Re: Business Week article on the Rise of Math


Old Pif wrote:
> Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
> >
> > Are you serious? On one hand, you say we want to get hold of modern
> > science & tech -on the other hand, you say we want to be dirt cheap &
> > poor. Why would we want to move up the value chain without aspiring
> > for the benefits of moving up the value chain?
> >
>
> Not even close. I tried to look at India from the Toynbee theory
> standpoint. Pre-modern stage is a classical example of that. Fertile
> land, mighty revers and warm climate left very little incentive for the
> technological social development. And ended the British brought you
> education, sanitation, parliamentary system and the most precious gift
> - English. And at that point I realized that as a matter of fact the

Indus valley civilization went through its ups and downs/declines (like
a sine wave) and at one pt -the region as a whole stopped inventing.
The land supported easy living and people kind of became lazy. Every
invader/settler ended up doing the same -or you can say that the land
beckoned lots of settlers like Babur (who brought him with him the
cannon gun) or the British (who brought with them the stuff mentioned
above). But they all came because the land beckoned them and as such
till the British began dismantling the economy to boost their own -it
was one of the largest economies on earth. It doesn't mean the Indus
valley never invented anything or would not have invented anything but
for the British/english language. Language is just a means of
communication but not the source of ideas, and democracy is something
that may or may not have had success in meeting aspirations of the
public.

> same trend is continuing today. You are getting modern technologies and
> science from the West the same way as you have been getting fruits in
> the past from the mother Nature. And you explained us many times that

Did you know that many of those doing pioneering research in the US are
not US citizens or WASPs? Some of the pioneering institutions doing
sensitive research like Lawrence livermore national lab and NASA employ
scores of Indians. If technologies flow from this research to other
countries -would you call that stealing?
One of the democratic candidates Wesley Clark suggested during his
campaign trial of 2004 that graduates of Indian Institutes of
Technology should be given green card on arrival -to ensure they do a
good job of hiring/retaining them. He suggested that during his
campaign when people have a chance to decide whether to vote for the
person.

> the reason you are getting all that is because you are cheap and poor
> whereas people in say US are expensive and rich.
>
The reason why people get hired to use that technology is because their
services are priced competitively. In order to price services
competitively, one has also got to be capable of providing services and
being poor isn't sufficient. It doesn't matter who came up with the
idea first i.e that doesn't give residents of the inventor's country
any legal rights to own that industry.
As things stand, MNCs are creating research labs in India and these
have started generating a large number of patents. You can look them up
in the US patent office -if it can be searched by country. So the claim
of living off other people's inventions may not remain true if and when
employers find they can get good return on investment by hiiring
Indians. If a large no. of patents did come from the US -it is because
employers found it financially viable to hire people to invent stuff in
the US. Nobody is holding you back from offering the best deal to
employers and ensuring that they hire just americans for the job. The
problem comes when your services are not competitively priced -but if
you do ensure they are competitively priced, I would agree that
americans more than anybody else deserves to get those jobs.

> As far as your (India) aspirations are concern I don't know anything

The aspirations of this country would be to move up the value chain
and do pioneering work more in line with the west and less in line with
the east.

> about that. Hopefully you have some to be independent of 1) Nature; 2)
> filthy rich America.

Can you tell me how on earth the biggest debtor on earth can be filthy
rich? What exactly is it that makes you rich? Are americans super-human
or are they sitting on a sea of natural resources? Before yoy say
agriculture, let me tell you the US is a net importer of agricultural
goods. Look up safeway and you will see rows and rows of south american
agricultural goods. Just as US engineers are too expensive to be hired
-even US farm hands are too expensive to be hired to produce
agricultural goods when compared to s. american labour. The exception
would be slave labour that is imported to till the land.

>
> Are we in agreement?
In some ways that while the British did milk the country economically,
they provided some fringe benefits in return. But for them, maybe you
would have had lesser competition:-)

regards
-kamal

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Good book "Great Careers in 2 Years".....
    ... India as a country is like a line on the equator. ... the british empire covered 80% of the world's landmass. ... Hispanic or non-Hispanic Americans. ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: "We killed the Patriot Act" (NDC)
    ... Rural Americans were regularly kidnapped and carried off into the ... British troops ran amok in the land, especially in the South, ... The country was crawling with British spies. ... Those that strongly support these provisions of the Patriot Act are ...
    (rec.music.gdead)
  • Re: Cover up in Iraq
    ... Americans when the Americans invaded their country. ... British who were merely visiting relatives in Pakistan when they were kidnapped by the Americans. ... only Feroz Abbasi was actually detained in Afghanistan. ...
    (uk.legal)
  • Stand up!
    ... I have a privilege given few Americans ... In my life, no success has come without a good fight, and this nomination ... their outstanding example of honorable service to our country. ...
    (soc.culture.argentina)