On the Path to Innovative Future
By Dr Ghulam M. Haniff
St. Cloud , MN
In their eternal rivalry between the two neighbors, India has clearly emerged as the nation on the fast track with all the wherewithal of a rapidly developing country, while Pakistan has fallen behind and continues to slip a notch or two each year.
Commentators estimate that by the middle of this century India will have the second highest GDP next only to China. Much of the expansion in its productivity will be propelled by the innovative ingenuity of the Indian people.
Clearly buoyed by economic advancement the public in India have embarked on activities to achieve a better future through innovative enterprise.
The latest coup in that regard was the state-of-the-art conference in India, previously a preserve exclusively of the developed nations. This meeting was convened in the city of Mysore, not far from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India.
The noteworthy thing about these conferences is that they attract the most creative and talented people who are working on cutting edge projects and are ready for their work to be demonstrated to an audience of original thinkers.
On the forefront of creativity these gatherings appeal to creative people in “Technology, Entertainment and Development,” hence, the acronym TED. The origin of these meetings began in the early 1990s in the United States with the initiative of one or two individuals. Participants for the conclave are chosen only after a rigorous application process which is scrutinized for originality of ideas and their potential to solve concrete problems.
To the best of my knowledge no one from Pakistan has ever attended one of these meetings. The conferences take place mostly in North America and Europe.
The Indian conference in November of this year was the first one ever in a Third World nation. Apparently, India has reached a certain level of technological sophistication, shown by its entrepreneurial endeavors, that justifies its inclusion in an otherwise exclusive club.
Unlike Pakistan, sustained technological breakthroughs have made India into one of the countries where innovative and entrepreneurial activities are in full blossom. Creative people want to turn their ideas into business application for the benefit of the nation and the common good.
Unfortunately, people of the western neighbor Pakistan, judging by the media reports, have excelled in throwing bombs. They have even penetrated the headquarters of the army, where recent explosion inside a mosque took forty lives, including seven officers. Though the military is considered to be the most efficient institution in the nation it was unable to stop violence-prone individuals.
While visiting Washington, DC, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted in his speech that India is pursuing two goals: one, the massive industrialization of the nation and, two, the pursuit of education with a focus on research and development. Actually, these items were first introduced by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the fifties and have been kept on the front burner ever since.
On the other hand Pakistani leaders, mostly feudal characters, hardly paid any attention to these priorities until Pervez Musharraf rose to power. He saw what was happening and how India had excelled in several arenas while Pakistan was slipping backwardly.
In the late 1990s India surpassed Pakistan in per capita GDP and the gap has widened each year. Currently, the per capita income in India is $1236 with a growth rate of 9.5 percent, and in Pakistan it is $988 with a growth rate of 5.6 percent.
Until the decade of 2000 Pakistan hardly had any visible IT industry while India had become a powerhouse in software productivity. India today is the main target of outsourcing for the major US companies, and that country’s software exports are over to $40 billion. Meanwhile, Pakistan has an incipient software industry and has managed to acquire $1.4 billion in exports.
At the Mysore TED conference among many exhibitions a 13-year-old girl demonstrated a pedal powered dishwasher, an amazing breakthrough. Also, an Indian student, Pranav Mistry, demonstrated interaction between the physical world and the world of data. Both of these technologies would be major contributions when brought to fruition through the market process.
The meeting in India was considered to be so important that CNN sent a special team to prepare a report on the proceedings.
As insular as Pakistanis are they have no idea of the technological fever that has gripped India. They still continue to bad-mouth India as a land of teeming millions afflicted with poverty and incessant conflicts. Under the magical appeal of technology and education India is changing by leaps and bounds as Pakistan remains stagnant.
In Pakistan the governing elite have to be shaken by their collars in order to wake them up to see the reality of the world around them.
