Thoughts of Dr R.A.

Mashelkar

Compiled & Edited By

G a u t a m S o m a n

For

u r a l t
N e N e

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neuraldtnet
On Education

The ones who get education are fortunate indeed. Two years ago, I was
invited to present the Ramakrishna Bajaj Award to industrialist
Kumaramangalam Birla, Narayana Murthy and F C Kohli. On way to the venue of
the ceremony, I saw children from the slums picking rags at a time when they
should rightly be at school. I could see himself as one of them many years ago and
thought: “I’m here today driving down to give awards to great industrialists. That
is basically because of education.”

We had dedicated teachers who would not only impart knowledge to

children but also good values. In fact, my entire life was made because of such
teachers. The reason I turned to science was because of my Physics teacher Bhave
who would demonstrate simple experiments to us. One of them was finding the
focal length of a convex lens. He took us out in the sun, held a piece of paper, held
the convex lens, there was a bright spot and he said ‘this is the focal length’. He
held it for a while longer and the paper burnt! For some reason, he turned to me
and said, ‘Mashelkar, if you focus your energies like this, you can burn anything
in the world. You can achieve anything in the world, don’t despair’. This gave me
my philosophy of life, ‘focus and you can achieve anything’. We all must converge
and focus. Bhave was a poor teacher but he would spend money from his pocket
to take us out to show us things like soap making. Mashelkars were built because
Bhaves were there. Where are those Bhaves now? What are we doing about it?

On Creating An Inquiring Society To Promote Innovation

We cannot allow the 'I' in India to stand for imitation and inhibition; it
must stand for innovation.
Innovation has to start at the grass-root level with our education system.
In India innovation is not promoted, questioning is not permitted and creativity
is subdued. Information is dished out in classrooms and asked for in exams.
Take, for instance, Polaroid. When Edwin Land took his daughter on a holiday
and photographed her, the little girl asked her father whether she could see the
picture immediately, that’s how Polaroid was created and then patented. We need
to create a system where we develop a culture of asking questions, an inquiring
society. Information is available to everyone, but it is the insight that matters.
Conversion of information into insight through the process of inquiry will build
and promote innovators. For this to happen, changes need to be made in
curricula, in the teaching methods, in the examination system and in the
evaluation process. We need to replicate and rediscover our best practices in
India. The global digital network is inexorably shifting power from organisations
to individuals, decentralising authority and accelerating innovation. At the
corporate level, if companies do not become innovation-driven they will not
survive. Corporates and the academics must work together. Corporates must look
at academia as providers of ideas and windows of knowledge to the outside
world. There must be progress through partnership.

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On Creating An Innovation-Centered India

Innovation thrives in a society that tolerates innovation and change and

hence it must be part of our system – social, legal and political. Innovation
cannot survive in hierarchies and where there is bureaucracy. It does not happen
only in laboratories among scientists and technologists, but also at grassroots
levels – among farmers, artisans and even among housewives. The government
has created a National Innovation Foundation, which focuses on promoting
grassroots level innovations. The NIF should create a national register of
innovations that can be made available across boundaries over the Internet. It
must be recognized that ideas are not the prerogative of the learned or formally
educated

Another thing that is vital is vitamin M, where M stands for money.

Innovation cannot work without money, hence we need venture capital financing.
We still do not have good venture capital finance, we still play safe and do not
take risks. Risk taking is an essential ingredient of innovation. Investing in ideas
and thinking ahead should be part of our culture.

On Vision For Indian Science And Technology

I have always believed that the 21st century is going to be India’s century.
If that dream has to come true, then one of the key factors will be science and
technology. I would like to see Indian science lead and not follow. In science, it is
said that only two people matter – the one who says the first word and the one
who says the last word. I would like to see Indian science do that.

Among the Nobel Prize winners, there is always an American. Why? They
have made it a habit. I would like to see Indian scientists make it a habit. I would
also like to see India take a technology leadership. We cannot be leaders in
everything, but there must be five to six areas where we can be the best in the
world. I would like to see the 21st century getting dominated by Indian products.
I would like to see Indian brands based on Indian technology. I would like to see
Indian science create wealth, so the world can take notice of India as a rich
country with rich people – not merely in terms of physical wealth, but in terms of
values as well.

On Patents And Awareness About Patents

We still stick to the culture of publish and perish instead of patent and
flourish. When I took over as director National Chemical Laboratories (NCL) and
floated the idea of spreading patent knowledge, it had very few takers. True
patenting is a work of art. You have to possess the ability to not only think of
ideas but also be able to write and read patents in such a way that you can bypass
the fortress that the West sometimes manages to build. It is time we broke with

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the past and acknowledged the reality around us. Left to myself, I would love to
convert all Indian knowledge into wealth, at the same time take enough
precautions to protect indigenous knowledge. Isn't it surprising that China has
patented nearly 100,000 products while we have managed to patent just 2,000
which reflects on the lack of innovation among Indians. Once you crack the
impenetrable fortress that multi-nationals build around themselves, the game is
yours. To patent a product, essentially it has to fulfill three conditions: Novelty,
utility and non- obviousness. I am a swadeshi scientist who hates being a passive
recipient of Western knowledge. I would like to stem the trend and see India
emerging as an export house for knowledge. Why should we specialise in reverse
engineering alone? We can definitely create new ideas and concepts on our own.

