Let's just think of it, because he was reading a little bit about him, and we're going to have a lot of time. Yeah, don't worry about it. Good evening everybody, and welcome to ANU. My name's Mike Calford, I'm the provost of the university. I acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging. We're here for the 2018 Nureyan Oration, the 20th in the series, organised by the Australia South Asia Research Centre, ASAR, here at the university. I'm pleased to note that this year's oration is co-hosted by our research school of physics and engineering. We've got some special guests as well, we have a defect represented by Paul Meyer, and Dr Alan Finkel, our chief scientist. Thank you for coming. The oration honours the late Dr K.R. Nureyan, former president of India, who helped establish ASARC in 1994, one of the great aspects of lineage at this university. Dr Nureyan was amongst the most accomplished of Indian diplomats. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics, and served in various diplomatic roles in addition to vice president and finally president of India. Our speaker today is Padma Vubashan, Dr Ramesh Masalkar, FRS, national research professor, president of the Global Research Alliance, and one of India's most distinguished scientists. We also welcome His Excellency Dr Ajay Gondane, Indian High Commissioner, and his wife in attendance this evening. I'm also very happy to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian India Council and DFAT to this oration series. In addition, we have a special mention from the President of India, His Excellency Mr Rahman Naat Kovand, who sent a message to this oration. And I will now ask the Indian High Commissioner to read this message. Thank you, sir. I'll read the message from His Excellency Mr Rahman Naat Kovand, who is the President of India. I'm happy to learn that the Australian South Asia Research Centre at the Australian National University Canberra is organising the 20th K.R. Narayanan oration on the topic dismantling inequality through assured innovation to be delivered by Dr R.A. Masalkar, FRS Chairman, National Innovation Foundation of India. It is imperative for our society to assure inclusive development so that all sections benefit. For India, the world's fastest growing large economy, inclusive development remains a cherished commitment to accelerate this process. Government of India has taken several policy initiatives in the area of tax simplification and investment, governance and regulatory affairs and citizen empowerment, among others. These initiatives will ensure inclusive growth and reduce inequality. Technological innovations have the potential to reduce inequalities at the very least, they can help bring about equality of access to the essentials of human life and dignity and both the public and private sectors can promote advance in this direction. With that optimism, I wish the oration named in honour of my distinguished predecessor, President Narayanan, every success. I'm confident it will contribute to policy debates on contemporary developmental challenges. After the lecture, we'll have a few questions. So please get ready for those. I now invite Dr. Masalkar to deliver the 2018 K.R. Narayanan oration. As you can see, dismantling inequalities through assured innovation. Honourable Provost, Honourable Deputy Vice Chancellor, His Excellency, High Commissioner of India, Professor Ja, ladies and gentlemen, I deeply appreciate the honour done to me by Australian National University by inviting me to deliver the prestigious K.R. Narayanan oration. Kuchheri Raman Narayanan was the 10th President of India and one of our most accomplished civil servants, distinguished diplomats and stellar accommodations. President Narayanan and I were born 22 years apart. But his life story bears a striking resemblance to mine. He was born in a small village in Kerala. I was born in a small village in Goa. He walked 15 kilometres to go to school, much like I walked barefoot to a municipal school. He sometimes stood outside class and eavesdropped on lectures because his family didn't have enough money for tuition. Due to extreme poverty, my widowed mother could not afford notebooks or shoes and I remember many nights on which I studied under street lights. He took his brother's help to copy notebooks and books and return them and I remember sitting on a footpath borrowing books from a kind bookstore owner quickly reading them and returning them. In fact, we both even shared the turning point of our academic lives. Both of us were Tata scholars. We both left India only to return when we were fairly young with a zeal to do more for our homeland. He at the age of 27 and I at the age of 32. I met President Narayanan for the very first time in 1982. He was visiting the National Chemical Laboratory where we had established a polymer science engineering department and there was a polymer that we had developed, Jala Shakti. You can see how my colleague Dr. Imji Kulkarni is demonstrating to him the power of a super-absorbing polymer. We called it Jala Shakti. Jala is water and Shakti is the power to absorb. One gram of that polymer could absorb 100 to 200 grams of water. I remember having discussions with him on what applications we were working on and he was the one who gave us the idea of why don't we coat the seats with this water-absorbing polymer when we are sewing because in India rays come and then they disappear for one week, two weeks and so on and so forth. He kept in touch with me to find out what were the results of the field and of course we commercialized this, did not last long for a variety of reasons but I still carry those wonderful memories. President Narayanan had many reflective thoughts and one of them was I see and understand both the symbolic as well as the substantial elements of my life. Sometimes I've realized it as a journey, as an individual from a remote village on the sidelines of society to the hub of social standing but at the same time I realized my life encapsulates the ability of the democratic system to accommodate and empower marginalized sections of the society. And just as a proof of that are some interesting photographs here. You can see here I was receiving both Ratan Tata and I the Padma Bhushan Award which is one of the highest civilian honors and it is interesting that President Narayanan was a Tata scholar giving Padma Bhushan to the head of the family of Tatas and at the same time giving to me on the same day one after the other that showed us the power of education. I always say education is future. Of course more precisely future is equal to education plus opportunity. I mean it's not just education that sort of matters. So this is I think sort of a remarkable photograph because neither President Narayanan nor I would have been there but for that 60 rupees per month scholarship 60 rupees is slightly bigger than an Australian dollar by the way. Now if one goes back talking about Tatas they have a very rich legacy of corporate social responsibility. Many of you may not be aware that the Tata Trust was founded in 1892 by Jamcheji Tata and this was a head of Rockefeller Foundation which came in 1930, Ford Foundation which came in 1936, Lord Liberium Trust which came in 1925 and of course others follow including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and so on and so forth but to do it in 1892 was something that is absolutely remarkable. The issue is this is corporate social responsibility I would call it CSR 1.2. In India now the government has made it mandatory that 2% of the net profit of companies should be spent on CSR. That means it is almost what shall I say legalizing compassion or regulating compassion if you like. Compassion has to come from the heart. But the way it worked CSR 1.2 was it was doing well and doing good. What does it mean?  