Dr.
Bhaskar Dasgupta
works in the city of London
in various capacities in the
financial sector. He has worked
and travelled widely around
the world. He has a BSc in
Mathematics, an MBA in Finance
& IT, a PhD in Financial
Modelling and is working on
his second PhD in International
Relations and Terrorism.
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The
Rise and Fall of Great Knowledge
Powers (Part II)
Click HERE
for Part 1.
Last
week we talked about what makes
great knowledge powers and we noted
that it is due to six main reasons.
A strong top down sponsorship of
arts and sciences; respect for scientists
and artists; a basic minimum number
of artists and scientists who congregate
together; having the proper infrastructure
needed to support knowledge generation;
presence of capital to convert ideas
into action and finally, the freedom
of speech, individual liberty and
ability to research almost anything
that their minds take them to. We
ended last week’s column by giving
a teaser on how to take this forward,
how India / China can become knowledge
powers? What can the USA do to safeguard
its current lead? What can the UK
do to restore its flagging powers?
What can countries like Indonesia,
South Africa, Mexico and Brazil
do to become knowledge powers?
One
thing which modern governments are
very good at, is to establish committees,
commissions, inquiries, expert councils
or what have you, to come up with
reports and tomes to advise the
governments on public policy. The
select group of developed or developing
country governments, who are concerned
about the future, have all established
these worthy groupings and there
are more reports floating around
than all the universities of this
world. Most of the democratic countries
in the world are pretty well concerned
about the future. By their very
nature, liberal democracies have
to do something about their soft
powers, governance, security, economy,
unlike despotic and autocratic countries
where the leaders are solely concerned
with their power and their Swiss
bank accounts.
While
researching this column, I came
across a bewildering array of reports
by and for the UK and USA. I am
talking about substantive reports,
as not one of them was less than
100 pages. Some were high level;
several were industry specific,
while others were specific to a
sector, geography, race, ethnic
origin, gender, etc. For example,
there are reports on the competitive
position of the USA over the next
five, ten and fifty years. There
are reports on the future competitiveness
of the financial sector in the United
Kingdom. Reports are available on
London as a financial centre and
the UK as a medical research centre.
One can find reports on the future
of Silicon Valley as a centre of
research and excellence for IT and
the Thames Valley as a centre for
motor racing research, development
and testing. I found reports on
increasing the output of university
level Greek and Latin research papers
and others on increasing the ability
of Caribbean origin students in
the UK to get more A Levels. Quango’s,
research bodies and various institutes
are prolific in producing reports
of various shapes and sizes. Not
content with that, the supranational
and multinational institutions such
as the World Bank, IMF, and United
Nations are themselves responsible
for a goodly chunk of electronic
space for their reports.
If
one wanted to plough through all
these reports, I am afraid it would
require several lifetimes, I only
managed to skim through them. It
is much easier to look at various
countries through the guidelines/reasons
which I have mentioned above rather
than work through all these reports.
In any case, it would be easier
to compare and contrast across the
ages and countries based upon this
framework.
Let
us start with the two countries
which are said to be future knowledge
powers, namely China and India.
While these two countries are frequently
lumped together by analysts, it
behoves us to look at them separately.
China has sponsorship of arts and
sciences, respect for scientists;
teachers and artisans are present
(thank Confucius for that); there
are respectable centres of research
and lots of scientists – not least
the droves of Chinese students who
have come back to China after higher
studies abroad; infrastructure is
not as good as it could be, but
still is a lot better compared to
some other countries. Where it falls
short is in the ability to translate
ideas into action through proper
deployment of capital and the concept
of freedom of speech and individual
rights.
China’s
financial system is, at this moment,
a rental economy, it relies on basic
and fundamental research being done
elsewhere and the ability to copy
designs and take them into production
at a vastly lower cost. Concepts
such as private equity, venture
capital, small caps stock exchange,
presence of state development corporations,
specialised government owned investment
funds are either missing or minimal.
I expect another 5-7 years before
this sort of structure is relatively
embedded within the Chinese economy.
On the other hand, given the dead
man’s hand of the communist party
on the social, economic and political
processes, individual freedom and
freedom of action is patchy, weak
and cannot be relied upon. Very
opaque indeed! While it will be
considerably easier to fix the problem
of finding capital and allocating
it efficiently, individual freedoms
will take a heck of a while longer
to fix. When will this happen? Let’s
just say that I am not holding my
breath for the next ten years at
least.
India,
on the other hand, has ticks against
all the six reasons, but these are
tentative ticks. It has everything,just
not enough of it. People may talk
about lack of resources, very large
population, competing resource allocation
requirements, but at the end of
the day, it requires concentrated
attention to be paid to them. For
example, the infrastructure is definitely
there – look at all the IISc, IIT,
IIM and so on and so forth, but
they are not enough, we need to
increase this at least four fold.