Global knowledge markets do not pay much attention to research papers

but they do if you have patents in critical areas. So I convinced my colleagues at
NCL that, while the output of the laboratory in terms of science was excellent, it
had not staked its claim in technology markets with patents. In fact, NCL then
did not have a single US patent.

I advised my colleagues, many of them distinguished scientists on their

own standing, to scan patent databases before they started a research project, to
make sure that they weren't reinventing the wheel. I also asked them to scan their
papers for any patentable (novel, non-obvious, commercially exploitable) result
and file a patent before sending it for publication. It was hard initially, because it
is research publications that bring peer recognition in science and not patents. So
I replaced the old adage in science "publish and perish" with a new slogan
"patent, publish, and prosper". I tom-tommed it constantly and today it has
caught on all over CSIR. A new body, NCL Research Foundation funded through
donations gave away medallions to all US patent holders every year. A healthy
competitive spirit has developed. A few specialists are trained in writing patents.
After all, patent-writing is an art where you give away the least amount of
information while at the same time covering the flanks of your work so that
others cannot easily bypass your patent. In the last five years CSIR has filed about
350 international patents and NCL is the leader in US patents applications from
India.

Urgent steps should be taken to spread patent literacy in scientific and

business circles. It is a two-way street and India's knowledge base, be it
traditional or modern, requires protection too. Today the battle over patenting
has been won. For example, two years back a brilliant, young molecular biologist
from the Centre for cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, came to me for
advice. He had patented an innovation, published the paper and a US biotech
company had come to negotiate the commercial terms for exploiting his patent. I
was overjoyed because the same scientist in 1995 had argued passionately and
boldly about keeping science away from commerce.
However, I am not complacent. Demands change as time moves on. Now,
there will be a greater emphasis on exploitation of patents, and income generated
from them - and not merely on the number of patents.

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Spreading The Wings

Patents, however, are really a small part of a large goal of turning India
into a global R&D platform.

In 1992, I visited GE's corporate R&D at Schenectady in upstate New York

to deliver a scientific talk on polymer engineering. I had, however, asked my
contacts at GE to gather some business development people as well. The seminar
soon became a presentation of NCL's capabilities, including a pitch on US patent
obtained by NCL in "solid state poly-condensation"- a topic of interest to GE,
which is the world leader in polycarbonates.

The one-hour seminar stretched to two. It then lead to an extended lunch,

where more executives joined. The lunch was followed by meetings with senior
V.P.s in the afternoon. And in the evening I had to change my flight plans for
more serious talks. One of the V.Ps. exclaimed, "You speak our (Corporate)
language. Nobody in publicly funded labs in the US seems to do so". When a GE
team came to NCL to negotiate some pilot projects in 1992-93 they had come via
Russia. When they saw the sum quoted by NCL for contract research they said
that they could buy a whole R&D lab in Russia for that kind of money. I said, "Go
ahead and buy Russian Lab. but come back to NCL if you want world class
quality." GE was finally convinced and, since then, has not looked back. Today
GE's corporate R&D considers its relationship with NCL as its most successful
external relationship. It is a partnership in joint technology development and not
"a lab on rent". In fact, NCL charges foreign clients at least five times what it does
Indian clients. So I do believe that, without outpricing ourselves, we are getting
outstanding results.

Cutting-edge work for foreign clients has many intangible benefits. It

raises the quality of research of the whole Lab. For example, GE ran its
prestigious Six Sigma training course for NCL. Several scientists got training that
they would otherwise never have got. Even contract research for foreign clients
requires the use of cutting-edge biology and chemistry- no'me too' products and
processes. Time, quality, price, and delivery are all internationally benchmarked.

The time is right to strike more such partnerships. Globally R&D and
innovation have become a high risk game for all high-technology corporations.
R&D is becoming very expensive and is yielding diminishing returns when
carried out under a single roof. On the other hand, without innovation and new
technology, one can loose ones business position very quickly. This dilemma has
lead to networking, outsourcing, strategic alliances, and partnerships in R&D.
None of the Indian Labs is in a position to develop a full-scale globally
competitive technology by itself and then license it worldwide. Partnerships,
where they assume a junior position initially, can help them catch up with the
rest of the world. So it is indeed a win-win situation. After GE several other MNCs
like Du Pont and Smith Kline Beecham have come to various CSIR for R&D tie-
ups.

