There are universities in the USA where tens of Nobel laureate professors are part of the faculty. There is no such University in India. There are universities in the USA including the one where I currently study where the students of the university win more medals in the Olympics than 90% of the countries in the world. The university where I study is one such: its students have also won at least one gold medal in each Olympic since 1904. We have no Olympic gold medallists as our fellow students in any university in India.

Why is it that I have decided to continue here in USA for three more years after getting my MA, in order to complete a Ph.D.? This is a vital question. In fact, life here is extremely hard. The amount of study that graduate students are expected to do is almost unbelievable, and the pressure of assignments, exams, etc., is so high that, given that one has so much work to do just to maintain the daily life of one's family (washing dishes, clothes, sweeping the house, vacuuming the carpet, dusting, putting things in order, changing the baby's diapers, ironing clothes, cooking, buying groceries, cleaning the oven, the kitchen and the bathroom, etc., etc.,) it sounds almost foolish to continue this struggle merely to get a degree called "Ph.D."

Maybe I have changed. There was a time when, not so long ago (in 1979), I refused to do even my Masters degree in India. I found the education system to stultifying that I decided that I might as well do a job - and I chose the IAS as being the most satisfying. I was a National Science Talent Scholarship holder, receiving Rs.250 a month just to pursue my studies. But six months into my MA course in Mathematics, I dropped out. And I actually refunded the six months of scholarship that I had received to the government. Later, after joining the IAS, out of sheer curiosity for Economics, I took my Masters in Economics by studying as a private candidate under the correspondence course of Panjab University. Not satisfied, I took the two year course with the All India Management Association and got my Graduate Diploma in Management. Thus there has been always a strange tension between my desire to learn more but to not get into the clutches of the Indian education system which basically cares little for innovation and excellence.

A little while later, I went to Australia and got a Post Graduate Diploma in Business (Finance and Economics) under the Colombo Plan. It was this trip that finally kindled my interest in deeper studies once again. All the superficiality of studies that we do in India was over. Now, for the first time, in Australia, I really began to enjoy the challenge of studying hard and reaching the cutting edge level in whatever one was studying.

I am sure that the IITs and IIMs, or the better universities in India really challenge the students. But the tragedy is that most of the average universities in India do nothing of this sort, and the student feels that his or her job is to merely churn out a top rank and be done with it. The studies are clearly not challenging enough, the exams are not tough enough, the libraries are dilapidated, and "kunjis" float around at least till the end of the Bachelors degree. Maybe I was a bad student, but I k now I was not an exception. Most of the "bright" students of India are exceptionally good in cramming for the exams a few weeks before the exams (in fact, I skipped over 65% of my classes during my college days, but the Principal signed that I had met the minimum attendance since I was very active on the extra-curricular scene, and also since they needed my "results" in the exams). But these very students are neither challenged enough, nor receive the motivation to "excel," and thus to create something new.

USA		55
Japan		110
South Korea	46
India		3.5
Pakistan	4.0

Source: Cyper (p.406) In other words, it is clear that only about 4 persons out of a thousand, are engaged in science or technology in India, compared with 110 in Japan. This is a key reason for our overall lack of scientific attitude.

The following newsreport shows how we are all under-performing under the educational system of India.(source: INDIA-NEWS from INDNET.BGSU.EDU, dated 11/30/96):

Why I have cited this newsreport in full is because of its great significance to what I am saying here. What I am trying to say is that we need to re-orient our higher education toward more rigor, and much, much greater produc tivity. As a student in these foreign universities, I have not only enjoyed the challenge of learning about things at the cutting edge utilizing the best libraries, computers, and facilities, but also, primarily, have been immensely productive, by producing term papers and reports which I really enjoyed writing. For example, I studied small industries across Asia during a short course while in Australia, and produced a 150 page document with the latest data and analysis. I was challenged enough to get the latest, unpublished data, from the Development Commissioner for SSI at New Delhi, while in Australia. I even think that the term paper can be stretched into a good book with a bit of effort: not bad for a mere term paper.

Similarly satisfying experiences in the USA have kept my desire to learn more, alive. I no longer feel cheated, or that I am wasting my time in trying to learn second rate stuff from a second rate system. I am being stretched to my limit. And I LOVE it . I guarantee that everyone loves being challenged to his or her limit. It is a pleasure that only human beings can feel. When we work late nights for long weeks, trying to master a huge literature and mathematics on one's own, with just the "direction" being provided by the Professors, one feels as if one is climbing a steep mountain. That is a thrilling experience. In a few days, you reach a new peak from where you survey vast areas, and realize how shallow your knowledge was - just a few weeks ago.

