Modern Technology for Economic Development

Summary

Prof. S. Sampath, then Deputy Director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, uses the A. D. Shroff Memorial Lecture (delivered 28 October 1975, published by the Forum of Free Enterprise in 1976) to argue that modern science and technology are the decisive levers of economic development and that India must learn to harness them on its own terms. The opening section catalogues the explosive pace of twentieth-century invention — from the Wright brothers and the telephone to Sputnik, the integrated circuit, the electronic computer and the communications satellite — and frames technology not as a smoke-belching factory but as a sequence of self-reinforcing stages of idea, realisation and diffusion that reshape the way humans think about and act on their environment. Computers, satellites and integrated-circuit electronics are presented as devices that abolish the age of isolation, slash unit costs and put once-elite capabilities within reach of the common man.

The second section, ‘The Gearing of Technology to Humane Goals’, concedes the deleterious side-effects — pollution, centralisation, weaponisation, displacement of labour — and argues that the answer is not to jettison technology but to inject ‘a substantial dose of new technology’, sensitively appropriated. Sampath surveys the case for alternative or appropriate technologies in energy (wood, hydro-electric, geo-thermal, tidal, wind and solar), housing, sewage and food, citing Robin Clarke on the need to lift technology out of the moral vacuum in which it has long existed.

The third section places the argument in the Indian context. Drawing on Indira Gandhi, C. V. Raman, M. G. K. Menon, Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha, Sampath rejects the post-colonial assumption that growth will follow automatically from importing capital equipment, and instead calls for a judicious blend: build a strong domestic scientific base, adopt frontier techniques in selected high-payoff areas (electronics, communications, defence, medicine, water and energy), and use intermediate technology to lift the bullock-cart economy. He closes by attacking the inherited administrative culture’s suspicion of the profit motive, defending profit as ‘the motive-power for saving’ and the engine of capital formation, and pleading for a civic ethic of competence at every level — ‘good scientists and good carpenters; good teachers and good plumbers; and good cabinet ministers and good bus-drivers.‘

Key points

• Frames modern technology as a self-reinforcing cycle of idea, realisation and diffusion, accelerating at a pace that doubles scientific output every decade.

• Presents the electronic computer, communications satellites and integrated-circuit electronics as instruments that end isolation, lower unit costs and enlarge the reach of the common man.

• Concedes serious side-effects — pollution, centralisation, capital-intensity, weaponisation — but rejects deceleration: the cure for bad technology is more, better-directed technology.

• Argues for alternative or appropriate technologies in energy (solar, wind, tidal, hydro, geo-thermal), housing, sanitation and food, citing Robin Clarke’s case that humane goals lift technology out of its moral vacuum.

• Endorses C. V. Raman’s quip about bullock-carts and M. G. K. Menon’s plea to adopt the most modern techniques in selected fields, advocating a blend of intermediate and frontier technologies.

• Reads Vikram Sarabhai’s case for an Indian communications satellite as compatible with — not opposed to — rural priorities of roads, schools, hospitals and water.

• Invokes Homi Bhabha to insist that foreign technology can only super-charge a domestic engine, never replace it; economic development must be ‘an adaptive and assimilative’ quest.

• Closes with a Forum-of-Free-Enterprise-flavoured defence of the profit motive as the indispensable engine of saving and capital formation, paired with a Gardner-style ethic of competence at every level of work.