Of course that has had a lot of impact. Like I wouldn't be standing here if CSR 1.2 was not done through Dharapata Trust by Tadas. But what I'm saying or what I'm proposing is let's move on CSR 2.2 where you don't influence the lives of a few select like me but billions of lives. How do we do that? And I would say that is doing well by doing good and by doing it means doing good itself as a business. Sounds paradoxical but that is possible by doing it.  You have a challenge. The challenge is that despite income inequality you have to create access equality basically because people have aspirations so as to say of high quality access to education, to health and so on but they don't have the capacity to pay. So how do you do that? Is it possible? Well you can see it here. The income inequality is 1000 is to 1 but access equality is 1 is to 1. Today we have billion mobiles in India for example. Now the rickshaw pullers have it just as those who drive a Mercedes they have it. That is access equality despite income inequality. And for that I suggest that the companies will have to start looking at different strategies from CSR 1.0 to CSR 2.0. From old learning they will have to move to new learning. What was the old learning? Create technologically sophisticated performance rich products with many features. For whom? For the select few. From there they have to say can we make frugal functional but high quality products. Remember my emphasis is always on high quality. The next is remove features to reduce costs. You look at a developing country and say what can I knock down from here so that it becomes affordable. No sorry reinvent the product from ground up. Like a refrigerator compressor is an essential element of that but if you want to make a rule refrigerator for 69 dollars you can't do it on the technology of a compressor. You have to look at an auto radio and that's what Boudre's did. They came out with a completely different order. Then premium price high margins making a lot of money. No affordable price but high volumes because you serve hundreds of millions. Technology push product approach no customer centric market based approach. Current markets old money is what one was always comfortable with. No. Increase the size of the pie because you are serving now hundreds of millions and so on so forth and there will be new money. Use developed products to transform emerging markets. No. Build new global growth platforms based on emerging markets and mind you these are becoming strategies now all over the world of big multinational companies and I will come back to that a little later. So it is possible to move from CSR 1.0 to CSR 2.0 if we do the changes. And for that what I suggest is the assured framework. That's why the assured word appears there. What is assured? A is affordable? Of course that I have explained. It has to be scalable because we are talking about hundreds of millions. It has to be sustainable. Sustainable in three respects. First is economic. You can't depend on governments of cities all the time. The business must make a sense. The second is environmental. Like plastic sashes are affordable but are they environmentally sustainable? No. And finally socially acceptable because if the society doesn't accept it your business will not be sustainable as we have seen. Next is universal or user friendly so as to say and I don't have to explain that. Next is rapid. Rapid in two ways. The process by which you move from mind to marketplace has to be rapid but the products for example dengue fever. You can't take five days to diagnose it. Can you do it in five minutes for example? So both process and product way. Excellence in technology, cutting edge technology. Now you will say come on, what are you talking about? Affordable excellence. Because normally we say what is affordable can't be excellent what is excellent cannot be affordable but I will demonstrate to you that that is actually possible and we do need to make it excellent because the aspirations of the people are very high. And finally distinctive, hopefully disruptive because it can't be sort of me too. Now this is a matrix by the way. I have not seen it before but it appears to work very well. I did an analysis of what one might call as a failed companies or failed technologies and so on and so forth. This is very interesting, just see that. I will not explain the whole slide, just take two or three. If you look at all of them you find as far as excellence and distinctive is concerned which is really here. At the end practically all of them meet that but what happens, why did they fail? For example look at Napster. In terms of sustainability it failed. Why sustainability? Because the society, the artists who are actually producing the music they say come on, you can't give it for free. And finally of course now we have iTunes which charges one dollar and you can get a lot of music, that's a different matter. Because of that it failed. Look at Blackberry for example. It was a great product at a point in time. But when it came to user friendliness after the smart phones came and the touch came in they were still typing, so as to say. And Blackberry actually went. Take one other example, General Motors EV1, the electric vehicle. And you are the expert in this. One would know that at that time the regulation that was going to come was 10% of the vehicles would be at least electric. That is how it was based. And lobbies made sure that that doesn't happen and they went down. So sustainability in terms of. So this is a very dynamic table by the way. Dynamic table. And I suggest that this table you can use yourself in whatever you are doing basically. The project financing, project selection and so on. Suppose it works wonders. So the frame of works but our major challenge is as I said not for some but for all. So how do you do that? Now in terms of affordability one of the great things is the technological innovation that is bringing down the cost. For example if you see sensors. Thousand fold changes in seven years. These are picked up from Tony Sieber. You know the change if you see the number of sensors have gone up by thousand. The cost has come down by thousand. The power consumption has come down by thousand. Physical size has come down by thousand. The number of transistors have gone up by thousand and so on and so forth. So this is exponential. In seven years if you can do that this is exponential. And it is the exponential technology which is making all the difference. Of course Moore's law we are all aware annual improvement rate of 41.4% transistor doubling up every two years. But there are other laws. For example data storage, Crider's law. Hard days, dollars per bit down by 50% every 18 months. Digital imaging, Hindi's law. Pixels per dollar, 59% down by per year. Network capacity, Butler's law, 50% every nine months. So all these laws are actually working but what is most important I want to say that it used to take a long long time before the cost came down. What is happening is that this is happening more and more rapidly. And that is where the developing world has a chance. Because they didn't have a chance. Something would happen and then it would take 20 years before you could make a difference. So this is a great opportunity because of the digital disruption that is being created as far as technology is concerned. And of course the exponential technologies that are making a big difference.  