Prof. Indiresan's Speech

PROF INDIRESAN WAS FORMER DIRECTOR OF IIT MADRAS
Response of Professor Indiresan To Felicitation by IIT Delhi On
The Conferment of Hon.  Membership By The Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (April 6, 1998)

Some people are born with honours; some acquire honours and some
others have honours thrust on them. I belong to the third
category!
I have been lucky, lucky to have the kind of students I have had,and 
particularly lucky with the kind of colleagues I had the privilege to work 
with. Many of you would have heard of the Big Temple in Tanjore. That temple 
is an engineering marvel. As its name implies,it s big, very big indeed. It 
is also aesthetically fascinating. But it is not a holy temple. It is not 
described as Thiru Tanjore the way holy temples are described in that part of 
the country. That is so because the Big Temple never had an ardent poet who 
sang in praise of its deity. Evidently, it is not how great you are but how 
great your disciples are that determines what honours you get. So, I thank my
stars that my students and colleagues are as great as they are!

Today, I plan to explore the reasons why India is, and has always been
a weak force in international technology. Once we understand why we have been 
backward, and why we still are backward, we should be on the way to success. 
Let there be no misunderstanding. I yield to no one in my pride in what India 
has achieved in recent years.In many areas of space technology, defence 
systems, nuclear engineering,telecommunications and the like, we are 
admittedly at the cutting edge of technology. We do not want to boast about 
it, we do not even talk about it but the work that we have done here at IIT 
Delhi on phased array radars would be deemed commendable in any part of the 
world.
At the same time, it is proper for us to enquire why we built temple
halls with a thousand pillars a millennium after others had mastered
the design of the arch. Or, consider why we built the great sundial in
Jantar Mantar long after telescopes had become commonplace, and why even 
today we remain the only manufacturers of vintage cars. When Alexander bore 
down on us with his swift horses, we stood stuck in the mire with elephants. 
We learnt no lessons from our defeat at his hands. 1700 years later, we lost 
again to Babar because, in all those intervening centuries, we had remained 
loyal to elephants and further had nothing better than muskets to counter 
Babar's canons. Even in 1962, the Chinese humiliated us because they had 
modern arms and we had none. Why do we stick to obsolete technology all the 
time?

Let me illustrate the issue with a couple of stories. The first concerns a 
dhabha where, as is to be expected, the food was delightful. A guest after 
enjoying the meal, washed his hands and asked for a towel to dry them. The 
towel that was proffered was so filthy that he was driven to protest. The 
dhabha owner was perplexed. He replied ``Saab! Hazaron log use kiye hain; 
abhi tak koi complaint kiye nai!'' (Sir! A thousand people have used that
towel and nobody has complained!) The second concerns a seller of gud
in a mandi in Rajasthan. Noticing that the whole mound of gud was covered 
with flies, a young police officer asked the shopkeeper to do something about 
it. The shopkeeper was unperturbed. He said: ``Wo kitna kha sakta hai, 
saab!'' (How much can they eat, sir!) These anecdotes tell us a great deal 
about our culture.  One, as in the case of the dirty towel, we are content 
with the barest minimum utility and have no concern for quality. Two, as in 
the case of flies, we measure what is irrelevant. We are backward in 
technology not because we do not have the materials, not because we do not 
have the talent, not because we do not have the money, not even because we 
cannot get the technology. We are backward because, as Mancur Olson has
postulated,our culture makes us think poor. 
Technology innovation is like a baby. As you know, a baby is defined as an 
alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the 
other! Likewise, technology innovation is a conduit for digesting natural 
resources - with environmental disturbance at one end and science at the 
other. 
Let me turn to Thomas Kuhn to explain the science part of it. Kuhn has 
developed a theory to explain why Western science has dominated the world for 
centuries. For that purpose, he broadly divides science into two categories: 
the normal and the revolutionary.  Normal science involves:

  1. Acceptance of a paradigm composed of mutually consistent hypotheses.
  2. Setting solvable puzzles based on the paradigm.
  3. Checking theoretical solutions by experiment.
  4. Looking for anomalies.

In normal science, researchers operate with a paradigm by accepting certain 
hypotheses to be absolutely true. Based on those axioms,they set for 
themselves puzzles, solvable puzzles. After solving them theoretically, they 
verify the same by experiment. Every time experiments confirm the theoretical 
prediction, the paradigm gets strengthened. However, sooner or later, 
anomalies crop up. When they do, the initial attempt is to question the 
experiment, not the paradigm. After some time, so many anomalies accumulate 
that the paradigm becomes indefensible. At that stage comes a new genius
who postulates a new theory to trigger a revolution that produces a new
paradigm which explains the anomalies and explains the earlier results
too. What Einstein did to Newtonian mechanics is one such example. Once the 
new paradigm is accepted, the process continues with a new set of puzzles 
until yet another paradigm becomes necessary.
At times, the old theory is subsumed; at times it becomes irrelevant. In
the latter event, textbook writers give obsolete concepts an unceremonious 
burial by deleting them altogether. For instance,which textbook today talks 
of phlogiston or even about electronic tubes?
Science textbooks do not argue the past, they merely ignore it!
Compare that with philosophers who never forget and will not forgive either! 
That is why we have ideological wars but no wars between followers of Newton 
and Einstein, not even between devotees of Newton and Huygens.

