CNBC-TV18
Updated Jul 06, 2011 at 04:28pm IST
Ideas, Ideas that move beyond the confines of laboratories and a way from the old and accepted towards new processes, structures and wine sets, that break the mould and give birth to new possibilities that ladies and gentleman is the key to innovation.
Well innovation be the key to India's double digit growth dream, Will ideas give rise to sustainable solutions to the problems of over a billion people?
More importantly, will innovation be India's key differentiator in an integrated global economy? The government seems to be putting its wage behind the power of innovation, the decade is been started as the decade of innovation with the National Innovation Council headed by the man who capitalize India’s telecom revolution.
Join us as we speak to Sam Pitroda on how he intends to create a framework to develop innovative solutions to propel India towards an unlimited future. Welcome to this very special series of India Unlimited with Sam Pitroda.
An inventor, entrepreneur and policy maker, Satyanarayan N Gangaram Pitroda or Sam Pitroda is considered responsible for the communication revolution that India witnessed.
After his much loaded work at The National Knowledge Commission, the Government of India has now vested him with the responsibility to create the roadmap for India’s decade of innovation from 2010 to 2020. Here he shares some of his key thoughts that will drive this exercise.
"Innovation is not a project, it is a process. The fact that we are growing today at 9 to 10 percent and the fact that we plan to grow at that rate for the next couple of decades to really lift hard number of people at the bottom of the pyramid we need to focus on two things, one, right kind of skills that we need and two, innovations. The gut to innovate not only for us to be globally competitive in products and services but also to really restructure our own processes, governance structures because at times people like us think that we have 19th century mind set and 20th century processes and 21st century needs," says Sam, Advisor to the Prime Minister and Chairman, National Innovation Council.
It is to meet those needs that India needs the role of innovation to make use of ideas and create solutions to benefit the masses that innovation steps bring development closer to its people.
"Idea is that innovators and traditional knowledge holders in one part of country should learn from simple people in another part of country. How will they learn? They will learn in local languages. They cannot learn in English.
"Thirdly when we learn from people they should not become anonymous, their identity should be preserved, should be protected, should be honored. And third we add any value, taken to the market, generate some revenue, then reasonable share should go back to the people because there is their idea after all which made it possible.
So with this philosophy we started and the first organizational we start up was Shrishti 93 and then Gyan in 97 and NIF we brought in 2000 with the department of science and technology and I must say when we began in 2000 we hardly had ten thousand ideas innovation and traditional practices, in last ten years we could reach a number of hundred forty thousand."
Says Professor Anil Gupta of National Innovation Council: "The base of inclusion of people across the country hasn’t been fast enough, different parts of the country remain still very poor though some progress is been made but is not fast enough to bring people in their own sort teenage years lets say young people into better situation in many parts of the country. There are communities which find if you are not been sufficiently included in the pace of progress and the very poor people are not getting up to be able to stand on their own feet quickly enough. So the growth must be accompanied by a much faster inclusion in the growth so we have to find the ways to do that, what we know is that the present way hasn’t done this. It has grown the economy but the pace of inclusion hasn’t been fast."
Arun Maira, Member of the National Innovation Council said: To bring in people from the bottom of the pyramid to the folds of development, to match the urban rural divide these are some of the core challenges that India needs to contend with. Will innovation help lend pace to inclusion, will innovation create solutions for the upcoming young Indian population, we ask some these final questions.
Small steps to big strides the innovation movement is concern with the problems of each and every Indian but more importantly to create solutions for the five hundred and fifty billion young population, their education, employment and future prospects there is need to ensure that India reach the benefits of its demographic dividend in the times to come.
"In a country where you have five hundred and fifty million young below age of twenty five you got to really look at their future, their prosperity, their jobs and I don’t think we are really in tune with their needs today. Lot of our legacy comes from British Raj which our own administration and bureaucracy has perfected. Fortunately in 91 when we decided to dismantle British Raj in terms of license Raj and encourage entrepreneurship, private initiative, free market economy we have seen this gain but to continue this gain we need innovations and that’s why all this emphasis on innovation," Sam asserts.
Sustainable ideas, creative solutions and more importantly ideas that truly address the real needs of the people of India.
This is what the innovation council hopes to inspire.
"We have been one of the most innovative countries in the world in every sphere in science we invented zero leave alone anything else if u didn’t have the zero you wouldn’t have the whole digital age but not just that if you look at the art and culture and even religions, I think two of the world’s greatest religions practiced by most people were also I might say invented may not be the right word here but we have given them to the world but we did slip back over the last two or three hundred years from being 25% of the global economy to 2 per cent and then 0.2 per cent so I think this is a great time for us to start to get back to where we were," said Saurabh Srivastav, also a member of the National Innovation Council.