And the last key on the block is blockchain by the way. Everybody is very excited about the possibilities of blockchain. Now the issue is the following. The cost will keep on coming down. Like for example, cost per genome and I'm very happy Elisabeth here is in the audience and you can see that way the sort of costs are plummeted. But the question I asked you is alright we have come down to thousand dollars but how many people can afford thousand dollars? So the issue is not affordability. It is extreme affordability. It is not 10 percent, 10 times. It is not 100 percent, 100 times. How do you do that? And that requires extreme innovation. And that is where we have to look at other forms of innovation and their combinations. For example, technology innovation which I talked about, just one. Business model innovation, system delivery innovation, workflow innovation, process innovation, organization innovation, policy innovation and combination of these by the way, intelligent combination on one hand of technological and on the other. Let me give you an example. For example, if you see workflow innovation, you know, for extreme affordability but still doing well by doing good. That means must still be a business. You look at high quality cataract eye surgery. Arvindai care, 100 times cheaper, not 100 percent by the way. And the quality as good as Royal College of Optal Mic Surgeons in all nine parameters. High quality but extreme affordability. Narayan Rudalaya, my friend, David Shetty. Incredible. Open heart surgery 20 times cheaper, not 20 percent. This is all by workflow innovation so as to say. So this looks impossible but India has done it. I would say that this is from more from less for more, not 1.0 but 1.2. So I think the big challenge that we have is really assured innovation but assured inclusive innovation. That is where the biggest challenge is because you are looking at extreme affordability. I'm very happy to be in Canberra. 2008 I was here where I was introduced, you know, Alan is a former president of ATSE and in Robin Batterham's time I was inducted as a fellow and I was asked to give a lecture in the innovation forum. So the title of my talk was Gandhian Engineering. You have to create some effect so I use the term Gandhian Engineering. And what was Gandhian Engineering? What were the values that were close to Gandhi? One is the benefit of science must reach all individuals, not some. And secondly he had talked about, you know, there is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed. What it meant was that the resources you have to conserve for your great-grandson, granddaughter and their grandson and granddaughter and so on and so forth. So I called it getting more from less for more and more people, not just for more and more profit. Amazingly this picked up very well. This was getting more from less for more. MLM 1.0 as people would call it. And I remember writing a paper with Siké Pralhad in Howard Business Review. He was a great thought leader by the way. This was his last paper that we wrote together. This is now ranked among the top ten must read innovation papers where we showed how businesses can get more from less for more and yet be profitable. Later on I gave a trade lecture on breakthrough designs for ultra low cost products that is available for anyone to basically see that. The essential part was that it caught the imagination more from less for more. To an extent where after this paper was published in July, in November they had a full day session on more from less for more. Because one realized this is not just the mantra for the developing world but the developed world too because the inequalities in the developed world were also rising very, very sharply. And the mantra continues. Last year in the month of November in Munich, there was a half a day session on more from less for more. So the word has caught on basically on this principle of more from less for more. Having laid down this background, we don't have time at our disposal. We can't take 20 years, 30 years, 40 years to dismantle inequalities. We have to bomb them and move them very quickly. How do we do that? So I have three ideas here. First is leapfrog to pole vault. And I'll explain what that is. Second, just don't go by current based practice, go to the next practice. And third is move from incremental to disruptive innovation. Is that possible? What is leapfrog to pole vault? What are the origin of this, by the way? I'll tell you. Reliance is our biggest industrial enterprise. Mr. Mukesh Ambani is chairman and managing director and extraordinary visionary. So this is an alliance innovation leadership center of which I happen to be the chairman. And we have wonderful people, like John Millen, the Nobel laureate is a member, Bob Grubbs, the Nobel laureate from Caltech is a member, Bill Asseltine, and C.K. Pralhad used to be a member, he's no more. So we always talk about these three mantras. How do we move? So one of the things Mukesh said, he said, Doc, we must leapfrog. So I said, I don't believe in leapfrogging. So he said, what? I said, do you know why leapfrog leaps? Because he's afraid of predators. Do you know the average distance it can go? 4.6 feet. Do you know what is the world record? 7.2 feet. So I said, I don't want to be afraid of my computers and jump 7 feet. We have to pole vault.  So basically what we're saying is that from leapfrogging, we moved to pole vaulting. And he loved it so much that we created a program called Beyonders, you know, for leaders. And he actually started pole vaulting. How? We went into the telecom business, we created a company called Geo, and they have been absolutely transformative. And if you see, for example, the mobile data transmission in millions of GB per month, India was here, USA was here, China, Japan, South Korea. And within six months, we have pole vaulted to number one position. We are not leapfrog. Otherwise from 155 position two years ago, we'd have come to 100. No, sorry. It's number one. Now it's a great story. If you look at the number of years to reach 50 million users, telephone took 50, mobile took 12, YouTube took four, Facebook took three, Twitter took two, and this is what we learned in our textbook. Now this textbook will have to be modified a bit because Relangio did it in 83 days. And there was an innovation involved there, by the way, in terms of onboarding. Thanks to the platforms that we have, you know, billion mobile, billion Aadhar cards which are identity, as well as authentication