Kuhn's paradigm may be described as a tetrahedron. Puzzle solving, anomaly 
detection, experimentation and textbook writing are its four vertices. A 
tetrahedron is admittedly the most stable structure imaginable. In this case, 
the situation is different. The Kuhn tetrahedron is normally as stable as you 
wish. But once in a while,it explodes. That combination of normal stability 
and occasional revolution is the hallmark of the culture of Western science. 
What about our culture? The Mundaka Upanishad says:

   Dve vidye veditavye . . . tatra apara rigvedo yajurvedah, samavedo
   atharva vedah; shiksha, kalpo, vyakaranam, niruktam, chando jyotishmati.
   atah para, adrishyam, agrahyam, agothram, avarnam.
   (There are two kinds of knowledge; the lower one consists of the Rig
    Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Saama Veda, the Atharva Veda as also diction, 
    rituals, grammar, etymology, prosody and astrology. The higher one is    
    unseeable, unreachable, origin-less and undescribable.)
These thoughts are prehistoric, were enunciated thousands of years ago. They 
still control our attitudes. We still feel in our bones that the highest 
knowledge cannot be measured, cannot be deduced logically, may only be 
realised intuitively and hence, cannot be taught in the conventional sense. 
There is also no space for experiment.
Further,in the Indian tradition of caste, imparting knowledge to the
undeserved is prohibited. So, textbooks are not written with the fear they
may fall into wrong hands. (That we have jumped to the other extreme with
our affirmative policies is a different story.) At any rate, however much 
Feynman and Samuelson could have become famous, we look down on the writing 
of textbooks. So, if current Western science philosophy is like a solid 
tetrahedron, our tradition, lacking as it does both experimental spirit and 
interest in writing textbooks, is formless.
At the same time, some aspects of our philosophy are unbelievably fantastic. 
In which culture will the holiest of holy texts (in our case the Vedas) be 
described as inferior knowledge? Thus, we are warned not to accept even holy 
texts as immutable. That is great; that should have made us prolific 
inventors. Unfortunately, we were also taught that innovation requires 
intuition that comes out of a form of Immaculate Conception. That needs a 
miracle. Unfortunately, in the strict sense, technology permits no miracles. 
Instead, as Kuhn points out, revolution is actually the culmination of 
continuous evolution - it is always one last straw that breaks the camel's 
back. In our culture, in theory, we may question but as we do not experiment,
we have no logical way of doing so. That is why we still manufacture cars
exactly the way they were designed nearly half a century ago. 
In this respect, Indian intellectual culture is similar to that of ancient 
Greeks. They too felt that the best way to develop new ideas is to sit under 
a tree and think and think and think until realisation comes like a bolt of 
lightening. There is the story of Aristotle decreeing that women had less 
number of teeth than men. Such was Aristotle's reputation in the Western 
world that, for centuries, people did indeed believe that women had fewer 
teeth. They could have easily verified whether that was true or false by 
asking their wives to open their mouth. They did not because in those they 
too did not believe in experiments. Eventually, they started experimentation,
and progressed. We do not do so as yet. So, we remain stuck.  Not many people 
are aware that the first rockets ever used in war were of Indian origin. 
Almost exactly two hundred years ago, Tipu Sultan stuck terror among British 
troops with his rockets.  Unfortunately, his rockets were so primitive and so 
uncontrollable that they devastated Tipu's own troops as often as they hurt 
the enemy. So, Tipu Sultan abandoned his rockets instead of trying to improve 
them. (As a matter of curiosity, the only sample of Tipu's missiles is not in 
India,but in the British War Museum.) The moral of the story is, generating
ideas is not the same as converting ideas into usable products. 
The latter needs patience, time, determination and above all empathy.
That is where Indian technology policy is found wanting. These days, we are 
looking for new models of economic development. Many of us have been 
ascinated by the extraordinary progress of East Asian countries. There is a 
talk of instituting a new ministry on the lines of Japan's MITI. As Lawrence 
Summers has explained, the East Asian success is attributable less to
technology innovation and more to higher application of capital. East Asian
countries operate with technologies that are available for sale,not with 
innovations of their own. However, a large country like India cannot become 
rich by selling TV sets and notebook computers based on somebody else's 
design. Then, what can we, who missed the bus of post-war expansion, do? The 
story of drug industry indicates the way out.  Drug prices often fall to less 
than a tenth the moment their patents expire. That is an indication of the 
power of technology innovation. Monopolies are always profitable. However, in 
that respect no commercial monopoly can hold a candle to technology monopoly.
That is, what India needs most is technology of her own. India can
become rich not by exploiting labour, not by borrowing capital but only   
through technical innovation.

