gives birth to a male and a female without the help of a male and then, the male and the female offsprings reproduce - until all the males die and only the females remain. Then the cycle begins all over again.
But more interestingly, the aphid has, what is called, telescopic reproduction capability. A female becomes pregnant with a female foetus and that foetus has another female fetus in it. The grandmother, mother and granddaughter exist as one body.
As a result, the dietary habits of the mother can impact the grand daughter from the beginning itself.
In some ways, business behaves like the aphid - in its womb remains science, in whose womb remains technology. In countries like India, the aphid like state of the three needs to be deconstructed so that science, technology and business can evolve independently and yet, work in harmony. That would need thought leadership and that thought leadership alone can be socially transformative.