and so on, the clever combination actually made it happen. But more importantly, it changed life, like before Jio and after Jio. The 4G phone that they are offering now, before Jio it was 300 dollars, it has come to 23 dollars. And there is a business model innovation, but it is available for zero dollars. How? You give 1500 rupees, and after three years, that 1500 is returned to you. Second, data per GB cost from five dollars, it has come to 0.1 dollars. And vice expenditure, not 1.6 dollars, but zero dollars. You can see when I talk about extreme affordability, there cannot be anything more affordable than zero. That's what has been sort of reached, and we have now 200 million sort of customers. And I talked about affordability, link to scalability, as you can see, the prices have crumbled, and today we have sort of a billion mobile. So the two go actually hand in hand. The other thing I want to emphasize is that, mostly we are making incremental changes, small changes, and so on and so forth. But if the size of the ambition is such that you really want to pour water, you can jump. And I'm very happy to say, I'm very happy that our high commissioner is here. In India, we have seen that happen, by the way, because what it requires is a combination of technological innovation coupled with business model innovation, coupled with system delivery innovation, work-through innovation, and policy innovation, most importantly. So as you know, India is a poor country, and many of our people, they don't have bank accounts. So there is a target on creating bank accounts. And what happened was, there was this policy innovation, janadhanayojna, janam means people, danam means money, and yojna means policy, coupled with adhar card, which was authentication, and 1 billion plus mobiles. And you can see here the certificate that has been given by Guinness Book of Records for having the fastest financial inclusion. 360 million, by the way, is the current account opening, which would have taken otherwise 30 years, which we have done within no time at all. So it's a brilliant example of how you can get more from less from more by sort of combining these. These are not stories, these are real things. Let us move to the second mantra, best practice to next practice. In my mother's name, I have created an award called Anjanima Shelkar Infusion Innovation Award. The idea of the award is inclusive innovation, helping the poor, making high technology work for the poor. I'm not a great believer in best practice, by the way, because if you are following somebody's current best practice, you are following. You are not creating an next practice. So this award is only given to next practice. This is the seventh year of the award. And young people are winning it. I'll give you a couple of examples to show how that happens. For example, this is one young man, the second man, Vaishali is here, you can see. My wife is also here, very proud. And this is the third one. Let's take to the whole story. What is the best practice when you talk about ECG? Well, you lie down and there will be a nurse and 12 leads and the rest of it. That's the best practice. What is the next practice is what you see here. It's like a smartphone, you know, half the size of the smartphone, basically. And you use it externally, in a way which is demonstrated here. This is a portable car size. Cost is just five rupees. Remind you that 50 rupees is a dollar. And this is the kind of device that we have. So this is download the free mobile app called Sanket. Like I have on my mobile. Touch Sanket with thumbs. Hold it for 15 seconds. And followed by, of course, the, you have the sensors which you hold above the heart and then below the heart. One, two, three. One, two, three. So within three minutes, you may be anywhere, the sort of ECG is actually delivered to you. The other one is Mishki Nengawali. These are young people. They went to villages and found that he went to villages and found that women were dying of anemia. Why? Because their low hemoglobin levels were not detected. Why? Because they refused to give blood. Why? Because they thought it was very precious. So he said, fine, I will not take blood. I will do it non-invisibly without taking blood. That's the beauty of young people, by the way. Oldies like me feel that that is not possible. But these young people, they meet the definition of an innovator. Innovator is one who does not know it cannot be done. So Mishki Nengawali was one. And he created this incredible, the best practice to next practice. Best was invasive with needles. Next was non-invasive with needles. Cost per taste, 150. This is just 10. And most importantly, he used high technology. Photoplasmography, spectrophotometry, advanced software for photoscattering, and so on. Here I want to make the point. Making high technology work for the rich and low technology work for the poor, very easy. But making high technology work for the poor is very difficult. And this young man sort of actually did it. But was it assured? It was affordable, yes. User-friendly, very user-friendly. Rapid, yes. Excellence in technology, yes. De-distinctive, yes. But there are two rates. Not scalable, not sustainable. Why? Because this had to be coupled with a good business model and so on and so forth. And there was a failure on that. But every bad news that I give will be followed by good news. And here is a good news. One awardee was Meher Shah, dollar one based cancer screening. This is low-cost tactile sensor that measures tissue stiffness difference in real time. Non-invisibility and without pain. Ultra-portable, accurate, minimal training, wireless, cloud-connected, and you get instant results. And what has happened? If you look at from the best practice to next practice, best practice is invasive with mammography, next practice non-invasive, no mammograph. Best practice is painful, next practice is painless. Cost per scan, dollar 100, this is dollar one. Requires specialist, doesn't require specialist. Has it been successful? Yes. G-Healthcare signed an agreement in November and they will go to now 25 countries, over 500 million. So if you use that short criteria, it's all green. It is affordable. It is scalable, we are talking about a few hundred million. Sustainable, he's making a good business out of it. User-friendly, yes. Rapid, yes. Within few minutes. Excellence in technology, yes. Without that, he would not have got it done. And de-distinctive, yes. So we are doing now seven years of Anjani Marshalkar inclusive innovation about case studies in terms of the assured framework and why things actually didn't work. Let me move to the last part, the incremental to disruptive innovation. All right. India had the reputation of being a follower, not a leader in technology. You know, and we want to rapidly change that, basically. The issue is Indian genes express in silicon value, but not in Indus value. Why is it? And that was our lunchtime discussion, by the way. But there are Indian genes which express in Indus value and yet they don't make a successful business. I'll give you just one example. This was the creation of Simpuder in 2001. And it was incredible. Bruce Sterling wrote about it. The most significant innovation in computer technology in 2001 was