The inspiration for India’s future lies in India’s past the answers for its future lies within. It is just the right time to harness the country’s old resources and garner strength for an unlimited future.
"Hundred forty thousand ideas innovations, traditional knowledge practices from over 545 districts of the country almost we have covered everywhere. And last 13 years we have been walking every six month we call it Shobh Yatra and the last 26th Shobh Yatra was in Meghalaya and to meet one community we have to climb down four thousand feet and climb up four thousand feet so you can imagine that the effort is to go out and search for ideas and knowledge. If we had waited for ideas to come to us then we would not have receive more than ten thousand more in last ten years," Anil Gupta said.
"First of all each one of us will have to take responsibility individually and collectively to change. Each one of us will have to look at the processes that we follow and re-engineer our processes for example how do we get birth certificate, how do we apply for admission in school, Is it really relevant today to get five copies of the mark sheet you know stamp by gazetted officer, this is obscene they don’t make sense anymore, why do we following because everybody follows it.
I am even going further and asking questions like why does it take four years to get a degree, who decided it should take four years to get a degree," questioned Sam.
Asking the right questions and looking for the right answers will be the key to drive India's wealth to the next level and we will continue to ask some of those questions but after a very short break. You are watching India Unlimited with Sam Pitroda.
Its time to sit up and challenge the status quo and take innovation everywhere from products to services from within organization to religion to science technology and even government. How do we begin on this innovated journey here’s Sam Pitroda with his ideas.
"How do we think of innovation in every aspect of our life, to me it is about redefining myself, I need to think through and say now that we are a country of billion connected people, now that we are a country of five hundred and fifty million young, how do I think differently. What happens to my work, my thought process so it’s a platform we want to make sure that innovation touches every aspect, government, education, health, public delivery system, technology, science, social sector, Ngo's, families and all kind of assets we have. How do we re-look at our assets. How do I re-look at my rivers, how do I re-look at agriculture it’s a pretty complicated demand on our people. But I think we all need to begin to think differently," Sam asks.
Innovation has to be a way of life, to touch every sphere and bring about a quantum leap in the Indian development story and sustain its economic growth and here are some more insights on how we can achieve that.
"Society continue to believe that if you give to big people on the top the kursis and the positions and these leaders they will somehow make change come about but it doesn’t work fast enough and you have the problems of collaboration among them and these could be not necessarily cabinet members, they could be expert from different disciplines they can’t get together to agree on what is the method to go forth and meanwhile like I said the poor kids of this country are waiting malnourished, no nutrition, no water for hope to get jobs. So we need another method," Arun Maira commented.
Think differently, think afresh and find easy solutions, the Innovation Council is even ready to question how on governments and administration needs to change.
Think differently, think afresh and find easy solutions, the Innovation Council is even ready to question how on governments and administration needs to change.
"We need to begin to ask fundamental questions which we haven’t ask for many years, In addition we need to go to technology, information systems, communication to really do things differently because we have different tools today. Can you imagine twenty years ago that we are now connected with seven hundred million phones, twenty years ago we had two millions phones, it used to take us fifteen years to get a telephone connection. Now that nation is connected we have to think differently. Many times I said that we fundamentally have tree challenges n the country, one disparity, disparity between rich and poor, urban-rural, educated-uneducated, how do we really reduce that disparity, we can never get rid of it but can we reduce it to a point we all feel good about standard of living in our country. Can we really provide dignity to labour, can we really give them minimum basic needs relation to water, sanitation, education, health, housing, power, whatever," Sam said.
"True demography is a big challenge in this country, on one hand we have five hundred and fifty million young below age of twenty five on the other hand we need to create 20 million new jobs every year, year after year. How we do that? Who is working on it? Are these jobs going to come from agriculture, are they going come from software, services, what, where, how? Third is really development, everything is happening in India but not happening fast enough, we are building roads but not fast enough, we are building power plants not fast enough, homes we need more homes. Just take for example education, we look at higher education as part of Knowledge commission and we recommended focus on three things, one expansion, a country of 1.1 billion people cannot have three hundred and fifty universities, may be we need fifteen hundred, may be thousand who knows. But we need lot of new universities, old universities, small universities and all that," said Sam.
We need different methods we need fresh ideas and above all we need new solutions to India’s old problems. Here we end the first part of our India Unlimited series. Join us same time, same place next week for our second episode of India Unlimited with Sam Pitroda.
Interviews & Script by Sharmila Bhowmick, Senior Producer, CNBC-TV18
Feedback: indiaunlimited@network18online.com
Follow Sam on twitter @ pitrodasam
The show timings are: Sat 11:30 am, 10:30 pm
Sun 7 pm
Follow Sam on twitter @ pitrodasam
The show timings are: Sat 11:30 am, 10:30 pm
Sun 7 pm
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