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Clinton’s One-Day Visit to India’s Silicon Valley Leads to Science and Technology Collaborations
On the main streets were signs reading “Wel.com Mr. President” and children, given a day off from school, waving miniature US flags. Never one to miss a chance to address a crowd, Clinton spoke about the “new economy” and the “cyber revolution” flourishing in Andhra Pradesh, the southeastern state in which Hyderabad is located. He noted that India is “fast becoming one of the world’s software superpowers,” proving that “in a globalized world, developing nations not only can succeed, developing nations can lead.” India’s exports of
information technology have catapulted in value to $4 billion last year
from some $150 million a decade earlier, and the Indian government has
projected that by 2008 such exports may amount to as much as $85 billion.
What’s more, one of India’s principal exports is its strongly motivated
and highly educated scientists, engineers, and technicians. Indian students
compete ferociously to attend a top-notch science or engineering school.
Last year, India’s Institute of Technology in New Delhi had 130,000 applicants
for 2,000 places. The ratio is even larger to enter the Institute of Science,
founded in Bangalore in 1933 by India’s only Nobel laureate in physics,
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman.
To emphasize the quality of education in
science and technology, Clinton noted that India produces 30% of the world’s
software engineers. The US benefits mightily from this talented workforce.
Some 750 high-tech companies in California’s Silicon Valley are led by
executives of Indian origin, he stated. Clinton also extolled such expatriate
superstars as Vinod Khosla, who helped elevate Sun Microsystems to its
present technological status, and Vinod Dahm, who masterminded Intel’s
Pentium chip. On stage with Clinton was Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam
Computer Services, the first Indian information technology company to
be listed on the Nasdaq exchange. Satyam has entered into an agreement
with TechnologyNet.com, one of several high-tech US–India business ventures.
With India’s economy
growing by 6% a year, and with 10% growth in sight, some of the country’s
skilled computer and software engineers and scientists are leaving Silicon
Valley and returning home as entrepreneurs or as professors at Hyderabad’s
Indian Institute of Information Technology, which is already being compared
with MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. “What we see is a movement from
brain drain to brain gain,” said Clinton.
During Clinton’s visit, Lane
and India’s science minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, agreed to set up a
forum to promote greater scientific collaboration among government research
centers, universities and industry. The forum will consist of seven members
from each country and is expected to commission studies on issues involving
science and technology and to initiate joint research projects. The US
is contributing $4 million to operate the forum, using unspent funds from
a moribund US–India Fund that was scuttled when India tested nuclear weapons
in 1998. Scientific cooperation between India and the US peaked in the
1980s with the launching of some 250 collaborations. It went downhill
in the 1990s over issues of patent protection and intellectual property
rights, and came to a halt after India’s nuclear tests. In her talk in Hyderabad, NSF’s Colwell spoke of the “rich potential for science and technology” in India. “Indeed, we can envision a time when young scientists from our country and other countries will pursue research and advanced training at centers of excellence throughout India,” she said. The forum, said Colwell, is a new beginning of “a vibrant partnership for our nations.” Irwin Goodwin © 2000 American Institute of Physics
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