When we make it challenging enough, our best students will study hard EVEN in India. And it is not as if we do not have good students in India. A casual look at the graduate schools across USA will show how powerful the presence of Indians is over here . Our GRE scores - or tests of raw graduate study ability - are among the highest anywhere; almost without exception, thousands of India graduate students here in the USA are being paid for entirely by the US universities/ international organizations to study here, in return (sometimes) for a little teaching load. We not only exist in abundance here, but we excel here. Indians are welcome all over the world as teachers, computer professionals, and finance specialists, among others.

So why is it that this talent is practically wasted in India? This is a very big question that we must address, very carefully. It will require a LOT of hard work to set up systems in our vast nation to provide suitably challenging facilities to our graduate students. But unless that is done, we will continue to slide down, down, and further down, the rankings, in science, the social sciences, and everywhere else.

Therefore, when I have decided to spend five years of my life studying in the USA, it is because I believe that this is more important for my nation that I study the problems of an economy from an analytical perspective and ultimately have something useful to say as far as policy is concerned, than that I merely repeat, parrot-like, the policies that are in place and attempt an incremental approach to such policies which is bound to fail. Take for example our poverty alleviation programs. I can show - and I will, later, sometime - that our poverty has not declined dramatically because of the IRDP programs which people like me have implemented religiously over the past fifteen years, but because of the growth of the economy. Data on the precipitous decline of poverty in South Korea, coterminous wit the spurt in its economic growth, would convince all of us that we should stop wasting time in palliatives - which, like the RLEGP etc., programs are extremely expensive - and focus our energy in human development and in pulling out the brakes on our economic growth.

* Is it "efficient" for India to send bureaucrats outside to study?

I do not have adequate time at the moment to answer all aspects of this question. But I wish to raise some basic issues of cost and benefit here:

a) The total amount of money spent by the World Bank and the University of Southern California in my education over five years would be close to $125,000. In rupee terms, this is close to Rs. 43 lakhs. On the other side, by my coming here, India has lost at least some value, in terms of my contribution in some part of the government. It is difficult to value it but it surely was more than my salary drawn (hopefully). Therefore, I can add approximately Rs.5 lakhs to this number: In other words, my Ph.D. has cost the 'world' Rs. 48 lakhs, or say, Rs. 50 lakhs.

b) The great debates in academia are still the basic ones which were presumably proved long ago: the debates between democracy and other forms of government; the compatibility of capitalism and democracy; the efficiency of the market system; the weaknesses of the market system and the role of government; the weaknesses of bureaucracies. At least three disciplines, viz., political science, economics and public administration, consider more or less all these issues and write tons of books of analysis on such topics. What I have learnt here from my academic pursuits is extremely limited: that democracy is good; that capitalism is good; that capitalism has some defects which need to be rectified. And so on. But after my recent visit to Washington, I have realized that it is easy to talk endlessly on these topics, but very difficult to solve the problems of the poor [Washington D.C. is in a pretty bad shape, given that it is the capital city of the richest nation on earth]. If I put a value on my total learning, it would be well below Rs. 50 lakhs.

Therefore, a prima-facie cost-benefit analysis shows that the value to society of my getting a Ph.D. abroad is negative. Perhaps the money used for my Ph.D. could have been better spent in other things, such as cash aid to India. But the problem here i s that the money spent in USA generates employment within the USA, and hence it will be difficult to persuade the USA to donate this money to India. On second thoughts, I am not quite sure whether the valuation of one's learning can be made so easily. If, for example, I am closer to the "truth" after this learning than I would be otherwise, then the gains are immeasurable.

I will revert to this topic later, when I have more time.

Some basic facts on Indians in USA

An article by R.K. Narayan

This is an extremely controversial question and while I myself subscribed some time ago to the view that Indians should remain within India, I find my view radically changed after studying the history of migration to the new continent. The truth is that there was virtually no legal barrier to migration from India or elsewhere till the early 20th century in the USA. By that time, the race problems with the Chinese migrants surfaced to the fore, and the USA became stricter in its migration policies. Now , coming to the USA or to Australia has turned out to be extremely good for the migrants (except for racial problems which are coming down in the recent years). Not only did they imbibe the culture of dynamism and the Protestant ethic, in a way, prevalent in these nations, but also carried on their own culture. America today (and to some extent Australia) is an extremely cosmopolitan nation. Unfortunately, very few Indians were able to migrate during this period to these nations, and therefore we missed out one of the great opportunities to participate as a group in the growth of a new nation. After the 1970s, there have been many Indian migrants, and they have proved that coming out of India has been beneficial to India in many ways:

The fact that Indians have mostly turned out to be an outstandingly self-disciplined and hard-working community which has done very well academically, and economically, has enhanced the image of Indians in general. These Indians have spread the message of Indian culture through associations in Universities and elsewhere, through construction of temples and cultural centers, thus making India better known to the rest of the world. These Indians have also been crucial in the building up of the foreign exchange reserves of India and thus pivotal in its economy. There is some question about the loyalty of NRI investments but ignoring that, the sheer tourism dollars and also the remittances to parents and others in India, have perhaps been more beneficial to the Indian society than the cost of educating these people in India. We have the potential today of bringing back some of the best brains in the world - if only we know how to invite them back and to retain their enthusiasm - and thus implant the best technology into India in a relatively cost-effective manner.

