As I graduated out of the Engineering College and took up a job, I had dreams of putting my learning to work. To be honest, though I am an Electronic Engineer by training and am working in the area of Control and Instrumentation for Power Stations looking back at my nearly 30 years of experience, the times when I had to search my knowledge base to look for a solution to any of the line problems had been few and far between. I am sure this must have been the experience of most professionals, unless they have been in the true R&D kind of atmosphere and are really searching for solutions to specific problems. In my opinion such R&D as would enrich you with new knowledge is near-absent in India. I have some unconfirmed reports that some of these MNCs that have set up shop in India esp., GE have tried to produce “technology” out of their Indian Operations.

If I were to be given the choice to rewind my life-tape back to my 22nd year, when I joined my job, and I had the choices of courses and technologies that we have now in our Engineering Colleges, I would have chosen CSE-Computer Science and Engineering, went on to do an M.Tech, in Software Engineering. Further, if it were only possible to have the sort of Liberal Education that Prof. K.S.Narendra of Yale University had introduced to us students [Guest Lecture at Osmania University, Hyderabad] way back in 1978 were to be available by some miraculous renaissance attitude taking over Indian University Education, then I would be concocting my own credits’ choices wherein I would make a curious mixture of necessary papers in CSE and Mainstream Sanskrit-based linguistics and work on Natural Language Processing. But today the only alternative available to me is to struggle with my ideas in my spare time or time scrounged out of several other activities of personal and professional nature.

Let’s say the Energy Field chosen wasn’t bad after all. Then my interest could have been Non-Conventional Energy Sources (NCES). For one thing I am not very much in love with the Utility Thermal Power Generation as I find it very polluting and inefficient, though this is the most used technology in India today, perhaps due to the vast acumen of professionals in this field. At a time when the developed world is moving towards environmentally friendly means of Power Generation and as a first step have put a stop to adding Generation capacity by the Thermal route, we are heavily investing in Thermal Power Generation. It is time we take to NCES in the form of Solar Power, for instance. Within Solar Power Generation alternatives, direct conversion techniques like photo-voltaics [made attractive with increasing conversion efficiencies and falling cost per KW due in part to economies of scale possible today] or solar water heating in domestic and the hospitality industry are the only two areas we are looking at in the Indian context. Despite the increasing availability of capital with a booming economy we as a country look up to others to provide us with direct usable technology.

The way we had taken to superconductivity research in the 70’s in our IITs in search of room temperature superconductors, or are trying to make inroads into Biotechnology, because of easy availability of trained manpower in productive age groups, we need to invest in technology creation in the areas of power generation like Fuel Cells, Solar Thermal Power Generation for instance. Recently, I read a lot of raving and ranting on a blog-board on solar concentrators being placed too close to human habitation, in Southern States of US. I wished someone would even think of such ideas in India.

The Indian penchant is to buy usable technology and apply our minds to “managing” the same to productive levels, even in the face of increasing revenues and swelling capital reserves, makes me sad and I feel hopeless that this country would ever be able to really generate some indigenous technology like Japan did or even the smaller tiger countries have done in the manufacturing sector.