[Commons-Law] commons-law Digest, Vol 38, Issue 8

[Achal Prabhala]

How nice to see Shourie pissing all over himself for a change instead of on
Dalits and Muslims.

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Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 3:30 PM
Subject: commons-law Digest, Vol 38, Issue 8


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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. In this tech-driven world, we can’t be asleep at the wheel
>       (Hasit seth)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:56:56 +0530
> From: "Hasit seth" <hbs.law at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Commons-Law] In this tech-driven world, we can’t be asleep
> at the wheel
> To: commons-law at sarai.net
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> <8b60429e0609120026m6d601fb8ia4140fc14b15b2a4 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="WINDOWS-1252"; format=flowed
>
> At least somebody in this country (India) is thinking  seriously about
> technology and its engagement with society without painting doomsday
> scenario of every possible shade. I think a society's future rate of
> progress can be easily predicted as inverse to the count of luddities.
>
> Hasit
> ==================
> In this tech-driven world, we can't be asleep at the wheel
> Arun Shourie
> (Indian Express Online www.indianexpress.com)
>
> Posted online: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email
> The cost of squandering resources on populist schemes will be paid not
> just in missed advantages but also in the resulting social unrest.
> First in a three-part series
>
> Arun Shourie
> Related Stories
>
> 'Parity', did you say?This is about energy, did you say?Rescued from
> the abyssThird-class governance can't give first-class response to
> terrorismNational security through redefinition
>
>  Among the propellers that are driving the world, technology is one of
> the most forceful. Six features about its advance have far-reaching
> consequences for India:
>
> • To start with, what has seemed impossible suddenly begins to seem
possible
>
> • Second, whatever seems possible comes to pass
>
> • Third, it comes to pass sooner than anyone had thought possible
>
> • Fourth, with each decade, it comes to pass sooner and sooner. And
> there is good reason for that: the advances are cumulative
>
> • Fifth, the advances are interdependent. Today, drug discovery is
> becoming critically dependent on biotechnology. Biotechnology, in
> turn, is critically dependent on advances in other technologies — DNA
> could not have been decoded but for advances in IT.
>
> • Sixth, each advance has effects that spread farther than anyone had
> imagined. Today, the technologies that rivals have mastered are a
> major influence on the balance of power between countries. Companies
> rise and, just as swiftly are wiped out by some new Bill Gates working
> out of a garage. The livelihood of thousands disappears overnight as
> entire professions are wiped out and new ones appear.
>
> Till just the other day in India, telephony was confined to fixed line
> instruments; PCOs were a leap forward — they provided unimagined
> access to those who could not get fixed line connections, and
> thousands got a new way of earning a living; today, with millions
> having mobiles, fewer go to PCOs.
>
> Nor are we anywhere near the end: there is intense competition among
> service providers, each has invested crores in infrastructure; but
> now, thanks to advances in internet telephony, you can call the US or
> Europe for almost nothing. What will that do to the thousands of
> crores invested by companies in setting up telecom infrastructure?
>
> The effects on national security are even more evident, just as they
> are of even greater consequence. Terrorists remind us every day of the
> consequences of the miniaturization and increased lethality of the
> technologies of violence. But the lesson is not lost on states. As
> technology advances, economies become progressively integrated. That
> induces the Chinese to acquire capabilities to hurl what they call
> "the assassin's mace" at the "acupuncture points" of other, modern,
> integrated societies — national power grids, air-traffic control
> systems, rail-traffic control systems, financial and banking
> operations, communication networks — so that, by disrupting and
> corrupting them simultaneously, the societies are thrown into disarray
> for those few vital moments.
>
> Lemmas
>
> For us in India, pushed around as we are ever so often by Luddites,
> these features of technological change hold several lemmas.
>
> First, as a consequence of technological and economic changes, every
> country is bound to be buffeted by massive dislocations. Take what is
> today the most successful example of propelling and managing change:
> China. According to official Chinese estimates, the "floating
> population" is anywhere between 120 and 140 million. As they lose
> rights to medical treatment and education once they leave their place
> of residence, the 20 million children in tow are now bereft of these
> services. And this is the situation in a country that has today the
> most purposive government among emerging economies.
>
> So massive dislocations are inevitable. But equally important is the
> related lesson: the march of technology will not be slowed down just
> because we have not been able to handle the dislocations or are