Negative points? Sure, there are some. Unlike the earlier migrations, the newer migrations have been restricted by host nations in terms of the quality of the people they allow entry, which means that only those with above average capabilities are able to gain entry. Automatically, this means that we lose some of the best brains of India to the rest of the world. But the big issue is surely not that: the question is whether these "brains," had they stayed behind in India, would have been profitably utilized in India? The answer to that question is obvious to most of us: No. We are such a large nation that we can never run short of "brains." The problem is that we do not know how to use our brains anyway, for reasons too well known to enumerate here. I can claim for sure that at least 99% of our best brains are still within India. Has that helped us in any way? Not quite. So, we should let the world benefit directly from the migration of Indians abroad, and hopefully, indirectly, we too will benefit so me day.

* Ethics

I do not wish to enter into a debate whether the western developed world is more honest than us, or more ethical. I sincerely tend to believe, however, that the western developed world possesses a broadly uniform "Positive Life Ethic". By life ethic I mean the attitude towards life itself. Not only the morality of certain actions, but the recognition of cause and effect, the recognition of chance and the role it plays in life, determination, will and the application of mind.

In India many of our people still believe that they have to be specially blessed with fate, in order to reach any particular position or place in life. I am not kidding: it is a fact that a great number of top scientists, bureaucrats and politicians spend great effort in getting hold of astrologers to tell them about how their hand or their horoscope has destined them for greatness or for failure. Therefore, most Indians are willing to put in only the bare minimum of effort required to achieve sustenance for their families, but not many aim for "greatness" and continued improvement. Most of us are content with mediocre performances in all spheres of life.

But much of the West has the Protestant ethic which drives them to a perennial quest for excellence. Without this ethic, as many economists, sociologists and philosophers have noted, the West would have remained in the Dark Ages. It is worthwhile emulating this attitude toward life. We cannot remain feudal in our thinking and yet achieve greatness.

Instances of some of the things which we could do are:

1. We could try to do our best in our jobs, and with complete honesty.
2. We could try to be moderate in our religious/ political views.
3. We could try to have more patience with a country of the size of India - and expect that results would be delayed than what the smaller countries have been achieving.
4. We could form the forefront of social reform in favor of equality, women's rights, the avoidance of dowry, and other such things...

* The Quest for Excellence:

In this country (the US), persons working in the humblest of jobs seek to do that job as creatively as possible. The extent of invention that have been made to streamline even the smallest of jobs is quite amazing. What appears to me to be vital in this culture is that no one accepts the tools handed down by his or her forefathers. They innovate, change, adapt, and invent. The construction of a house, for example, is done by so many tools, and so meticulously, that every part of the house functions perfectly, and "fits." This dramatic enhancement of productivity takes place in almost every task performed here. This higher level of productivity is - almost without exception - the only reason why the worker here earns tens of times the wages/ salary earned by a worker in India or in an LDC. The workers here are not only trained in the latest skills, but are creative. They do not aspire to copy the work of their ancestors, but to improve it.

Herein lies, I believe, a very vital attitudinal difference between people from LDCs and the "West." We have every reason to be grateful to this creative set of people. Were it not for them, we would have remained as primitive as ever. It will not do to only criticize the Westerners for their colonization of the East in the past. We must recognize that had it not been for their development of the discipline of science, we would still have been seeing death by starvation in famines, short and brutish lives with average life expectancies being in the 20s, and probably split into hundreds of small states with primitive forms of government.

It is easy for us today - given the basis of intellectual and other property rights established in our nation by the West - to claim that the West is exploiting our genetic diversity without paying for it, as when we claim that our seeds are being taken away. But we must not forget that most of us are alive today on the basis of the development of science and technology by the West. We have tapped their intellect without expressing our gratitude or paying for it. We have not got the ability to exploit our own genetic pool of diversity and to create wealth out of it. So we must not cry out when someone with greater capability uses it to create medicines and wealth for the rest of the world. Going by the trend of our past - or even our present attitudes - we would not be able to reach the creativity levels of the West for hundreds of years. So, why cry "foul" when the West utilizes our un-utilized resources? Have they not given us more than enough in return?

