Innovation - A Few Thoughts

Innovations - A Few Thoughts

Aniruddha Sarkar

13 September 2023

Recently, a concern was expressed by one prominent Indian Political leader at Leiden University, Netherlands, on the 10th of September 2023.

He said the Indian Information Technology industry could not innovate.

With due respect, I, as an Information Technology Professional in India, beg to differ.

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Let us look back at the geography of Europe, where he said that.

In Europe, there is a host of smaller nations. These nations lacked individual natural resources for independent survival.

They went out on ships to trade across the oceans. Over time, they used their superior firepower to establish their colonies across the globe. Thus, these nations could amass massive wealth to sustain themselves for a century or two.

These people had to innovate newer weapons, newer and faster transportation modes on land, newer concepts like wheels, and many more implements.

Subsequently, the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe.

Thus, the Europeans kept on dominating and exploiting a major part of the Asian and African continents.

If you analyze, the major differentiator was higher firepower and divisive tactics.

An appropriate example could be the Battle of Plassey. The then Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-doula, had a very large number of soldiers on the battleground. However, a small contingent of British soldiers, under the command of Robert Clive, won the battle. There was a suspicion that a few commanders of Siraj might have sided with the British.

Then onward, the British East India Company stopped behaving like a trader. They started occupying the Mughal Empire quickly. For the next two centuries, this South Asian geography remained under the British Rule.

Thus, for Europe, the necessity of 'Innovation' was to build a newer approach to dominate, exploit, and survive.

That was the colonial era.

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Today, in Europe, what are the key necessities for innovation?

It is by and large the same as earlier.

Innovate on the superior war machinery for the new information age, build global influence, and sell high-tech arms to other nations. Remain wealthy and survive.

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Now, let us talk about the innovations that India did, particularly in Information Technology.

British left India in 1947. They transported resources from India for over two centuries to their homeland. For that purpose, the British set up a vast Railway Network connecting all the major sea and riverine ports in India. India was denuded of resources accumulated over millennia.

Before their departure, in the year 1943, the British Rulers even triggered an artificial famine in Bengal by hoarding food stock. Four million Bengali people died of hunger on the streets.

When the British finally left India, they left this resource-rich land high and dry. This was one of the darkest history of the British Colonial Rule.

Independent India had no options left but to innovate in multiple areas for survival.

The initial focus was on building infrastructure rapidly. India could do that reasonably well. A few large integrated Steel Plants came up with foreign collaborations, mainly Russian and German. Along with that, many downstream industries also came up. Infrastructure setup gained momentum.

I call this innovation in thought at the highest level to achieve self-dependence.

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Gradually, many manufacturing units came up in both the Government Sector and the Private sector.

By the next five decades after independence, India could manufacture anything from a pin to an amphibious tank.

Side-by-side, India set up Centers for Excellence in Research for multiple high-technology areas. These were areas like Atomic Energy, Space Research, Super Computing, Telecommunications, High Yield Food Research, Oil exploration, etc. The results were visible soon.

There was a green revolution in India. We started producing our own staples. We also witnessed Operation Flood, meaning sufficiency in milk production. India achieved food security. For a billion-plus population, this is an outstanding achievement.

India became a nuclear power. India also placed multiple satellites in space for many peaceful purposes.

These were the second wave of results from the innovative thoughts at the highest level.

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The Information Technology era was relatively new.

The government of India asked IBM to set up manufacturing facilities in India. IBM declined. They exited India in 1977. Indian Engineers from a PSU company silently took over maintenance of all the computing machines left by IBM. The IBM machine users in India appreciated and recognized the innovations done by this PSU company. These Field Engineers maintained a low profile. They never boasted. Within their small toolrooms, they innovated on a good number of hardware and firmware. The imported systems were up and running in many non-stop mission-critical application environments. Customers could thus save a lot of foreign exchange otherwise required for importing costly spares from OEMs abroad.

I call this a massively successful innovation that was badly required for a developing country like India post-1977.

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Next, India opted for open-source operating systems. Reserve Bank of India implemented the Unix boxes for the first time in the early 1980s.

I call this a massive innovative thought by the Government.

The IT Industry took the cue from the Government and kept on automating the Government, business, and industrial applications using open-source, nonproprietary systems.

I call this a massive third wave of innovative thinking, triggered by the Indian IT Sector.

India was the early bird adopter of any innovative technology that was launched abroad.

Thus, from the Online Railway Reservations System to the BSE online trading system, to the Unique Identification Authority of India's AADHAAR, all along, India was innovating in Systems Integration.

This is a concept that is not understood by many people.

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Here is a sublime message.

Instead of wasting time and scarce resources on Innovation in a niche area, we, Indian IT professionals, spent our time on Systems Integration using various state-of-the-art products, tools, and technologies to solve problems of massive scale for the country.

That meant we identified a few burning problems within India to be solved urgently.

Then we went forward to identify all the relevant technology components to be put together to solve these problems.

PUTTING TOGETHER was the major challenge. That was where our Indian IT brains worked day and night against murderous schedules.

We had to build complex domain-heavy software from scratch and make those millions of software source lines of code run on open-source operating systems-based non-proprietary machines.

By the turn of the last century, India was far ahead of many other advanced nations in rolling out large-scale IT-based end-to-end solutions.

Around the beginning of the 21st century, the innovative nations realized one vital point. They did well at a few niche innovations here and there. However, they lacked a few integrated solution frameworks that could efficiently power their Government Business Processes and/ or Corporate Industrial workflows end-to-end.

They lacked an organized end-to-end solution approach that could solve their mega problems.

A new paradigm shift gradually took off.

A few governments and multinationals the world over approached the Indian IT industry. They asked the Indian Multinational IT Companies to manage their total end-to-end workflow processes and also to suggest productivity improvements.

Indian IT Industry accepted those challenges. Indian IT Professionals kept on innovating to cater to those needs. Over time, these International Customers experienced major productivity gains.

WE, THE INDIAN IT PROFESSIONALS, INNOVATE AS A MATTER OF HABIT. WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT.

Mr. Politician, Sir, please understand that the Indian IT Industry has outperformed every other nation in terms of innovations in products and services by providing complex systems integration solutions.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRIVATE CUSTOMERS NEED IS A COMPLETE END-TO-END SOLUTION. ARTICULATION OF SUCH COMPLEX SOLUTIONS ARE MASSIVELY INNOVATIVE JOB.

Unfortunately, many people miss this point. They count the number of patents originating from a country and thus take a position on innovation. Such an approach may lead one to an immature conclusion. The existence of a large number of patents in a country may not always lead to prudence in collective thoughts and actions in mega problem-solving for that country.

As per our millennia-old civilizational culture, we share our knowledge and expertise with all those who need that. We don't hoard our knowledge. We don't make a profit out of other people's ignorance or misery. The latest pandemic management by India vis-à-vis other advanced nations bears testimony to these facts.

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