Challenges transform into Opportunity

Dr R A Mashelkar says  "When we are challenged and denied a technology, we perform." He elucidates it with :

We are, again, a peculiar country. When we are challenged and denied a technology, we perform. Let us remind ourselves about how India reacted to the denial of the supercomputers in the late eighties. Cray XMP-1205 was something that we needed for weather forecasting. It was not available for a variety of reasons – one need not go into the details. But Indian scientists were challenged. They met the challenge by using massively parallel processing computing technology to create a supercomputer. In less than three years that C-DAC was given, and within less than $ 10 million that C-DAC was allocated, the PARAM supercomputer was delivered. I remember reading the Washington Post, which said: "Angry India does it". Our problem seems to be that we are not permanently angry!

What would we really require for transforming India? Now here is the issue. People consider India as a 'land of ideas' but the USA as a 'land of opportunities'. That is why our young people with aspirations go to the USA, which provides them an opportunity to reach their own potential. I read some statistics the other day that 2 per cent of Indians, i.e. non-resident Indians, who work in those lands of opportunity outside, generate an economic output which is almost the same as India's economic output, which 98 per cent of us generate from within India. Our challenge is to make India a land of opportunity. That again requires a positivism and a faith in ourselves.

As I said, Indian talent will reign supreme in the twenty-first century. But it is not Indian talent alone that the world would be seeking, it will also be seeking the Indian way of life. With sharp demographic imbalances, the aged population in the western world would increase phenomenally. This will mean that the social security demands will increase. It is estimated that in some nations, this may be as much as 20 to 30 per cent of their GDP. Someone said recently to me that the only way to deal with these problems is by emulating India, namely, by adopting its joint family system. As you know, our joint families give a value of belonging and sharing that is almost epic in scope. That model is what the rest of the world is seeking. The world wants to go back to nature, back to yoga, back to Ayurveda, back to spiritualism. It is all "an Indian way of life".

--

The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

Follow us on   blog   twitter   youtube   facebook   g+   delicious   rss   Donate Online