Maybe I am getting carried away. Maybe we could have invented all these telephones, automobiles, airplanes, the television systems, the aircraft carriers and submarines, the nuclear powered stations, the personal computers, the watches, and all the sciences, all on our own. Maybe we are so great as a nation that our kings, exploiting the poor peasants for millennia, and persistently fighting amongst themselves, would have created the right foundation for our country to become the greatest power in the world. Maybe our "ojhas," in a sudden awakening, would have discovered the secrets of the human body, the heart and the brain, and would have become the top surgeons and doctors of today. Maybe ...

But again, maybe not. And according to me, it is this latter view that is correct. There is no evidence in our past nor in our present of a burst of creativity anywhere comparable to the burst of creativity seen on this planet in the last five hundred years, fueled entirely from the Western intellect. The surges of exploration - including going beyond the solar system, the surges in discovery and invention in every field, and in mathematics (a discipline which Indians almost claim to have invented), g o far, far beyond our "Golden Age" in our history. While our "nav-ratans" might have been nine great brains, today, an average University in the West possesses "ninety brains." We are outgunned and out-achieved in every field of human endeavor. When a common man becomes great, then that nation has achieved true greatness. It is this that has happened in the USA today, and in the West in general.

In Assam - as in many other parts of India, I am sure - there is a day set aside for the worship of the "Bishwakarma" - the God of equipment. On that day, drivers worship their cars and trucks, carpenters worship their tools, and so on. But if there truly is a God of creativity, that God resides in the brains of the West. Definitely not in the brains of Indians. But we can all be gods, yet. All we need to do that is to open our eyes.

First of all, recognize plainly and simply, that we owe to the West a great debt, a debt of intellectual wealth that we can only repay if we outdo the West in invention and innovation. We must at once catch up with the West. Stop this whining and cringing about technology. Go and grab the latest and the best technology. Buy all the books in the world. Break open and analyze all the equipment produced in the world. And then make these things in India. Subsidize the copying of technology. Subsidize the import of even the most trivial tool and gadget found in the West. Flood our markets with all the tools and equipment produced in the world today. Let our people learn to use these tools. Let us then teach our children and our people to worship technology not by "actually" worshipping it by taking a holiday, but by throwing it away in the dust bin of history. All technology is dust the moment it is invented. It is "over." We must invent new technology if we want to worship it. This is a "moving" God. We c an never worship this god if we stay still. As we run ahead, however, this god comes into our range of vision in a more powerful way.

I know, being officially a student of economics, that economists will scream - "But that (i.e., importing all kinds of tools and gadgets) will increase our current account deficit and even cause balance of payments problems." But that might not be quite true. In fact, I think they are not considering the overall picture. We have something to offer that these Western mutinationals badly need in order to compete with each other. Our brains. We may also have a small middling sized market of the middle class (which we needlessly boast about, as usual). But what they want from us is our brains, which are going at throw-away prices. Our people have not become stupid, just because our political leaders and economists have become so. Therefore, there is going to be a FLOOD of investment into India the moment we release all controls and kick out our stupid bureaucrats. The investment will depend entirely on you the people. If the people are confused by socialism and there are these socialistic parties hanging about then the foreign investor will be quite scared of a change in policy and will put only a few million dollars. But if we as people are clear about where we are to go and how, then the foreign investor will have no problem in pouring tens of billions of dollars (as they do in China on a regular basis) each year into India. Their objective: to get profits from our cheaply priced brains. They will use these brains to produce goods at cheap prices and defeat other multinationals. On the other hand, we will get the much needed exposure to the international systems of production and finance. Our brains will become even better. If the atmosphere is totally free, many of our top brains will return at once to India to exploit the cheap wages and they will form formidable multinationals desinged to beat the developed country multinationals.

Samsung could do that. And all of these Japanese companies could do that (the big names like Sony, Honda, Toyota, etc., were very small and insignificant at one time).

But if we are half hearted about this, then there will be an immediate current account crisis as well as a BOP crisis. We need to quickly boost the internal competition and build markets and institutions which can compete. We need to tell our people about the way India has to go. We have to then, finally, release India from its shackles. We have to then, make India FREE.

Let us therefore quickly build our institutions. Let us free the market from the meddling intervention of idiots. How come our bureacrats are so wise that they know how to interfere in our markets and fix prices? If in the West they could not discover such breaucrats after hundreds of years of intense study and search, then how come we suddenly founds thousands of such bureaucrats and clerks?

Where are the degrees offered in Universities in India called Ph.D. in Market Interference? I don't have that of a degree. I was never trained by the Government of India in Market Interference. I was taught only some simple plain history, political science, basic socialism, and basic law at the National Academy, and in the districts I was trained on how to fool the people and the politicians and be smart. One of my Deputy Commissioners told me during the back seat drives across Haryana that he will teach me to "be practical." Do you find me even trying to "be practical"? I am perhaps the biggest fool in his eyes now, writing so plainly and blatantly, ruining my future career as your Governor or even President.

