[Commons-Law] Re: More on the Development Agenda (Sudhir) (Hasit)

[Hasit seth]

Dear Sudhir and others,

    Your comments about CSIR and Dr. Mashelkar are interesting. Let
me add a little from it to balance the perspective.  CSIR is an
admirable effort at creating an industrial and applied research base
in India when in first 50 years of independence India had little
industrial research base.  Industrial research needs a market
(consumer, military or other) to flourish and to invest in research.
Without a viable industrial consumer market in early decades,
government had to step in.  Also, those were the years of "socialist"
model of science and technology.

   CSIR labs have done some good work.  For example, work of National
Chemical Laboratories in catalyst research is quite good.  More
details are of course here http://www.csir.res.in/.  Research
capabilities in fields like aerospace take decades to mature.  Also, a
lot of this industrial research is pretty much falls under basic
research too.

   I do see a terrible game of one-upmanship in CSIR research.  Their
patents usually list a dozen or more inventors, which though not wrong
is quite unusual.  I guess another case of overstaffing as is common
with Government of India.  As for patent quality being abysmal, it
reflects the research done.  If a lot of money is spent on staff
salaries and that too on hundreds of non-scientific adminstrative
staff, then I guess we get a big payroll not a steady output of
commerically valuable research.  Also, government research has no
pressure of market to bring out useful research.  Exception would be
Soviet Russia research where if goals of the "great leader" were not
fulfilled by a government lab then a one way ticket to Sieberia was
ensured.

   Dr. Mashelkar's insistence on patents is nothing abnormal.  If you
are in the game of industrial research like CSIR is, then patents are
the common quantitative indicators of research outputs.  Patenting
will at least give some returns for the vast amount of public money
spent in industrial research in the first place.  I am sure no one is
arguing that quantum of money spent on patenting is a large part of
CSIR budget.  With the new patent law which will ensure that anything
invented in India needs a patent application to be filed first in
India will bring down costs quite a lot.  An English pat. application
filed in India, when it is being refiled in the US costs at least
1/4th or 1/5th of original US patent application written afresh.

    What exactly should be the set of policies governing research and
innovation in a developing society?  India's national innovation
foundation (NIF) promotes almost only rural research.  Does NIF think
that India just needs rural research?  Rural research is seriously
admirable work, but this is a lopsided idea of a research policy.
Rural innovations are just one little aspect of technology spectrum.
Developing societies want and need every possible leap in technology
but how about contributing something back?  If we do not create
technology then we will be reduced to being only consumers.  Cellular
phone is just one example about how advanced technology can provide
tools for accelerating development.  Instead of cutting edge research
in wireless technology, we are more interested in promoting divine
benefits of cow-urine.  India's C-DOT (Centre for Development of
Telematics) did cutting edge work to create rural electronic
exchanges.  It was C-DOT's RAX and MAX exchnages that gave us STD
dialling and put an end to "trunk calls".  They designed it from
scratch.  Amazing work.  What next? Nothing, it became another
decaying government lab.

   We all love using computers, internet, cell-phones, TVs and every
other modern gadget and what have we in India invented or improved out
of this? Countries, societies and industries which create such cutting
edge tools and take giant leaps in technology are not going to give
away their technology out of some charitable aims.  It cost them real
money and effort to create it.  They will protect it as much as
possible, patents or no-patents.  Only way to compete is to create
more technology, improve existing technology.  Narrow focus of
anti-patents debate misses this big picture.

Regards,
Hasit Seth