not Apple's gleaning Titanium PowerBook G4 or Microsoft's Windows XP. It was Simpuder in it linked radically simple portable computer intended to bring the computer revolution to the third world. In fact things like accelerometer which came later in iPhone, by the way, were there. Samsung Galaxy some of the technological features which came later were there. So in terms of a leap forward Indian scientists had taken a big leap, but it did not become success. Why? Because these two S's got red. And what went missing was a bold, innovative, public procurement policy for an off innovation something that we're talking about. So whenever such breakthroughs come as a matter of fact, the government has a big role to play. Government become the first buyer, by the way. I was in China about 10 years ago. Remember giving the opening plenary in Global Inclusive Innovation Summit. And you know, Jagdish the person who spoke after me was the Chinese Vice Minister. And she said the public procurement support to such innovations in China was to a trillion young, the previous year. Just divide it by six and you will get US dollars. So we require not only for but off, so as to say. Now, off innovation we have done through public-private partnerships where actually I myself have been involved in that in terms of creating new millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative where we give money to public sector at practically 0% interest, basically, for the grand challenges that India was facing like tuberculosis gets cleared in six to eight months. Can you do it in two months? All right? And things of that kind. But then, that was far. But then the off part of it, that when you come out with something what happens? They are left in wilderness. So therefore there is a big discussion in India and there is a, I have created a paper, Innovative Public Procurement Policy for Fueling Assured Inclusive Innovation. And this will appear in a book which is coming next month the Pathahed Anthology of Transformative Ideas for India. But more importantly it is going to be actually implemented. And we are going beyond the reams of possibilities to make things happen. You know, as you know we have the start-up India movement and so on and so forth. We are making life easy for them. Start-ups have no chance when the normal tendering process is gone. So we are now creating policies like Bahasa State Innovation Society I happen to be the co-chairman. And we have made policies where the entire tendering process changes for these young people. Not only that we have gone to an extreme of saying that all public sector public procurement, 10% public procurement has to come from basically start-ups. Because unless that is done you don't give them basically a chance. There is an interesting story I want to say. As I said there will be always a bad news and a good news. First I'll give you the bad news on this story and then I'll give you the good news. Naveen Khanna got the inclusive innovation award last year. Anjini Mastri will get the award. What did he do? Dengue test which takes a few days he could do it in 15 minutes. He had three remarkable markers which could also tell you the state at which Dengue was by the way. And nobody would buy it. He had struggled, struggled, struggled so as to say. And it was very interesting the way he got a break. Today he has 80% market share. You know the way it happened? The way it happened was that there was a Dengue outbreak in India and all the Dengue kits got finished. And we had to import them from where? From South Korea, from Australia, from US. But the US and Australia processes were rather tough. So it took time so they went for South Korea. And South Korea said we'll supply. And they sent the ship. And the ship did not come to India, it went to Africa. So India was without Dengue kits and there was no other alternative but to go for this. And today he has 80% market share. So therefore I say the key drivers are going to be talent. Yes we have the Naveen Khanna's of this world and all these young people. Technology, yes. As you could see they are developing the trust. The biggest challenge is the trust deficit, trusting the young, risking putting money and so on and so forth. So I give the bad news, now I'll give the good news. Good news is look at this 14 year old young man. He has designed a drone which is able to detect landmines as well as sort of deal with them in terms of destroying them. A 14 year old and he has created a start-up by the way. We gave him an award Mariko Innovation Foundation that I chaired just three months ago. We gave him an award and he was interviewed by the way 14 year old start-up. Who is the CEO of the company? He says I am. What are the members of the board of directors? He said my mom and dad. The most important part was that they come from a poor family and they are doing the prototypes by the way. They required 600,000 rupees and they borrowed money and put trust in him. But equally importantly the Gujarat government gave him 5 crore. 5 crore is 50 million rupees. So what it means is trusting the young I think is going to be critical. The final points I want to make in a country like India we are looking at democratization of innovation. We believe that everyone is someone 1.25 billion Indians are not 1.25 billion mouths but 1.25 billion minds. And minds on the margin are not necessarily marginal minds. It is very important to understand that. And this is something that we are promoting. There is a National Innovation Foundation which I chaired is grassroots innovation. It is about farmers, school dropouts, housewives you name them basically. And the President of India himself gives them awards every year. It is incredible we get more than 100,000 sort of applications last year 30 were given. 50% of them were barefoot basically. As I said the basic issue is that everyone is someone. And I am very proud to show the next slide to you. You can see our president inaugurating something what was that inauguration. This is people's innovation done by the people for the people. And right in president's house right in the middle he has created an exhibition so as to say demonstrating what is the power of such thinking and you can see how he is enjoying going around the exhibition. I like to end finally by saying if historical things are fine but at the end you know we have to create a world class assured innovation ecosystem. What does it need? It has to have physical intellectual as well as cultural concepts and cultural concepts are most important by the way. Innovation as a culture, innovation as a way of life because innovation is doing thing differently to make a difference making a change. And that you have to have the critical innovation support systems education research institutions incubators, accelerators scalerators, technology parts and most importantly not venture capital which many times becomes venture capital but adventure capital where you are taking basically risk. On the other side government institutions, society, industry public procurement policy that we talk about robust IPR regimes balance regulatory systems design standards and so on so forth. If that happens then you can think of innovation led accelerated growth and assured innovation