But I have finally decided: By "being practical," my future generations will rot in India. I care for India far more than I care for my current job or even future glorification as your Secretary to the Government of India, and I care for my children and future grandchildren far more than I care about India. I am sure that you care more about yourself and your future children than you care about me or the current political leaders or bureaucrats. Actually, there is a contract we have with our leaders. We make them leaders to that they will make us (and each of us) rich and powerful. We do not give them our salutes or bowing, or red carpets or red lights over their cars just because we care so much for their fat buttocks that these have to be placed on soft velvety sofas while we sit on the mud without a roof over our heads as students in a village school. They have signed up to make us rich and powerful. So they had better do something for us else they can be thrown into the dustbin of history. So we need to sit together and in our own self interest, analyze the rot in India. The faster we discover the reason why our entire country is rotting so badly, the faster we will know how to get out of this mess.

In fact, most top bureaucrats in India don't even know the difference between Marx's theory of value and that of Marshall. They have no idea why Adam Smith was right. If Adam Smith recognized two hundred years ago that the collective wisdom of the people, operating through a free market system, is more efficient than the wisdom of a few planners, why then do we have a "Planning Commission?" Which smarter people sit in the Planning Commission arrogating to themselves the wisdom and the smartness which even Adam Smith and no one else in the world has? What do our planners do more efficiently that markets cannot do on their own? They are fools and they know not that fact. There cannot be a bigger fool than that, truly. The only problem is that they are making fools of all of us in the country. That is the real problem.

There are definitely some areas which need attention by the "planners," such as coordinating information flows between the government and business, or in trying to set the "correct" price for public goods. But in general, it is necessary to shut down Yojana Bhawan, and to replace it with a body on the lines of MITI of Japan. I will come back to institutions again and again, later, because I think that unless we change our attitudes and our institutions, no amount of imported technology will help. That is because technology does not "grow" on its own. It requires an appropriate environment to grow, an environment that is provided only when the institutions provide the "right" incentives.

It may sound that I am giving excessive importance to technology, but we have seen a quiet disdain for technology in our country, which, to me, seems to account for an inordinately large part of our bad decision making. Take for example, our import of computers, and compare with what tiny nations like Taiwan did.

Did Taiwan invent the computer? Or any of its parts? The answer is clearly, no. But how then is it that a large chunk of computer components are made in Taiwan? The reason seems to me to be its policy of importing huge amounts of the latest technology at the cheapest possible price, and then letting its domestic industries attempt to copy and produce what they have imported. The first step has to be to import computers and the second step has to be to quickly adopt the new technology. The consequence of this attitude has been that Taiwan today is one of the great success stories in the world.

By adopting the latest technology, a nation can overcome its past. But let us look at what we did in India. At first we did nothing. Then, finally, after Rajiv Gandhi, we started importing computers. The duties on these machines was so enormous that i t was not till the early 1990s that people started owning these machines. It is unbelievable but we lost out ten years in a technology that we should have subsidized people to purchase. Till today the technology has not been adopted by all our bureaucrats , industrialists and middle classes. How can then we hope to compete with any other nation? We may boast that we have a great software base, but we must remember - that was not created by our government, but by the piracy of computer books flooding our markets due to the demand of students in universities. It is not that our universities were able to do much to promote computer literacy. On the other hand, people, aware of the potential of this technology, paid thousands of rupees to go to private compute r teaching shops which mushroomed all over the nation.

* The technological gap:

One of the major things which comes to mind when looking at the prospects of India versus a developed country is the huge technological gap between the two. Ranging from agriculture to industry, from bureaucracy to retail stores, the difference in the use of technology between the developed world and India has become so vast that it appears to be a difficult matter for India to ever catch up with the developing world.

This concept needs no great elaboration, but one can illustrate it by considering the output of two different farmers, one using a bullock-driven plough and the other, a tractor. The man who sitting on the tractor ploughs a greater area, produces more and even if he sells at a lower rate per unit than the farmer who uses a plough bullock, he makes more money in a year's work than the former. The possibility of the farmer who uses the tractor becoming the owner of two tractors increases very fast, whereas the possibility of the farmer who uses a bullock cart, being able to afford a tractor, remains as remote as ever before. This is the difference between an average person in India and an average person in the developed world. The latter produces more, becomes richer, and continues to become richer at an ever-increasing rate compared to an Indian. The disparities thus increase and ever-widen. This phenomenon is visible to some extent in India itself, between people living in different parts of the count .

