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Dreaming a developed India VOL 1 Issue 5 – Nov 2007
Published by India Vision 2020 Group
From the Editor’s desk: - “A hope called India !! “ Contrary to its colonial contemporaries who won independence, we continue to fare better. One would argue it is not enough. The good news is we are on right path on many fronts. Eventually many fronts like politics, governance will take that path to excellence. Recently through one our friends, I heard of Mr.Narasimalu. An extraordinary story who is "Special" (in one sense he is physically challenged). He cannot use both his hands. But what makes him really special is his gifted artistic legs and “Never say die attitude”. He makes money out of the paintings he paints with his legs. The point we bring his reference is , India as a nation has lot of parallels with Narashimalu. Pragmatically lot of evils does plague the country making development cripple. But there lies hope [call it "India" ?] who rattles the shambles, comes out successful every time a disability is imposed upon her. Recent developments are a testimony. Indian Economy has clocked an average of more than 8% - Something unknown in the history of Independent India. The mid-year review of RBI has projected conservatively 8.5%. Even this time experts are confident, India will surpass Central Bank expectations. Though capital inflows are worrying, our economy has had the resilience to fight back. Not just in financial front, we have been vibrant on space technology front also. Chandrayaan-I on schedule,
recent participation in GLONASS with Russia are all growing story of our space missions. Not to be left behind on the Defence front, LCA fired its first missile integrated through indigenous weaponisation. NFHS-3 reports point to reduction in rural poverty. I know it is not a very significant amount, but appreciative. People like Vikram Akula rose to the occasion and contribute their bit to the rural society. Pioneering result was Microfinance in India. The results do reflect in the downgraded poverty estimates. A hope of two brave Major's & Soldiers of Indian Army stopped the extremists cause more damage. They & lakhs of brave souls guard our nation. Giving us also the hope we are in safe hands. Every one of us can provide hope through our thoughts, our belief, our deeds, our action, our vision. India Vision group takes pride in introducing great Indians like Dr.Partha and Narashimalu who are a source of inspiration to all of us.
We believe in a vast country like our's more than economic & material success, emphasis should lie in a collective belief, collective dream, collective hope – "A hope called Developed India 2020". Vande Mataram!!
Editorial Team [email protected]
2
` VandeMataram – Inside this ezine
• Editorial – Hope called India
• An exclusive interview with Dr.Partha !
• India of my dreams by Ravin vyas
Interview with Dr.Partha – A Young Innovator
Dr.Partha Ranganathan is one of the very few young Indians to have reached to the stage he is today. Currently a principal research scientist at Hewlett Packard Labs. His research interests are in low-power system design. Partha is a B.Tech IIT Madras and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Rice University, Houston. Is a recipient of the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughan fellowship and an IIT Madras Alumni Service Award. In 2007, he was named by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top 35 young innovators. Partha is also very interested in social entrepreneurship, particularly for emerging economies, and has founded and helped run several NGOs including the very successful IIT alumni association. He has received two awards for his
service in this area. We proudly present his thought provoking interview ! How IIT years shaped your view on Life & career? Of course, my IIT education provided a solid foundation technically for my later career But more than that, I really grew as an individual during my four years at IIT. Interacting with some of the top students in the country and learning from Professors were some of the best experiences in my life. I continue to interact with and learn from some top professors there – Dr. Srinivasan and Dr. Jhunjhunwala, for example. On your role models who inspired you in Life & Work. My father, Prof. Ranganathan, my mother, Mrs. Vijayalakshmi, and my brother, Krishnan have been personal role models and I have learned valuable traits from them that I use every single day in my professional career. On the professional research side - three amazing individuals – Dr. Sarita Adve – my Ph.D. advisor, and Dr.Norman Jouppi , Dr. Chandrakant Patel – my mentors and colleagues at HP Labs. Beyond their intellectual contributions, they have taught me a
lot from being role models for a lot of personal traits that I think are very important in succeeding professionally. You worked overseas early in your career. What did you learn from your stint abroad? At some levels, I think working overseas is no different from working in India, especially given trends towards globalization. I have however, been impressed by the work-ethic and openness to change that I have seen here in the U.S. – both in people and in organizations. Did you ever at any point feel like giving up?
Like every other person, I have had my ups and downs!!!
People say that the intellectual elite of India is now in Silicon Valley. What is your view? There is now a lot of Indians in Silicon Valley play a key role in the successes, but to say that the intellectual elite of India is in Silicon Valley is an overstatement. I think India, is particularly fortunate to be in
3 a position of nurturing and hosting some of the world’s top talent, we can do a better job in providing more opportunities and increasing their visibility. In what way you are involved in social activities back in India?
I continue to be involved in a lot of activities in India. I am really passionate about how NRIs in the U.S. can give back to various initiatives in India and other emerging economies, and as part of this, I have founded and helped run several non-profit organizations. Back, when I was doing my Ph.D., I was very active with Friends of Young Minds [FOYM] Can you please elaborate a bit more on that front ?