> paralysed by the fear of them. A country paralysed by fear of such
> dislocations, unable to decide which of competing courses to adopt,
> which stops change, will not just fall behind. It will be wiped out.
> And for a simple reason: its rivals won't slow down for it to solve
> its problems.
>
> Third, as change is so rapid, as it is cumulative, falling behind for
> a while makes catching up very difficult. When affairs are stationary
> or change is slow, even if we falter for a while, we can catch up soon
> enough. But when change is rapid, once we falter, the one who has
> captured the lead is able to go on lengthening the distance. China and
> India were at par in the mid- and late seventies. China began reforms
> in 1978. Our political class — weak, imprisoned in slogans of the past
> — had to wait for a breakdown in 1991 to initiate reforms. That lapse
> has made all the difference. Today, even in the Indian market, in an
> industry like electronics, many of our manufacturers are traders in
> Chinese products.
>
> Nor is one leap enough. One has to keep forging ahead. Again, the
> contrast is evident; China has sustained its momentum of reforms for
> 25 years; in India, splintered "coalitions" give everyone enough power
> to block everything, they leave no one with sufficient power to push
> anything.
>
> Nor is it enough to catch change by the forelocks. As advances are
> interdependent, if we falter in one discipline, we will be drowned in
> a cascade.
>
> Fifth, keeping up requires huge investments. We have had one major
> electronics complex — in Mohali, near Chandigarh. Even to this day it
> is not able to fabricate chips and the like at the submicron levels
> that have become customary. Building a new fab with the requisite
> capability costs $3-4 billion a piece. China is building six of them
> in one go. Countries that cannot muster up that kind of investment
> will have to forego those technologies or become hopelessly dependent
> on others for them.
>
> The effects will not be just on consumer items, and exports. The fabs
> are vital for national security. Not being able to construct the
> latest ones is to put the country in danger. Countries which waste
> resources on boondoggles - like the Employment Guarantee Scheme, or
> unaccounted subsidies - don't just put themselves at a competitive
> disadvantage but at risk.
>
> Next, the new technologies require ever higher, ever more complex and
> ever changing skills. "The masses", "the common man" just do not have
> them, and are not going to have them in the foreseeable future. It
> follows that countries which allow standards of higher education to
> fall; countries which do not institute systems to continually upgrade
> skills; countries which appoint and promote personnel on
> considerations other than merit (e.g., birth); countries which lose
> their best minds to others, will fall behind.
>
> The technologies that are revolutionising the world today are
> developed by minuscule minorities, by microscopic scientific and
> engineering elites. To fail to value these elites, to trample in the
> name of "equality" the incentives and work-environment that would spur
> them to do their best in our country is to forfeit our future. One has
> only to bear two facts from recent history in mind as an antidote to
> the nonsense which progressives feed us so often. One, the leaders and
> movements that have shouted the most about "equality" are the very
> ones who set up the most tyrannical regimes, the ones that came to be
> marred by the most brazen inequalities — who has not read of the
> nomenklatura that came to rule, and eventually ruin, the USSR?
>
> Second, when you are accosted for being an elitist on this score, when
> you are lectured about the "revolutionary creativity of the masses",
> remind yourself of the fate of Mao's Great Leap Forward, of those
> backyard steel furnaces, so idolised by our revolutionaries.
>
> We thus have a duality. On the one side are two facts: without the new
> technologies, the country will be endangered; and these technologies
> will be developed by tiny elites. On the other side is the equally
> undeniable fact: the new technologies will just not provide the
> massive employment that the growth in population and labour force
> necessitate in India. Even a factory producing automobile parts looks
> like a Japanese "lights-out" factory. There are few persons on the
> shop floor: production is all CAD-CAM. The precision that is today
> demanded by manufacturers who will use these components in their cars
> and trucks is measured in microns; the dimensions have to be measured
> by laser beams. This means that for the kind of numbers that need to
> be absorbed - we need to create 80 million jobs in the next five years
> — we have to put massive resources into the only activities which can
> absorb such numbers: agriculture and infrastructure.
>
> Thus, as Deng would have said, we have to walk on two legs. And that
> reinforces the point we glimpsed earlier: the cost of squandering
> resources on wasteful, populist schemes will not just be that we will
> not have those fabs, and thereby forfeit both competitive advantage
> and national security; we will foment social unrest.
>
> Given these truisms, what must we be doing?
>
> (To be continued)
>
>
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> End of commons-law Digest, Vol 38, Issue 8
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