Getting back to MITI, even in Japan, MITI is not much admired. MITI is a 
bureaucrat's paradise. It assumes that bureaucrats can out-guess   
entrepreneurs. We know that is not true. It is merciless competition
(with unsentimental bloody exit) that ensures prosperity for worthwhile ideas 
and the elimination of useless ones. So, if have to at all try a MITI like 
experiment, it is best to introduce MITI-like divisions in every economic 
ministry and let all of them compete against one another. That might possibly 
work. On the other hand, one single MITI will end up like our Planing  
Commission, excellent in promise but poor in performance. What we need is not 
more management but better innovation. That is exactly what a bureaucratic 
set up like MITI cannot provide. 
Richard Feynman has some very interesting things to say about innovators, 
rather about uncreative people. According to him.(Uncreative people's) main 
characteristic is a desire for exactness and precision, and for 
definiteness-a desire for formal rules that will be guaranteed to work and to 
yield results. I have to be very specific here. The main characteristic is 
really that they want someone to give them that exactness and precision, 
those definitions and those formal rules. But of course what distinguishes a
creative scientist is a desire to create (italic original) an exactness or
a definition or a way of stating a problem. Or to create a system of rules 
that will guarantee that the other fools get the right answer.''Then, who 
deals with rules? Bureaucrats! So, let us leave them alone. Instead, let us 
ask what we ourselves do here in the IIT.
Do we train our students to be creative, or do we let them assume that the
engineering world is a precisely regulated place with exact answers to
every problem? IITs are so much examination oriented with so much emphasis on 
accuracy that it is possible we induce our students to concentrate on 
common-sense and prevent them from exploring uncommon sense. Feynman is 
contemptuous of uncreative students who 'worship the Baconian idea of 
science'' and ``delight in trying to define as precisely as possible.'' He 
regards them as ``the bottom of the barrel''. As he says, the Baconian method 
is like Darwin's, to record everything and hope to find a pattern there in. 
Instead, Feynman extols the ability to pick and choose what to record and 
what not to record, that is, the ability to approximate. Let me modify his
thesis to point out that the more precise your measurement becomes,the more 
probabilistic the result will be. I shall not repeat Feynman's own earthy 
description but paraphrase it in more polite terms.
'`Your weight is essentially a constant from one day to the next if the
accuracy chosen is plus or minus a Kg. However, what with your daily imports 
and exports, your weight becomes a random variable if it is measured accurate 
to a gram.''
Do we teach our students to appreciate that the fun is not in measuring 
precisely the average value but in studying the variations around the mean? 
While we teach them Boolean logic do we also tell them about Bertrand 
Russel's paradox?  If the village barber is defined as one who shaves every 
person who does not shave himself, does the barber shave himself or not?  In 
other words, can it be that we in the IITs train students to solve problems 
but not to think!
If that is happening even in the IITs, where else can India go to get 
thinkers and innovators of tomorrow?
Let me now shift the thread of the argument. I believe philosophers are those 
who have the sixth sense. Then, let us say they can solve sixth order 
equations. By the same token, artists can solve fifth order equations - they 
can handle all five senses. Scientists are often described as mad.  That is 
possibly because they have no taste. So, they can solve only fourth order 
equations.  Engineers, the common garden variety at any rate - come yet 
another peg lower; they are often accused of having neither taste nor sense 
of smell.
Ask any environmentalist! So, they can handle only third order equations. 
Politicians are worse, they have no taste, they stink and further, they have 
no vision. However, they have their years to the ground and a fine sense of 
touch, I mean they know how to make a touch on your purse. So, we may take it 
they can solve second order problems. Still lower are bureaucrats who do not 
care to hear.
They know only how to make a touch. So, they can tackle nothing better than
first order equations. Is there a still lower breed? Who can that be?
Let me make a guess. How about IIT graduates who go on to study in he
institutes of management and manage Indian industry!
Let me explain. The problem with those who make it their profession to
provide precise management answers is, they often end up with precisely wrong 
answers. As it has been said, it is better to be approximately right than to 
be precisely wrong. Let me give one example. It is said that Howard Hughes 
the self-made billionaire of yester years approached a banker for a loan to 
build an aeroplane. According to the story, the banker refused to lend him   
the precisely- calculated amount the gawky youngster wanted. He insisted on 
lending him a lot more because a new venture is always uncertain, and there 
will always be unexpected demands. Compare that banker's wisdom with the way 
our bankers and grant giving agencies operate.
Our administrators pare down financial support to the barest minimum in the 
expectation the returns will then become maximum. As we know,more often than 
not, our bankers and our government lose everything. In contrast, Hughes's 
banker not only saved all his investment, he made millions for himself and 
for Hughes too. Once again, precise answers are wrong, approximate ones are 
right! Our country will march forward in technology only when our managers 
stop insisting on assured returns, and prepare to gamble to lose all -- or 
win the jackpot!
Then, there is the even more startling case of the Xerox corporation  
offering to sell to IBM the patents of the Xerox copier. In turn, IBM   
turned to Arthur D. Little, the famed management consultants, for advice. 
Those management experts calculated that even if the Xerox copier took away 
100 percent of the existing market for carbon paper and for dittographs, it 
will not be financially viable. So, IBM turned down the offer. Against such 
advice, Xerox persisted. The rest is history. The flaw in the management 
approach of Arthur D. Little was, there is no way of conducting market 
research on a product that does not exist, a flaw nobody in India 
appreciates. As Schumpeter pointed >   out over eighty years ago,  
``innovations do not as a rule take place in such a way that first new wants 
arise spontaneously in consumers . . . It is the producer who as a rule 
initiates economic change, and consumers . . .are taught as it were to want 
new things.''
When we look at our managers, I am reminded of an itinerant vendor who sold a 
customer a bottle, which, he assured, will kill mosquitoes. When the customer 
wanted to know what he should do with the bottle, the vendor explained: 
``catch the mosquito and put it inside the bottle.  Then it will die.'' When 
the customer protested that he could as well have squashed the mosquito, the 
vendor assuaged the customer saying ``That may as well be the easier way of 
killing mosquitoes, but this has always been my way of doing it!'' It would 
be nice if our managers, whether in the government or in industry, ask of  
themselves every day, and day after day, ``Am I using this technology because
it is good, or is it because I am used to it?'' As Robert Frost has written:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by,And that 
made all the difference. 
Do we train our students to take the less traveled road? Let me conclude with 
another thought. We bemoan that our lot is bad, that teachers are not given 
their due. Having been a member of the Pay Commission of IIT and other 
institutions, I know those complaints very well. The situation indeed is bad. 
As Donald Christiansen, long time editor of IEEE Spectrum has said:

