Business India, Oct 2, 2011
Managing Brand India
Shivanand Kanavi
Reinventing India- Raghunath Mashelkar, Sahyadri Prakashan, Pune, 2011
Sa'id al-Andalusi, a leading natural philosopher of the
eleventh century Spain, which was then under Arab rule, wrote in 1068 CE, in his
“Kitab Tabaqat al-'Umam”, (See “Science in the Medieval World—Book of the
Categories of Nations”, By Said Al-Andalusi, English Translation: Sema`an I.
Salem, Alok Kumar, University of Texas Press, 1991) about the contributions to
science of all known nations.
He said, “The first nation (to have cultivated science) is
India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, and a rich kingdom
(possession). India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries,
all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the
branches of knowledge.”
Further, “The kings of China have stated that the kings of
the world are five in number and all the people of the world are their
subjects. They mentioned the king of China, the king of India, the king of the
Turks, the king of the Furs (Persians) and the king of the Romans. They referred
to the king of China as the ‘king of humans’ because the people of China are
more obedient to authority and are stronger followers of government policies
than all the other peoples of the world. They referred to the king of India as
the ‘king of wisdom’ because of the Indians’ careful treatment of ulum
(sciences) and their advancement in all the branches of knowledge”. Science (ulum),
as used by Sa'id and other scholars of that period, is a broad term covering
virtually all aspects of human knowledge.
The point to be noted in the above quotation is not on India
being “the first nation to cultivate science.” It is on the fact that European
scholars, as late as the eleventh-century, thought India as a leader in science
and technology.
Eight hundred years later, Thomas Babington Macaulay in his
infamous minute on Indian education, said “who could deny that a single shelf
of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India”!
However violently one might disagree with this assessment, it
is a fact that India was not looked upon as a source of science, technology and
innovation by the rest of the world during and immediately after the colonial
period. Clearly from an innovator and leader, India had fallen far behind and
become a receiver and a me-too in the advancement of science and technology.
In the 70s and 80s we were all brought up on a steady diet
of “import substitution”, reverse engineering, “adapting advanced technology to
the needs of the developing world” ad nauseam.
How it is then, in the 21st century, the
situation seems to have changed in global perception? Today as Mashelkar points
out in his collection of writings and speeches, “Reinventing India”, India is a
very important part of the global knowledge network. Indian researchers are
being sought after by global corporations.
Considerable amount of Indian talent migrated to North
America and Europe in the 60s and 70s, filling the ranks of: NASA; Bell Labs; Silicon
Valley; National Institutes of Health and the global health care system and
pharmaceutical industry; Wall Street and of course global academia. However,
today at the last count by Mashelkar, 760 global companies had set up their
R&D establishments in India employing over 160,000 Indian researchers. To
top it all, recently the Financial Times spoke about India as a hub of
manufacturing driven by its own “Frugal Engineering” (see ‘The New Trade Routes’,
Friday, May 20, 2011, FT Special Reports) signifying that a new culture in
innovative science and technology is percolating to the shop floor and market
place as well.
This is a remarkable re-emergence of India in the global
knowledge networks.
Mashelkar’s book chronicles this re-emergence; cheer leads
it; brands it and markets it, in an inspirational way, like nobody else could.
Anybody who has heard him speak on the subject finds the evangelist in him
compelling, irresistible and motivational. Even die hard sceptics and
naysayers, of which we have a plenty in India, will find narration of his own
life’s journey from the poverty stricken chawls of Mumbai to the pinnacles of R&D
management and policy making, hard to resist.
Many readers might find several themes repeated or often
recycled with a new spin in his speeches and articles collected here. But a
cardinal mantra of brand building is, ‘spell out the differentiator of the
brand clearly and hammer it repeatedly and relentlessly in all your internal
and external messaging’. Mashelkar does it to a ‘t’.
One blemish in the otherwise well produced book is poor copy
editing. For example, on page 8, a sentence, “24 July 1995 marks the day on
which India started to reinvent itself” appears as a separate paragraph with no
connection to the previous one or the subsequent one, puzzling the reader about
its significance.
Many of Mashelkar’s messages regarding India having the
potential to become a platform for global R&D, have become passé in the 21st
century. The world has recognised the worth of Indian talent. And Indian talent
has recognised the worth of its ideas in the market place. However, it should
be remembered that Mashelkar stood out alone as an articulate dreamer and
inspiring speaker in the uncertain ‘90s.
Today the geo-political discourse has changed from ‘potential
of India’ to the ‘rise of India’. Of course, one would still consider Obama’s
remark that India has ‘already emerged’ as an American excess. In the ‘90s,
Mashelkar looked amazingly naïve but uplifting but today his messages are a
given. Hence the ideas in “Reinventing India” are worth going over again
keeping the dates and context in mind.