economy. And then you can say discord in India, innovate in India make in India or make in Australia whatever that we want to talk the individual sort of agenda. This is the ecosystem that we need to build India is still on a learning curve I don't call it a start-up nation I call it a starting-up nation by the way we have a long way to go we are learning from sort of everyone. So I like to summarize by saying what nations need most is trust in talent, trust in technology and trust in innovation. Are we trusting the young? Yes. I must say I am a witness to it I am a part of it we are trying to capture the minds of the young, make them think differently. You can see for example just six months ago this little girl for ideas by the way they don't make prototypes because they are but break through ideas about how to deal with societal problems of inequality this young girl comes out with a great idea and you can see our former president giving the award. The next one our current president just very recently you can see him in the middle the minister of science and technology is next to him and myself and secretary department of science and technology and professor Nil Gupta by the way he is the spirit behind it being there. They are called Gandhian young technological innovation awards where young people are awarded who actually think of the problems of the society and create innovative solutions and these are not just at the idea stage by the way, they should have created some prototypes and then you will say oh it's government government, what about industry I am very happy to say I have infected everybody so here is the infection the KPIT technologies I am the chairman of their innovation council and we have started this movement this young girl got it, it is 100,000 rupees for a kid by the way which is in first year engineering just so that she can take her prototype for sort of forward and I can give sort of other examples but the point I am trying to make is that this wave of inclusive innovation you know is something that we are spreading all across the country and capturing the young from the schools, the colleges and engineering colleges and so on so forth I want to end by showing this particular photograph what is the significance of this photograph this is taken on 24 July at 8.30 pm in Rastapati Bhavan our president's house this is the last act of the outgoing president you can see our prime minister next to him the incoming president next to him the then president next to him the vice president then professor Anil Gupta and myself in my capacity as chairman of national innovation foundation you know the book that he is releasing as his last act is on people's innovation for the people by the way I think that the strongest commitment that you can see that I mean I have ever seen what does India need I would just summarize it in my last slide this is what we need you know we are always part of the flock we don't want to move like Jagdish and I were discussing in the morning with regard to research and so on so forth if you really want breakthroughs you have to break away from the flock in terms of your mind says and you fly and then you can start believing in affordable excellence then you can start believing that high technology can be made to work for the poor so that is the sum and substance of what I wanted to talk about it's not just game changing assured innovation it is assured inclusive innovation and this will not dismantle inequalities I think I am exaggerating just to create an effect like I said Gandhian engineering just to create an effect but actually these are the first steps where we say you will have access to education you will have access to health you will have access to financial services by using this assured inclusive innovation format thank you well thank you so much for those inspiring words I think I will take the opportunity of the first question which is the system that is needed so that these clever projects bubble up and catch the attention of people like yourself and investors and the system going in India at this point how many people are coming through so that they are at that point where they can invent oh yes the issue is whether they can innovate inventions in plenty by the way if you have come to the festival of innovation that our president had inaugurated just a couple of months ago we showed the exhibition where young people were bubbling with inventive ideas somebody creating a TB detection kit which was moving from 200,000 rupees to 10,000 rupees and here is our prime minister who has a very wonderful this thing of saying TB free India by 2025 so here is an invention which can help and here is a government sort of motto to get India TB free matching the two so that invention becomes innovation innovation is a successful exploitation of a new idea and that ecosystem is something that we are trying to build very hard that is the issue that's why I say early stage financing risking betting on the young and so on and so forth etc but giving you some isolated examples basically but as a system as a whole we have a long way to go questions right down the back getting the profits but to these young people protecting their ideas and their intellectual property so your question is how can you do that if you are thinking about that how can you protect young people whose ideas are coming no that's a very interesting question as a matter of fact what we have found very frankly we thought all the wisdom lies in cities sorry the rural villages is one where lots of ideas are getting bubbled up so we are creating systems by which we can identify them we are creating an ecosystem we have what is called as a total innovation mission for example where we are focusing on the young and we are creating tinkering labs for example because in India the symptom is I mean normal thing that we tell children don't touch it it will break so we are saying toad for toad just break it and recreate it and so on and so forth so what we are doing is that rather than pushing it centrally we are doing a bottom up approach so as to say creating systems that are very well balanced and this is going statewide by the way because every state has an innovation council now it is not just sort of centrally and within that in districts in villages actually sort of we have made so we are creating these systems now hackathons have become very common where not just tens of thousands hundreds of thousands young people join in and technology had made a lot of difference I can tell you that for example data becoming so cheap you know 10 rupees per GB is nothing basically all right so more and more people young people are able to actually sort of participate I must say there is a lot of volunteerism also like our three national academies whether it is Indian Science Academy, Indian National Science Academy National Academy of Science National Academy of Engineering we are volunteering by the way to spot talent evaluate ideas and so on so forth otherwise when you get 100,000 ideas how do you actually do that so national innovation foundation because India's great news is the number but great challenge is also the number you know so how do you sort of manage that so we are beginning to sort of put these