``A country that trains its engineers and technologists well, then rewards
them with both real and psychic income, should have little trouble   
competing in a world economy that thrives on trading high quality, high    
tech products over international boundaries.''

I could not agree more. Consider Christiansen's phrase ``psychic income''. 
That comes from respect offered and respect received. Do we, the teachers of 
IIT respect our colleagues? We know our colleagues too well, we know what 
their failings are. That blinds us to their virtues.  We want the government 
to single out IIT teachers for special benefits but we do not want to give 
the same teachers anything ourselves. In one of the most evocative passages 
in our Upanishads we are given the advice:

   Shraddhaya deyam, ashraddhaya adeyam.
   Hriya deyam, bhiya deyam, sriya deyam, samvida deyam.
  (Give with reverence; do not give disrespectfully. Give with humility,
   give with a sense of awe, give generously, give affectionately.)

We are not good at giving. That is why we ourselves get so little. I must 
admit, however, that you have made an exception in my case.You have given me 
a lot. I am getting so much from you at this old age long years after I 
retired. I have come to believe the only reason why I have been so lucky is 
because when I could, I gave what I could. I did not give away what was mine 
but only let others have what was actually theirs. Authority is exercised 
both when you say ``Yes!'' and when you say ``No!'' I can assure you, it is 
more joyful to exercise authority by saying ``Yes!''than by saying ``No!''. 
Then, if you have to say ``yes'' ultimately, why not say so immediately? As 
you observe from my case, it is rewarding too!

Dutta Roy told you today about what I have done for IIT. He forgot to   
mention that the best thing I did for IIT is to induce a number of   
outstanding persons like him to give up lucrative careers elsewhere to join 
in the struggle for life here in IIT. That is my pride: I persuaded a number 
of minds greater than mine to join the IIT. It can only be on their behalf 
that I can accept the honour you have done me today.
 
Mancur Olson Jr., Big bills on the sidewalk: Why some countries are rich and 
others are poor, The Journal of Economic Perspectives,1995.
 
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago University 
Press, 1970.

David and Judith Goodstein, The Uncreative Scientist: Feynman's Other Lost 
Lecture, Caltech News, Vol.  31, No. 4, PP. 12-17,1997.

Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reegineering The Corporation: A Manifesto 
For Business Revolution, Nicholas Braily, London, p. 86.
 
J.A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, Oxford University Press, 
1961

Christiansen, Donald, Engineering Excellence: Cultural and Organisational 
Factors, New York, 1987, IEEE Press.