The difference between India and the developed world is now so much that whereas India as a whole is unable to produce aeroplanes on its own (it requires assistance from other countries to do so), in Australia, a high school had produced, in 193, an air- worthy two-seater airplane on its own as part of a school project. Children in the West know how to handle computers, microfiches, CD-ROMs, and have been exposed to practically all kinds of educational aids. In addition, by virtue of living in this society, these children have experienced extremely high technology and quality in their day-to-day life. Little wonder then that such children are many strides ahead of their peer in India, and are able to produce a much higher output from the day they join the work force.

I am giving below some common examples of use of technology, mere for illustrative purposes (to list the whole set would take many books):

1. Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) are located at various places in the shopping centres and one can draw cash 24 hours a day on all days of the week (subject to a daily drawal limit).

2. In every supermarket, except for vegetables, which one picks directly from the shelf, every item sold uses the barcode system. The checkout girl only has to pass each item above a bar-code reader or a digital weighing machine, which are connected t o a central computer. The computer immediately picks up the bar-code or the weight of the item, locates its price, and inputs the item name and price into the cash memo. After all the items are inputted, one can either pay in cash, or by the plastic ATM ca rd of any bank (since the supermarket computer is also attached to the banking network) and one can even draw some extra money from one's bank accounts at the supermarket itself. Payments can also be made by the credit card system.

3. Mobile car phones are a day-to-day part of life. One finds people carrying mobile phones in their briefcases and contacting people from any place in the city (even outside the cars). For business people, this means a great increase in productivity.

4. Most of the commercial buildings including ordinary shops, buildings of a university, etc., use automatic sliding doors, wherein an electronic eye detects an approaching person and slides open. These doors are electronically controlled and can be opened at night only by special electronic cards/ identification systems.

5. A large proportion of all buildings use the solar water heating system for domestic heating, and have 24 hour hot and cold running water in their bathrooms, kitchens, etc.

6. Many shops and supermarkets use sophisticated security systems with cameras/ etc., which are monitored centrally to prevent shoplifting.

7. Workers in the construction, carpentry, car repair, etc., businesses use the latest technology, mostly computerized, and the quality of their work is therefore as perfect as one can possibly expect. The finishing of a street, a wall, a table, or a traffic light is to be seen to be believed. Even manual workers use such high quality machines that their work turns out to be almost perfect.

8. The greatest miracle to a person coming from India is that power does not trip, nor fluctuate wildly as in India. Of course there could be sudden spikes due to line-failures on account of various mechanical reasons from time to time and one is advised to use a spike-guard in the more expensive electrical equipment, but certainly one does not have power cuts of any sort.

9. There are many frequency modulation radio stations, which relay stereophonic music. If one has the proper receiving equipment, one cannot distinguish the quality of reception coming from a radio station with a good-quality compact disk being played in one's music system.

10. Compact disks are the common mode of music packaging. Audio cassettes and record players are also available, but these are on the way out.

11. Computers are as common as manual typewriters are in India. Even primary schools use computers to manage the facility and the students.

12. Each house has piped cooking gas (or at least an electric oven).

13. There is a system of "phonecard" which is a magnetic card and can be used in the telephone booths, to make local/ STD calls. The magnetic component of the card is "consumed" each time a call is made.

14. Similarly, photocopiers in schools, libraries, and universities are fitted with a system which accepts coins/ magnetic card, etc., which measures the money paid for use of the photocopying service.

15. Automatic vending machines are located at various points in public places, where one can put in a coin and punch the item number to get a snack/ coffee/ cold drink/ cigarette,

etc. There is no pan-walla, of course, which is something one misses at times.

16. Parking in most public places requires a parking ticket to be purchased from the nearby ticket machine. One inserts a coin and the ticket purchased is displayed inside the car, in order to prevent fines from being levied.

17. The public lottery system, the horse-betting system, and most of the games in the local casino, are highly interactive and fully computerized.

18. Federal government offices have remote terminals from their parent offices in the capital, but when working on these computers one does not feel that there is any delay caused due to the distance.

When we look at the growth of nations (the Western nations, and the Eastern nations like Japan and Korea) we find the ability to absorb and create technology to be the distinguishing feature of all these nations. Technology, when fueled by the right m ix of governmental economic policies, is a most potent force not only for the eradication of poverty, but for gaining a superior competitive position in the world.

And yet, in India how many of us realise this? We tend to be fascinated by low level and preferably primitive technology. This could be either due to Gandhian influence on our thought, but I suspect this is largely due to our ignorance (that is changing rapidly now with the onset of cable television). Whatever happened in the past, I believe that we have to work overtime providing the right information base of technology to the people and introduce it in a big way in government. The feeble attempts being made by the National Informatics Center can not take us far. We have to jump on to the bandwagon of the internet and the world wide web before we are pushed further behind in this great race against time.