things together there are other ways in which we are doing it by the way for example one talked about drug discovery right how was drug discovery done in multinational companies by spending huge amount of money and so on so forth my successor Samir Mumichari as a director general of CSI came out with the idea of open source drug discovery okay and can you just imagine as I speak there are 136 countries you know and 35,000 participants in this drug discovery we are focusing on some of the more difficult areas like tuberculosis and so on and you cannot believe it 40% of there are students can you imagine students getting involved in drug discovery this has become possible because of technology so as to say so I think we have now tools not only to access talent evaluate talent but take those things forward to the logical conclusion then what this concept of what we call statistically Juga Juga is basically incremental innovation how does this fit with this assured inclusive innovation and then Juga do they converge and coalesce or they are separately and they will be divergent and has Juga sort of hindered this innovation I think there is a brilliant question by the eye commissioner Jugaad is doing things somehow with cost as the only consideration no consideration of safety environment aesthetics nothing killing some 17 people right because you assemble things which can move and you sit there and somehow the other Jugaad was glorified India was glorified as a Jugaad nation and in fact there are books written by Indians I am sorry to say my friend Naveen Raju on India as a Jugaad nation I am sorry I just don't like Jugaad I want India to move on systematic innovation basically and it is possible for example Alan Indian innovation was a miss call a missed call you make a call but you don't talk you get the benefit of connecting with the person that you want but you don't pay who pays the take home operator that is Jugaad from there thanks to technology systematic innovation investments we have come to zero priced voice call this to this that is India of my dreams we did it see what happens is that scarcity is something that India has lived with people like me have lived with you know you heard my opening paras very carefully under the conditions under which both president Narayanan I studied and still sort of finally he was use dropping on classes because his parents could not afford so that is how we have grown but not our next generation I wouldn't want my children my grandchildren to be doing that India has to basically move currently they coexist but people are sort of gradually shifting into that that is number one number two even the grassroots innovations that we pick up by the way what we do is that we actually get the formal system involved so that it becomes a systematic innovation I'll give you an idea there was a 13 year old girl called Kerala she had a tough time because she had to change three buses to go to school her mother was perennially and her father was down with cancer and she had to come home basically and wash clothes as well as study what did she do she created something by which she could wash clothes as well as study petrol driven where she could actually read this she did somehow you got getting a drum, fishing and this and etc because everyone amongst each one of us there is an engineer so as to say she did that but when we picked her we didn't leave it at that we got the National Institute of Design involved in that some IT guys involved in that made it most sophisticated basically and aesthetic design and the rest of it etc and made it into a village washing machine so what I am saying is that the two systems basically one comes because of the scarcity but India is moving India has strengths in other area the issue is they are talking to each other that is what my National Innovation Foundation does we bring them together Mr. Mishalkar thank you it was wonderfully inspirational sitting here thinking how do we translate your vision from the Indian context context in India to the Australian context here as you said India is on startup nation it is starting up nation but we are quite a well established nation and instead of our challenge instead of us benefiting from aspiration we are actually suffering from complacency because we are a country that said as you will have heard 27 years of continuous economic growth in our nation has ever had that our GDP for the last 10 or 15 years has been growing faster than the OECD average for whatever reason and when we talk about innovation in this country instead of people hearing opportunity they hear oh my gosh startup companies will take away all the jobs and we the majority of people will suffer because of innovation rather than benefit through participating so I am not looking for an instant answer but I know you are here for 2 weeks and I know you are going to be presenting to the Innovation and Science Australia Board and to the extent we can answer now fantastically I would like you to think about how we can take your inspirational solutions that are working in India coming off a low base and apply them in Australia where our challenge is almost the inverse psychological position you know it is wonderful to have this question from Chief Scientist of Australia thank you Alan and we have had private debates you know Alan and I are very close friends and we have spent hours and hours and hours together but to respond to your question as I said in the morning during lunch scarcity and aspiration is a great combination my friend Sike Prallad who was also my Guru used to say there is what is called as aspiration and that is what is called as a resource alright and as resource grows aspirations come down and the trick is always to keep the aspiration high as the resource grows I think I have said it all as far as Australia is concerned I think that is what we need to do because we are resource rich sort of nation I think that needs to be secondly you talked about start up by the way I am second of May I am giving a talk in Monash as you know I give series of lectures the last one is academia and wealth creation the shifting paradigms because the world is changing in terms of the Shanghai's of this world appearing now on the map not just the Silicon Valley and so on and how the geography of innovation is shifting and what are the new lessons that we can learn that is my talk by the way and like we mentioned during the dinner in terms of companies which are billion dollars we don't have sort of record on creating that and so on and so forth so I was looking at the top 20 cities which create sort of you know which are famous for sort of obviously Silicon Valley is at the top it has been one one one in everything and then there are others like Boston and so on and all these Shanghai's are now appearing in Singapore and the rest of it Australia is 17th by the way Sydney and India Bangalore is 20th basically but if you deep dive into that there is a bad news but there is a good news the good news is if you look at the different parameters the last parameter is growth and Australia is number one is 6.7% in terms of so I never look at the why axis because why is the current state I look at the slope basically so I think one is seeing very sort