Salaries for the teachers, more
investments for venture capital,
sort out the copyright and labour
laws, better and more libraries,
more tax breaks for research and
development, better physical infrastructure
etc. are a few things which any
government should do. I am not saying
that they aren’t doing it, it’s
just that it’s not doing enough.
I am all for the free market, but
in these types of long term planning
and strategy, the state has a much
bigger role to play.
Let
us take a look at the UK, which
funnily enough is in a similar situation
as that of India. No surprise there,
as the foundations of Indian knowledge
were driven to a certain extent
by the British System. Still, the
UK has lost its way somewhat. I
teach at several British universities
and study at one in particular.
The research and development output
of the British Universities has
fallen drastically, where one would
not be able to throw a piece of
chalk without braining at least
2 Nobel prize winners, now they
have all up and left to go to the
USA. Not only that, the pervading
anti-intellectualism prevalent in
British Society has to be seen to
be believed. To give you an example,
back in 1995, when I was looking
around for jobs in London, many
people advised me to stop prefixing
my name with “Dr.” because I would
be labelled as a “nerd” or a “brain”
which will be useless in “real”
society.
This
feeling permeates across the board.
Teachers are ill-paid and even less
respected. The feelings against
Mathematics, Physics and sciences
are running extremely high. Look
at the reduced number of people
graduating in these areas. The universities
have been starved of money, while
the government looks helplessly
around when animal extremists drive
one of the few remaining fields
of excellence from the country.
Wonderful news, let’s keep on driving
this country into the ground. If
you need any suggestions, take the
dollops of money that the government
is shoving into the NHS and try
to improve this country’s future
prospects. Health is here and now,
but the country is losing its technical,
scientific and knowledge lead. So,
get cracking now! Free the universities
from the government’s sweaty grasping
hands. If the Bank of England could
get independence, why can’t the
universities get financial and operational
independence as well?
Talking
about why university independence
is so vital, just hop across the
pond and look at USA. Most of the
excellent American universities
are private and therefore can concentrate
on research, training and education
without the government poking its
nose into it with silly fads. That
said the US government is itself
no slouch with a staggering amount
of money being pumped into fundamental
research, medicine, arts and sciences.
Rest of the factors are already
present due to which USA is currently
the premier knowledge power in the
world. It is also to its utter credit
that it is worried about maintaining
this position. My recommendations
are moot, but perhaps if they can
keep on having an open door visa
policy towards scientific and arts
professionals and graduate students,
it would help. The universities
are already moaning about the fact
that the coming crop of international
students are heading to more salubrious
locations than the USA. Let us also
not forget to mention that the local
students are really not coming up
to speed. Again, the same issues
relating to low esteem of intellectuals
and teachers arise in the USA, but
it will take time to address this.
Then
there are a clutch of four countries
in Asia, namely Singapore, Taiwan,
Japan and South Korea. Each of these
is well developed, rich, has good
infrastructure, intellectuals and
teachers are respected; capital
is well present to back up ideas.
They also have a good number of
professionals and are well reputed
in certain industrial areas. They
all fall short in one aspect, which
is the one concerning freedom of
speech, individual liberty and personal
freedoms. One may be surprised at
this, but the tendency of group
thinking and those famous “Asian
values” actually vitiate against
these countries coming up with a
framework which rewards individual
initiative. Since this is part of
the societal framework, it will
take a long time before they become
knowledge powers in their own right.
This
leads us to the other great unwashed
herd of countries aspiring to be
knowledge powers. Countries such
as Egypt, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia,
South Africa, Mexico, etc. have
the needed raw materials all right.
Why do I say so? It is because the
nationals of these countries, when
they are educated and work outside
their own countries, are brilliant
in their output and effectiveness.
It’s the internal system of their
home countries which produces dunces.
The reasons are multiple, poverty,
socialism, no individual freedom,
no infrastructure, or what have
you. We gave four examples, China,
India, UK and USA above and six
requirements for becoming knowledge
powers. It does not take a genius
to figure out what to do. Each country
will need its own recipe, diagnosis
and recommendation. At this moment,
with the potential exception of
Brazil and possibly South Africa,
I do not see any major change in
them in the next couple of decades,
but I am more than happy to see
myself being shown wrong in my prognosis,
for after all I am not a book and
even Arthur Schoppenhauer said:
“Many books, moreover, serve merely
to show how many ways there are
of being wrong, and how far astray
you yourself would go if you followed
their guidance.”
In the end, the immortal words of
Rabindranath Tagore ring true almost
a century after they were written:
“Where
the mind is without fear and the
head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken
up into fragments by narrow domestic
walls;
Where words come out from the depth
of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches
its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit; Where
the mind is led forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action---
Into that heaven of freedom, my
Father, let my country awake.”
All
this to be taken with a grain of
salt!
Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta
Also available on:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2005/05/rise-and-fall-of-great-knowledge_19.html
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5983_1369496,004300140003.htm
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