It is high time that we realize that only the best technology available must be used at any given point of time: there is no justification for the use of primitive technologies. Of course, if appropriate down-scaled, labor intensive technologies exist , there should be no objection to the use of such technologies, but even then the main criterion should be improved productivity.

I feel that whereas it is as good policy to go out of India to exhibit Indian products in various fairs and exhibitions, it would be much more strategic if a marketing approach it taken to promote technology in India. Since it is felt that India may not have adequate buyers of technology at present (this is a myth to which I do not however, subscribe), then the best thing would be to purchase a thousand each of the various items of high technology and to display these in the form of a permanent Cutting Edge of Technology Exhibitions all over India, even upto the level of small towns (at least at the district headquarters), and about ten to twenty such exhibitions in the bigger cities, so that there is a rapid increase in the awareness of such products in the school children, the entrepreneur and the common man in general. Displayed here should be all the kinds of hand-tools which are sold commonly in the supermarkets of developed countries, and other products which have high sales volumes in the developed markets. These products would give an idea to the entrepreneur about what sells abroad (including its retail price), and he would then be able to either set up production units which produce such items, or would be able to get hold of the appropriate technical collaboration to produce such items (and hopefully improve these products in the long run).

The fact that Indians can do this is obvious when we look at the example of Maruti. Till the Maruti car was put on the streets of India, the Indian entrepreneur had not been exposed to high technology cars and kept on producing shoddy quality goods required for the Ambassador and the Fiat. But suddenly, within a few years of his exposure to Maruti, the quality of goods produced has gone up and even the other cars have been forced to use better quality in their cars to be able to compete with rising consumer expectations.

I contend therefore that the government is totally unjustified in promoting outdated technology and must therefore take all steps to strategically promote high technology. The plea of heavy density of population does not cut much ice. When we examine the example of Samsung, the Korean giant, we find that Samsung sold practically all of its microwaves to foreign countries, until, partially induced by the wealth brought into Korea by these sales, the people of Korea became rich enough to afford his products within the country itself. Therefore, just because markets do not exist for certain products at present in India, it does not mean that we should make this an excuse for promoting only the labour-intensive primitive or even appropriate technologies, but should definitely strike out in the direction of high technology.

* Rudeness of Indians

A very good question was raised by a friend the other day. He asked, "I have traveled all over the world, but why is it that when I return to India, I am faced with extremely rude people? For example, at the international airports elsewhere, people at any desk greet you with a welcoming smile and a helping, attentive, attitude, while it appears that the Indian counterparts do not seem to be liking their job, and are extremely rude if even the slightest question is asked of them or if they find a s light discrepancy in something not to their liking. Also, when one goes anywhere in India, particularly in public organizations, why do people whose job it is to talk to you and help you, treat that as doing a favor to you?"

He was not quite happy with my answer that this is because of the incentive systems that we have designed, but felt that this is due to the attitude of Indians in general. I then gave him two example which sustained my basic premise of the incentive system being the problem. I might be wrong. But even if I am wrong in specific cases, and many Indian public servants do appear to have a dislike for their job and also have a bad attitude in genral, their attitude could be attributed to conditioning over time by bad incentive systems.

Take the example of the Computer Centers here at the University of Southern California. The centers are manned by student operators, who are part-time employees of the university. It is not quite true that all operators are born with the quality of politeness and goodwill toward other students. In fact, I have seen more American students with a 'bad attitude' toward their job than Asian students. Some of the operators are extremely rude. They will not respond while you wait at the counter, waiting to be checked in to a computer or waiting for a print-out. Even when they respond, they make it out as if they are doing a great favor to the users. Now, the job is so monotonous and un-interesting after a point that one would expect most people to display such an attitude. But most operators are in fact polite, attentive and caring. The reason for most operators being polite, I believe, is due to the act of politeness and service being given a great priority by the management.

The management has clearly demonstrated their commitment to politeness and being nice to users. For example, operators are trained in politeness when they join the job. If however, they are not quite polite as they are expected to be, and are caught being impolite (either by means of a public complaint, or by a supervisor), they are issued a written warning, and the second time, they are terminated. Full stop. No third chance is given. No further 'opportunity to reform,' no lenience is shown. Now, most students are expected by their parents in this country to at least earn part of their university costs, and with this job paying about $6000 per year, students have a very strong incentive to be polite, or else lose their funding. This is an example of a strong incentive system in favor of politeness. Thus, politeness is a part of the job specification of the person and if a person fails to meet a basic standard, he or she is terminated. Not so in India. In almost no job that I know of, at least in the public sector, is politeness listed as a specific requirement.

