Management of Technology in India

MANAGEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA

Introduction:
• Technology is a high-risk, costly and uncertain activity.
• The world has entered an age in which many of the easy invention and discoveries have
already been produced. To achieve breakthroughs which have social significance and profit
potentials for the originator; increasingly larger investments in research must be made. It
also requires greater managerial and financial commitments.
• But while costs of discovery are increasing at an accelerating rate, the incremental returns
seem to be growing at a decreasing rate over the short-run.
• In order to meet high costs of discovery and R&D expenditures, firms need potentially high
returns. Pharmaceutical drug companies have been criticized for prices excessively
higher than the cost of production and materials. But the uninformed public fails to consider
the high research investment that preceded production of an effective and successful drug
and all the dead ends and unsuccessful formulations that must be recovered from the
successful ones.
• There is the added risk that a new product will quickly be duplicated or closely imitated,
thereby reducing the market and profit potential for the original innovator. As the technology
of any industry becomes easier to duplicate, the motivation for further innovation declines.
• Undifferentiated competitive advantage, whether in drug, petrochemicals, electronics, or
building materials, ultimately leads to a slowdown in the rate of product improvements
generated within the industry. In seeking more profitable potentials for future growth,
management either turns more to manufacturing or distribution process improvement.
• For a management which wants to import technology, there are problems. Basic
infrastructural facilities include training of technicians and supervisors; tester’s facilities for
raw materials, replacement parts, and the like are not easily available.
• Import of technology is also not easy because developed countries are not willing to lend it.
In fact, these countries view India as a potential rival. The technology, the developed
countries are willing to lead, are limited in scope and are mainly aimed at exploiting our
dynamic competitive advantages in order to feed the markets they are interested in. They
will not pass on their key technology, such as design know-how for manufacturing
equipment, which could help us in challenging them in their own game.

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• Another problem in importing the technology is choosing right collaboration and obtaining
clearance from the government. Getting a right collaborator is not an easy task. Similarly, it
takes maximum one year for an entrepreneur to obtain final clearance from the government.
• Since 1966, the Indian Government has progressively restricted imports of
technology. Together with constraints on the growth of big business houses and of foreign
firms, the next consequence of the Government's policies has been that it takes 3–5 years
for a large firm to get a sanction for the import of technology and its utilization; this entails
advance planning of technology imports, and advance action for the generation of
alternatives within the country, should the imports not be allowed.
• The restrictions on technology imports accentuated the need for internal research and
development; at the same time, the recession that began in 1966, and whose effects still
continue to be felt in some sectors, squeezed industrial profits and limited the resources
that could be allocated to R & D. Hence large Indian firms have felt the need for methods of
rational allocation of R & D resources among competing projects, and a number of them
have been feeling their way towards general criteria of allocation. Some of their efforts are
described here. They are essentially exploratory; but since R & D management is still a
problematic area even in industrial countries, an analysis of Indian practices is perhaps of
more general interest.
• Ability to absorb western technology is low in our firms.
• For example:
✓ ‘Bullet', India’s once prized 350cc motorcycle manufactured by Enfield India, could not for a
long time, change the side of the foot brake lever from left to right, this putting the driver to
considerable physical risk. The company could not adapt the design (supplied by a
European company) for relatively minor changes to left-hand driving system.
✓ Bajaj Scooters, claiming to be the second largest scooter manufacturer in the world, took
more than six months, after the promulgation of law to introduce direction blinkers on its
scooters, and that too as crude protuberances. This was when the amendments in the
Motor Vehicles Act were in of ring for more than a year and all other leading scooter
manufacturers in the world had already integrated blinking indicators in their models.
• There are also constraints on the technological growth. Three constraints are significant:
pollutions, industrial resource base and social institution.

