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Technology in India
(From The New York Times, 7/3/89, p. 4)
New Delhi Journal
SHINY TOMORROW MEETS RAGGED, HUNGRY TODAY
By Barbara Crossette
Special to the New York Times
NEW DELHI, July 2 -- A haunting video documentary making the
unofficial rounds here chronicles a community's psychological
progression from bewilderment through awakening to defiance as it
realizes it is about to be displaced by a missile site.
For the un-self-conscious participants in the film, "Voices from
Baliapore," the missile has become their introduction to high
technology, and it threatens everything familiar. Baliapore is a
city on India's east coast.
India produces rockets, cars, computers, television sets and
refrigerators in half a dozen colors. But as recent statistics
from the Asian Development Bank show, India also harbors a larger
and larger proportion of the world's poorest people, the majority
of them illiterate, vulnerable to epidemic diseases and forced to
live without lighting, clean water or rudimentary communication
links to other Indians.
Bridging the gap is not merely a material problem any more, say
some experts in government and the private think tanks.
Alienation grows as technology expands, and the singularly Indian
model of austerity and unashamed simplicity exemplified by
Mohandas K. Gandhi fades from public life.
At the same time, the flow of information is often restricted by
bureaucrats who have learned to wield it, and their literacy, as
tools of power against the disadvantaged.
Among the Indian philosopher-technocrats looking for ways to
bring an understanding of science along with its benefits down to
village level are two influential civil servants with unorthodox
approaches.
Maheshwar Dayal, a pioneer in nuclear technology who built
India's first atomic reactor at Tarapur, now works full time
promoting solar power and other simpler technologies as head of
the Department of Nonconventional Energy Sources.
Mr. Dayal, who in the last five years has brought solar-powered
electricity to at least 5,000 poor villages -- as well as solar
water heaters to the hotels and hospitals of New Delhi -- thinks
new development strategies and economic policies to buttress them
at local levels are required.
"Development needs a change in focus, with not so much of it
coming from the top," said Mr. Dayal, a former chairman of
Unesco's science commission. He added that when development
costs are calculated, some not-so-obvious factors need to be
considered -- for instance, how much environmental damage will be
prevented by a project or how much time women will save for
pursuits more useful, health-enhancing or lucrative for them than
simple daily chores. These add real value to modest projects,
or, viewed another way, reduce the costs.
'Light Into Our World'
"They never had any lights in their history," he said. "They
were so delighted. They told me: 'You have literally brought
light into our world.'"
"Their days are longer," he said. "They can read and study after
work. They can have a farmers' literacy program at the end of
the day. Doctors can treat the sick at night.
"Solar systems can also be used for cooking, crop-drying, stills
and kilns," Mr. Dayal said in an interview in his office, where
the electrical equipment runs on photovoltaic cells outside his
windows.
Mr. Dayal's department, which encourages industrial production of
appliances run on renewable energy sources, is experimenting with
solar-powered batteries for city buses. They can also run on
electricity generated from city garbage.
"Energy plantations" of fast-growing trees are being sowed to
mitigate the annual loss of 3.7 million acres of forest. In
addition, 1.2 million rural families have been switched to biogas
cooking, using wood and animal wastes.
Satyen Gangaram Pitroda, a technology adviser to Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi and the chairman of a new telecommunications
commission, charged with improving the flow of information in the
world's second most populous country, believes that too many
Indians are unnecessarily afraid of technology.
"In a traditional society like ours, whenever you talk of
technology, you create tension," said Mr. Pitroda, who worked as
a businessman in Chicago for more than two decades. Indian-born,
he recently renounced his American citizenship and resumed his
Indian nationality.
"The message of technology has not been understood properly," he
said. "Technology is always seen as something elite, urban,
modern, exotic, fancy -- foreign.
"Technology doesn't have to be that," he went on. "Technology
could be down to earth, rural, very docile, user-friendly.
"Take, for example, satellite imagery," he said. "We use
satellite imagery for finding water sources. We can tell village
people that's the highest technology used for a mundane thing
like water."
Mr. Pitroda recently annoyed officials and business leaders by
vetoing plans to import mobile telephone systems.
"For every three car phones, I can provide communication in one
village," he said. "Shouldn't we do that first?"
Mr. Pitroda is fascinated by how information is handled in India.
"I'll give you a classic example," he said. "We were told that
we had to provide water to 100,000 villages, but no one would
tell us which 100,000. You could never pin anybody down. It
took us one year to get a list of names of waterless villages
from the system. Nobody wants to give you names because
information is power, and information also brings about
accountability. As soon as you share information you pinpoint
accountability."
He recalls how he had to turn to UNICEF during a drought to find
out how many well-drilling rigs India had. Tradition, local
politics and social status all get in the way of information-
sharing. The underprivileged suffer.
"If today you and I had to go and get a land record for a piece
of property that my father or grandfather owned in this country,
it would be a hell of a problem," he said. "It would take a
year, and you've got to hassle with 10 fellows. All the records
are manually documented. They could be modernized, computerized
through technology.
"But as soon as you computerize," he said, "you break the power
of the village patwaris, who are a strong vested interest. They
write the documents so that no one else can read them. They have
power over the village because they own all the documents. One
day, our computers will open that whole system."
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