India Must Create its Own Model of Innovation – Computer Society of India

January 5, 2013 –  India needs to evolve its own model for technology innovation and entrepreneurship for long-term balanced and equitable growth, said Satish Babu, President, Computer Society of India, while delivering the Platinum Jubilee Lecture in the ICT track at the 100^th Indian Science Congress that is being held at Kolkatta from January 3-7, 2013.

He said that the IT-BPO industry in India had made tremendous strides in the last two decades, touching close to USD 100 billion in turnover in 2012, and employing over 1.7 crore persons directly and indirectly. The industry contributes to over 7% of the country’s GDP and a quarter of its exports.

Despite this, the 2012 assessment of the ICT Development Index of countries by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), places India at 119th out of 155 countries. This points to a significant asymmetry in the ICT-vs-IT scenario, with wealth creation, employment and other benefits of the IT industry accruing largely to the urban population. IT industry is also attracting a significant share of the national talent, which may be detrimental to strategic priority of balanced and sustainable national growth.

“While innovation and entrepreneurship is certainly the way forward, the ‘Silicon valley’ model of start-up enterprises, may perhaps be appropriate for some sections, is not necessarily the most appropriate for the whole country, especially for rural India. Though there is no dearth of innovation or talented human resources in rural India, we do not seem to have a model that systematically promotes technology innovation, which at the same time permits social capital formation and accumulation together with economic capital and intellectual capital. The development of Social capital in the rural areas would significantly alter the rural-urban asymmetry.” He added.

He also said that Open Source philosophy together with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) – a genre of software that is considered as robust, non-restrictive, secure and extremely cost-effective, offers abundant potential that can be leveraged to create such a model of growth. The promotion and widespread use of FOSS tools, technologies and thinking can be leveraged to build this model of inclusive, distributed and equitable growth and development of the country.

The historic 100th edition of the Indian Science Congress was inaugurated on 3 Jan 2013 by the Hon. President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, in the presence of the Hon. Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and the Hon. Chief Minister of West Bengal, Smt.Mamta Banerjee.