Dr. R. A. Mashelkar's, Chairperson NIF Selected Lectures & Papers

Tomorrow’s world will be dominated by knowledge industries. The emphasis in such knowledge industries is not on physical or tangible assets, but on intangible knowledge assets. Increasingly the traditional factors of production – land, labor and capital – have become less important when compared with technology; the economists have termed this as the ‘expansion of the production frontier’. The value of intellectual capital of an industry will determine its rank and competitiveness. The nature of intangible assets will include several commonalties such as research and development, patents, proprietary technologies, databases, brands and even relationships, people and so on. In knowledge industries, there will be a major shift from people, who handled information and did routine and unthinking work, to those who will use knowledge at every stage. For such people, information and knowledge will be both the raw material of their labor as well as its product.

Tomorrow’s societies will be knowledge societies. Tomorrow’s markets will be knowledge markets. Tomorrow’s wars will be fought not by the conventional weapons, guns, missiles and so on, but they will be fought in the knowledge markets with the new thermonuclear weapons called information and knowledge.... I want to emphasize that to meet the twin objective of growth with equity, knowledge cannot be the prerogative of a few; everyone in the society must have access to knowledge and become a knowledge worker. Nations which do not create knowledge societies will vanish into the oblivion. But those that do create these knowledge societies will have the potential to lead the world. India has a chance to become a leader provided it sets this process of creating the knowledge society in place with speed and determination.

The five point agenda for the new millennium is almost like a new Panchasheel for the new millennium. It is simply :

The beauty about these five points is that they will be as relevant in the year 2000 as they will be in the year 3000. All five of them flow into each other. All of them have to be taken together.... This Panchasheel links the child, the woman, the human, the society and the nation. It focuses on equity, or dignity if you like, with growth. It emphasizes bringing back the values and culture, for which this country was so famous. If we get these five fundamentals right, we can achieve everything. For example, the burning problem of population growth will be addressed meaningfully only when we build a woman centered family, with education to the female child being its essential fulcrum.

We see today that there has been a sea change in the economic, political and technological environment the world over. Age old attitudes and mindsets are being discarded everywhere. India has been no exception; its economy has been unshackled and the forces of competition have been unleashed. A new vision of India as a major player in the global setting has been articulated. The wave of change sweeping the country and the world has thrown up myriad opportunities and challenges........In order to meet these challenges, just as we had launched a national freedom movement to unshackle ourselves from the foreign powers, we need to launch a national innovation movement.

Innovation is the key for the production as well as processing of knowledge. Indeed a nation’s ability to convert knowledge into wealth and social good through the process of innovation determines its future. I wish to focus on the challenge of the resurgence of an innovative India, since there has been a fear that for some time now, the ‘I’ in India has stood for imitation and

I am truly grateful to the Centre for Human Values for having invited me to deliver the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Oration. It is indeed a special honour. I am also privileged to be in the campus of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, a great institution, which is the pride of India.

I deem it a great honour and a special privilege to deliver the 2002 Professor Brahm Prakash Memorial Lecture. When I look at the list of previous speakers, I find that they were men of great eminence. Several of them were closely associated with Professor Brahm Prakash, and knew him closely – both personally and professionally.I cannot lay claim to either of these qualifications. Yet I thought here was an opportunity for me to pay my homage to the memory of this great son of India. Professor Brahm Prakash was an outstanding scientist and a leader, who made lasting impact on Indian science and technology, especially in the field of materials development and high technology systems integration.