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The Road To The Future

I look at the future, because that's where I am going to spend the rest of
my life!

I want everyone to be what I call a "dangerous optimist". The third millennium is

going to be about the mind and about knowledge. Tomorrow's markets will be
knowledge markets, tomorrow's wars will be fought when knowledge territories
are invaded, and tomorrow’s weapons will be patents. That's why, we must fight a
second freedom movement in the next century to free ourselves from the shackles
of inhibition and imitation and prepare our minds for innovation. Being
innovative constitutes India's greatest opportunity ever but only if we can change
our 'mindset'.

Strategies to change the “Indian Mindset”

My prescription includes
(a) Innovative & 'pro-risk' organisations ("which learn to dare and dare to learn")
(b) Innovative financing ("today's banker is concerned about a certain sum S; he
should really be concerned about the behaviour of its second derivative d2S/dt2
with time") and
(c) Innovative management ("the paradigm should shift from the 'strategy-
structure-system' to the 'purpose-process-people').

It is not information alone, but information coupled with inquiry which

provides insight. The paradigm is shifting: Information, not oil, is generating the
new wealth . Talking of "zones of comfort and discomfort" in scientific practice;
in the comfort zone, models fit experiments and everyone (student, guide,
referee, journal editor) is happy. But successes in the comfort zone rarely lead to
scientific breakthroughs; the big advances often result from the "zone of
discomfort".

Serendipity and Indian Science

We all know that the gust of wind blowing over Fleming's moulds created
the antibiotic age … as a proud Indian, it bothers me that such a wind has not
blown over the laboratories of Indian innovators for a whole century!. Lucky
accidents must certainly have taken place in Indian labs … but we were not
equipped to spot them. The eye does not see what the mind does not know.
Indians were perhaps culturally unprepared for happy accidents .we are so much
in search of the normal, that the abnormal frightens us. But, even this mindset
can be corrected. Indian science has the ability and the potential -- but lacks the
spirit of adventure. We must dare, take risks, come up with crazy ideas, and
gamble! We must create an environment which supports risky research because
only risk brings reward.

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 At a systematic level my emphasis is on networking, echoing Sun Micro
Systems' by now famous declaration "The network is the computer, not
individual servers and other components". Science administration is not a cushy
position for retiring scientists; that it needs hard core management skills. After 5
decades of independent India R&D management has made its appearance as an
organizational culture. It involves harmonizing short-term and long-term goals,
and encouraging innovation and creativity, while insisting on deliverability and
targets, handling temperamental scientists on the one hand and hard-nosed
businessmen, bankers, and bureaucrats on the other.

I believe in the lilies-in -the-pond story. That is, we should look at the rate
of change to see the future. Let us say that lilies double every day and there is one
lily in a pond and it takes thirty days to fill the pond. Then on the 29th day the
pond will be half full, on the 28th one-forth full, on the 27th one-eighth full, on
the 26th only one-sixteenth full, and so on. But if you see the rate of growth then
you will see that soon it will be full.

Managing change requires clear goals, lucid argumentation, empathy,

doggedness, faith in your team, optimism, and the ability to enthuse others with
your dreams and convert them into collective dreams. I am doing just that.

The boy who had stars in his eyes on the sands of Chowpatty is today
filling others with his dream of an India that will be a significant player in global
knowledge economics.
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Padmabhushan Dr Raghunath Anant Mashelkar

D i r e c t o r G e n e r a l , C S I R a n d S e c r e t a r y

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o r S c i e n c e & T e c h n o l o g y t o G o v t o I n d i a

B o r n o n t h e 1 s t J a n u a r y 1 9 4 3 , i n M a r c e l ( G o a ) , e x c e l l e d i n e d u c a t i o n a n d

e x h i b i t e d t h e i n h e r e n t t a l e n t a s a v i s i o n a r y t e r g r a d u a t i n g a n d o b t a i n i n g t h e d o c t o r a t e

. A

d e g r e e i n c h e m i c a l e n g i n e e r i n g r o m t h e p r e s t i g i o u s B o m b a y U n i v e r s i t y , s e r v e d a s a

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r e s e a r c h e r a n d s t a o t h e a c a d e m i c c o u n c i l o t h e U n i v e r s i t y o S a l o r d , U r o m 1 9 6 9

. K .

t o 1 9 7 6 , b e o r e j o i n i n g t h e N a t i o n a l C h e m i c a l L a b o r a t o r y e t o o k o v e r a s D i r e c t o r

. H

G e n e r a l o C S I R i n 1 9 9 5

D r M a s h e l k a r h a s m a d e o u t s t a n d i n g o r i g i n a l c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o p o l y m e r

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p a r t i c u l a r h i s e n g i n e e r i n g a n a l y s i s o s e c o n d a r y l o w s a n d p a r t i c l e m o t i o n / d e o r m a t i o n

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R o y a l S o c i e t y ( R S )

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