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1. Pollution:
• Pollution is an unavoidable consequence of industrial production. Smoke, smell, raiser
effluent animal dust is generated by industrial establishments.
• The biosphere, - the land, air, water and natural conditions on which all life on earth
depends- can absorb the break down many of these industrial pollutions without harm to
people, animals or plants. But the biosphere is not all infinite sponge, and the build-up of
harmful chemicals in the ecosystem poses threat to life and the planet itself.
• The earth’s absorptive capacity is especially limited when a single society concentrates its
industrial technology and industrial products too densely in a single region. A critical issue
today is society’s capability to raise the standard of living everywhere as less developed
counties industrialise without causing irreplaceable damage to the earth’s biosphere.
• Part of the answer to this potential obstacle to further technological development is to invent
and use new and less polluting forms of technology and energy.
• India is grappling with significant challenges in air, water and waste management. The
legislative framework is strong, but enforcement is relatively weak. Half of the world's 20
most polluted cities are in India, according to W orld Health Organization’s Global Urban
Ambient Air Pollution 2016 database. About 62 million tons of municipal solid waste is
generated each year in the 468 cities of over 100,000 people; only 70 percent is collected
and only 23 percent is processed or treated. While 94 percent of Indians have access to
drinking water, just less than 40 percent of the population has access to a sanitary
wastewater system, a disparity that reflects the need for wastewater treatment systems.
Almost 63 percent of municipal wastewater and 40 percent of industrial wastewater is left
untreated and discharged. 30-40 percent of India’s industrial units produce sizeable
quantities of pollutants. There are about 3 million small-scale enterprises in the country and
most of these are using minimal or no pollution control equipment. The Government of India
has classified 60 industry categories as highly polluting; these sectors are subject to
stringent standards. The Indian Parliament passed the National Green Tribunal Act in 2010,
which led to the creation of the National Green Tribunal. Its purpose is the effective and
expeditious processing of cases relating to environmental protection. Orders of the Green
Tribunal are driving many of the recent environment management initiatives.
• Important environmental sub-sectors include drinking water supply, waste water treatment,
municipal solid waste management, industrial hazardous waste management, and industrial
air pollution, pollution monitoring equipment and services, and carbon abatement
technologies.

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2. The Industrial Resource Base:

• Industrial resource base comprises minerals, different forms of energy, water
supplies skilled labour force and human knowledge. There is limit to the availability of
these and this limitation checks the advancement of technology.
• But technology itself offers an answer to shortage of all resource. It has potential to
discover new materials, substitutes for existing, ones and new uses for existing
materials. It also has potential to develop human knowledge and discover newer and
newer forms of energy.
• Technology need not be perceived as a threat to the resource base of society.
• For example: Maharastra jaitapur nuclear plant: This strategic cooperation
agreement is for long term partnership for construction of conventional island on ach
of 6 reactor units of jaitapur nuclear plant. GE Power will design conventional island
for the plant and supply its main components. EDF will supply EPR technology and
will be responsible for building and coordinating industrial partners for this project. It
will be responsible for engineering integration covering entire project (nuclear island,
conventional island and auxiliary system) and will provide all the requisite input data.

3. Social Institutions:
• A third factor limiting technology is social values and institutions that may be
inconsistent with the full productive potential that is present in technology.
• For example: In adani Australia opposition case thousands of people are protesting
a $16-billion coal mine: Australian opposition to the mine has come from environment
activists and common citizens who are fearful of the damaging impact of the
Carmichael coal mine and rail project on climate change due to increase emissions.
“People are concerned about the impact the mine will have on global climate change.
Also, locally, climate change has been impacting the Great Barrier Reef significantly.
We have seen two bleaching events in the last two years, which have already killed
as much 50% of the reef. This mine will destroy the reef altogether,” said Zethoven.
In addition, Adani group’s project involves dredging of 1.1 million cubic metres of
sea-bed near the Great Barrier Reef which raises further concerns about damage to
the reef.
• Many societies, perhaps most of those that adopt modern technology, encounter
similar dramatic problems in arriving at a decision between their traditional social
institution and the new trends of technological developments.
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Management of Technology in India

• There are ethical issues associated with technology and most of these related to the
use of technological products like email, internet, mobile phone, laptops, etc used to
employees these days. These devices no doubt, have greatly contributed to increase
productivity, expanded job- related knowledge, improved communication, improve
time management, relieved job stress and balanced work and family needs. But the
ethical issues created by the new technologies are challenging.
• The ethical issues of new technologies are shown in table below.

Sabotage system/data of current co-worker or employer

Sabotage system/data of former employer

Access private computer files without permission

Listen to a private cellular phone conversation

Use new technologies to unnecessarily on co-worker’s privacy

Copy the company’s software for home use

Use office equipment to network/search for another job

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Bibliography:

https://www.export.gov/article?id=India-Environmental-Technology
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024630172900313
https://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/tags/jaitapur-nuclear-plant
https://thewire.in/189547/adanis-australia-story-thousands-people-protesting-16-billion-coal-
mine/?fromNewsdog=1/amp

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