In economics, this is called arriving at a suitable 'incentive contract' which becomes costly to the party to break. I believe that the managements here give tremendous importance to the design of such contracts. We need to give top priority to this aspect in India.

Let us take an example of a bad incentive contract from India. I will illustrate the example of a Nash equilibrium also, using this example, and show why the systems encourage impolite behavior.

Consider the case of a clerk in a government office whose job is to deal with public petitions or to answer queries from the public, in a system that does not allow for either rewards or punishments. Everybody is paid a fixed amount, which is determined by 'seniority.' To start an enquiry against a person is extremely costly in terms of transaction costs (net of benefits, e.g., in terms of gain of reputation of the officer). Both parties are aware of these high costs. Then, it is a Nash equilibrium for the clerk to continue to be impolite. It is so, because, given the bad attitude of the clerk, it is the best response for the officer to keep quiet about it and given that the officer is going to be keeping quiet, the best response of the clerk is to be rude.

On the other hand, if we were to change the incentive contract either by lowering the transaction costs or by increasing the benefits (e.g., if the gain in reputation of the officer is critical for the officer's promotion), then the above equilibrium would get disturbed at once, and the clerk would tend not to be impolite. [This is but one illustration of the power of many analytical concepts from economics]

* Self respect

An article by Adam Osborne: Adam Osborne is the guy who invented the first microcomputer bus called S-100. He's one of the two that started Apple computers (the other is Steve Jobs). This article was printed in the Dataquest magazine in the April 91 issue. It was written by Adam Osborne, who is the director of Silicon Valley Technologies and publisher of a monthly news-letter "From the Fountainhead" I am putting this here since there is a definite ring of truth about it; no matter how painful this may sound.

I was raised in Tamil Nadu in South India, in the ashram of Sri Ramana Maharishi, of an English father and a Polish mother. Both were dedicated followers of Sri Ramana Maharishi. Therefore as a child growing up in the small town of Tiruvann amalai, Tamilnadu. I was fluent in Tamil and was surrounded by Indians who were proud of their nationality and heritage, and believed they had a lot to teach us Europeans.

I still speak enough Tamil to get by, and feel that my roots are indeed in India. I must be only professed "vellackaaren" (=white) Tamilian in America. After all, how could anyone, even an English boy, grown up in Tiruvannamalai, in the ashram of Sri Ramana Maharishi, and not acquire a pride in his roots?

It is therefore with some misgivings that today I find myself dealing with Indians, many of who do not feel proud of their Indianness. Indian Americans represent the most affluent minority in America, ahead of Jewish Americans and Japanese Americans. This is a statistic and not an opinion. Indians swarm all over the Silicon valley, where they are an integral part of most product development teams: be they teams developing new semiconductor chips, software packages or computers. Indians are recognized throughout America as technically superior. No Indian in America has to explain his educational background, or apologize for his technical training. And yet, as a group, though Indian Americans are quick to acknowledge their caste, religion or family, the y lack national pride. Indians are not proud of their nationality as Indians, something I realized many years ago, Something that puzzled me. Recently, talking before Indian audiences on the lecture circuit, I have frequently talked to Indians of their lack of national pride, with telling results. Invariably, after making this assertion from the lecture podium, I find myself surrounded by Indians: Engineers, Scientists, doctors, even lawyers, all asserting the correctness of my observations, "You are correct," they will assert. "I am not proud that I am an Indian." Is the reasons India's colonial heritage? Who knows? But whatever the reason, it is a pity. Since the day Indians learn pride, India will rapidly move out of its third world status to become on e of the world's industrial powers.

Today I work with an Indian American, trying to help him make his dream come true. And in the process, make my own dream come true, since I have hitched my dream to his. Then, with my dream realized, I will return to India, to preach Indian pride: not pride in being a Hindu, or practising Islam or being a Parsee, or a Sikh: not pride in being a Tamilian, or a Telugu, or a Punjabi, or a Marwari; not pride in being a Brahmin rather than a lesser caste.

These are all divisive differences that India would be better off without. But I will preach that Indians must learn to be proud of being Indians just as Singapore nationals are proud of their nationality, irrespective of their race or their religion. Then there will be no more shoddy Indian products, since every worker will generate output with the stamp of a proud man on it. With self-evident quality that screams out: "That is the work of an Indian!" And corruption will decline.

For, although bribes are solicited by greedy, dishonest men, as well as by men who do not earn enough to feed themselves and their families, and even though these root causes of corruption transcend the bases of lack of Indian pride of which I speak, nevertheless a proud man will pause, more than a man without pride, before extending his hand to receive a bribe. And a proud Indian will try harder to be responsible for products and services that others will praise. And it is in that praise that India's future Industrial greatness lies.

- Adam Osborne