India a soft, vulnerable country: Dr Kakodkar
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“India is a soft country and is conditioned more by external thought rather than internal,” Dr Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India, said here on Friday. “At this point, the country is vulnerable to the outside world,” he said.
Dr Kakodkar was responding to reporters’ queries after launching Electronics Corporation of India’s indi-genously-developed Programmable Logic Controller MPROGICON 5000.
Dr Kakodkar, now an AEC member, said that it was important that India practised protectionism at least in the field of technology. Asked why India was lagging far behind Western countries when it came to developing electronics, he said it was indirectly because of a lack of Indianness.
“It is the culture that needs to change. The basic feeling of Indianness is lacking among us,” he said.
Speaking to the audience, Dr Kakodkar predicted that the import bill of electronics would soon exceed that of oil and hydrocarbons. Asked if importing was seen as an easier way than developing electronics indi-genously, he said the ans-wer was “both yes and no.”
“There should be a balance of export and import. Currently, we export raw materials and import value-added products. Ideally, we should export a few value-added products and import some,” he said.
The major effect of importing value-added products, he said, was that it made us “that much more vulnerable”.
Acknowled-ging that R&D in the country had not been successful, he said, there is a lack of awareness among scientists about the commercialisation of a lab experiment.
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