FOYM is a non-profit organization that helped ship old computers to under-privileged children in India. I am also very active in the IIT alumni association (www.iit.org) and have been very involved in setting up and running this organization and funding various projects at the IITs. I really believe that if every alumni were to “give-back” in some form to their alma mater, the impact can be tremendous. On my yearly visits, I try my best to guest-teach or give lectures on my work and technologies in the U.S. and meet other young people - mentoring. I am a big admirer of Dr. Kalam’s India 2020 vision and hope to continue doing my small part to helping with that. Challenges facing India & youth's contribution to remove them? I think the biggest challenge facing India is attitudes and perceptions. As a nation, we have enormous talent and enormous opportunities, but I think to really achieve our potential, we need to move the conversation from survival to achievement for a large section of the population. Addressing these will take a lot of leadership and hard work and youth in particular, need to step in. Understanding the
dichotomous need to focus both on the high-end (technology) and the low-end (poverty) at the same time will be important!! What advice would you give to the youth of this country? I am not sure I am old enough to be going around giving advice to others! However, if I had to pick something that has really helped me in the past, it I would highlight two things. First, I think it is important for everyone to strive to create value – whether at work or at home, in building new things or in interacting with people. I remember the movie, “It is a wonderful life,” where the presence or absence of one individual dramatically changes the nature of the world, even through small actions. Our goal should be to make that change a positive one. Second, I think it is important for everyone to constantly strive to improve. A key component of this is self-introspection and being open to listening to, and incorporating, others’ feedback, and these are good skills to cultivate early. In what ways do you think, an individual can contribute to realizing India Vision 2020?" I have been very inspired by Dr. Kalam and his 2020 vision of emphasizing freedom, development, strength for India as well as his insights around the five key strategic growth areas around agriculture, infrastructure, education, ICT, and critical technologies. I think the biggest way we can contribute at an individual level is to *believe* that we can achieve this vision. We need to want to *be* the best and we need to want to *be recognized* as the best and we need to proactively work towards getting there without compromising our basic values and cultural strengths. (Reach Partha at : [email protected])
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Partha_Ranganathan/details.htm
4 India of my Dreams – Ravin Vyas
It 's a beautiful winter morning of 2020 A.D. I am checking my e-mails as usual and am surprised to receive a mail from Jay Smith, one of my old time friends. Actually, his name is (was) Jaydeep Panchal. He was with me as a student in Chicago in the year 1991-92. Once a die-hard "Indian" who changed his name from 'Jaydeep' to 'Jay' and last name from 'Panchal' to 'Smith' as Panchals are traditionally Blacksmiths in India. (no comments there!) Anyways, this time he got in touch with me after a while, after almost 10 years. In his mail, he requested me to arrange a one-day trip to Ambaji as he had to complete a 'badha' there. I arranged the same, and waited eagerly for the other fine winter morning when he arrived at the Amdavad airport. The airport was full of the traditional migratory birds - the so-called NRIs - that generally arrive in India during this season. Well, there was one another lot of people gathered at the airport - the RNIs - (i.e. Resident Non-Indians). This funny lot of people thinks that, culturally, they have accidentally ended up in Navrangpura instead of in New York. And there are indeed a lot of them across India now days. They were all there at the airport to greet their compatriots. I recognized Jaydeep from his Dev Anand style stroll. He was astonished to see the Amdavad airport, which is considered as one of the most "attractive" structures in world, thanks to a few graduates from the decades old School of Architecture stationed locally. The cleanliness of the vicinity also impressed him. But, he was more anxious to see my Solar power operated car in which we were going to travel to Ambaji. He said he has heard
a lot about the success of these cars in India and was dejected with the fact that he could not use one of them in the U.S. as they do not have enough sunlight there. Effective utilization of solar energy has been the biggest achievement of Indian scientists in recent times. It is one of the gifts of the technological revolution, which has put India far ahead of all the other developed nations of the world. We started for Ambaji. The 120 km long expressway was going to take about only an hour or so therefore we had enough time. Consequently, we stopped at Idar, a small town on the way, as Jaydeep wanted to have a glimpse of the rural India. So, we took an exit ahead of the town and went directly to a small but shipshape domicile located near to the freeway. It was a house of a farmer - Joitabhai - whose small agro-product processing plant was located in the same premise. We asked him whether we could come in and have a word with him. More than willingly, he called us in and told us to wait for a few minutes. He had to supervise the export consignment of the processed vegetables, which was to be shipped to Brazil. Jaydeep was inquisitive, as he knew that there are many farmers in India who process their produce, themselves, and ship the end product to all across the globe. However, witnessing an actual operative plant was of his long time yearning. That was because during last 10-15 odd years, India had registered more than 10,000 international patents in the field of agro-processing technology, which was his vocational subject. As per the centuries old tradition of "atithi devo bhav:", Joitabhai offered us refreshments and certainly,
5 the Gujarati "cha" with lots of Sugar! Jaydeep also was a little surprised by the swiftness with which Joitabhai was processing the export documentation on the net while spending time with us. He came to know from Joitabhai that almost all the farmers in North Gujarat have some sort of processing plant in which they process their own produce and make an end product, which is exported. So they all had to be capable of processing the shipping documents on the net.
We left Idar and reached Ambaji. The temple trust there has made arrangement of Valet Parking. As we entered the temple I heard the 'pujari's mobile ring tone. Everyone said - "that's the message from the GOD". Baffled, I rushed to the 'pujari'. Suddenly, that 'pujari' turned and said, - "Wake up, before it's too late!" - He was Dr. Kalam. Source http://avbodh.org/The%20Dream.htm
Spreading Hope & Smile – Narashimalu!
Editorial Team PPuubblliisshheerr aanndd PPaattrroonn:: KK.. SSrriinniivvaassaann ((PPrriimmee PPooiinntt FFoouunnddaattiioonn)) EEddiittoorr:: SSiivvaannaarraayyaannaann AAssssoocciiaattee EEddiittoorr:: JJaayyaatthheeeerrtthhaann
EEddiittoorriiaall MMeemmbbeerrss:: BBaallaaMMuurruuggaann ,, UUddhhaayy KKuummaarr KKaarrtthhiikk ,, SSuubbhhaa GGaanneesshh,, GGaayyaattrrii NNaayyaakk FFeeeeddbbaacckk aanndd ccoonnttrriibbuuttiioonnss ttoo:: [email protected]
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