of bright signs of you know I spent time in Monash this year within a week can you just believe me six startups have met me in one way or the other one of them wants me to be their mentor one of them wants me to be on the board one of them etc etc etc this is something I have not seen because I am coming there for 20 years so something is happening by the way maybe the chief scientist who has fuelled sort of everything so as you know I am a dangerous optimist as people call me always see the optimistic side of it I think that will happen but the basic issue is really the issue of as resources grow keeping the aspirations higher how do we keep that aspiration as an innovation nation sort of higher that is what in India that was our challenge I remember my Jairadi Tata lecture where I had said the I in India should not stand for inhibition it should not stand for imitation it will stand for innovation basically one had to be sort of at it I so therefore my view obviously I always found it an innovative nation you yourself was an epitome of that you yourself created a startup you are giving back to the people doing well and doing good so as to say why there should be one Alan Finkel there could be 10,000 last question yes you see how you are providing opportunities for young people who actually are new guys but I was just wondering if any of the organizations you are a part of you are thinking about how to change the education system in India because currently it's very role-based it's a memorizing sort of system there's a lot of policy that I imagine but in CBC or ICSE are you thinking about how to facilitate a more innovative mindset through yes I think that's a that's a wonderful question because that is where it all starts I can't pick up a 26 year old and say hey by tomorrow you should be innovative it can't be it has to be done where you are that young children are most innovative by the way infants are most innovative they don't know it cannot be done so they are trying out everything so they are very innovative till they go to the first standard in the school and therefore this entire educational system which was all learning by road then gave away to learning by doing what what the teachers told us 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that has to give away to learning by creating not individual and that has to give away to learning by co-creating by the way co-creating means not just man and man or man and woman but man and machine and I am seeing that particular change coming up in India that's why our Prime Minister's National Innovation Council basically is focusing on school level the tinkering labs and the rest of it it will be sometime before goes and there is a responsibility not only on the teachers but on the parents by the way because you can't be innovative in the school and at home don't touch this that's why I said innovation ecosystem is not just physical where you build labs not intellectual where best minds work but cultural or biggest challenge in culture you remember my last slide I was talking about the talk and then one of the bird is flying out how do you celebrate that bird who is flying out rather than hunt him I think that the crux of the matter I am invite Professor Yaa Executive Director of the Australia South Asia Research Centre to give a vote of thanks Thank you Ladies and gentlemen round of robust applause hasn't it been a wonderful evening thank you all very much for coming to the 2018 Oration this lecture will soon be printed and copies will be available with ASARC the lecture will also be available for free download from the ASARC website and of course it is being live streamed and it will be available on YouTube for you to watch again and again and share it with your friends this oration has characteristics that make it particularly special it is the 20th in the series which is a bit of a landmark second it marks the beginning of 25 years of ASARC as ASARC was established in April 1994 what better way to begin ASARC's silver jubilee year than an oration by Dr. Michelle Cutts we are really privileged furthermore this oration is also special because it is being co-hosted by the research school of physics and engineering in the ANU which is a fantastic development we would like to thank RSP director Professor Tim Sandin for his generous support and my friend in the RSP Professor Jagdish for his support as well at this time you might well want to ask what has been happening in ASARC during these past 24 years I want to spend a minute to recount this during this period we have brought out more than 200 working papers most of them published in leading journals 16 books successfully supervised several PhD students and obtained research funding from funding agencies in Australia England, US, Canada and Italy last but not the least we have held several conferences on the Indian economy and organized 20 oration orations which we have just seen all this I think justifies our claim that ASARC is the leading Australian organization researching on the South Asian economies in particular the Indian economy now it is my present duty to bring this oration to a close by thanking the people and organizations who have contributed to making this year's oration such a success the oration is named after the now deceased Dr. K. R. Narayanan of India Dr. Narayanan inaugurated ASARC in 1994 and continued his support to ASARC throughout his life following from President Narayanan President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam President Srimati Pratibha Patil President Pranab Mukherjee and current President his Excellency Ramnath Kovind have continued their support for the oration series and their association with the ANU this is a remarkable achievement to have such close links with five presidents of India one after the other ASARC's list of Narayanan speakers reads like who's who of outstanding Indian intellectual public figures and Dr. Mashelkar is a stellar addition to this list the Narayanan organization now ranks among the very best India lecture series anywhere in the world you can compare this with the top universities in England and the US in this regard this oration is a lasting contribution of ASARC and the Uncordoned Department of Economics to strengthen India-Australia relations I hope all concerned have taken notice you would like to thank the Indian High Commissioner his Excellency Dr. Ram Kondane and his staff particularly Mr. Bajaj for their wonderful and very warm support to this oration I must say that without the support of the Indian High Commission I would not have been able to organize this oration or in fact any previous oration we would like to extend a warm welcome to several members of the diplomatic community in Canberra also senior public servants from the Commonwealth Government of Australia at the ANU we would like to welcome the Provost who is this is his first visit to Narayanan Oration and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Shalilich who has come to the oration earlier all of you have made this oration so special our heartfelt thanks are to our speaker today Dr. Mashalkar if I were to read out the list of his for honors I would take almost as much time as he has in delivering the oration so I will not do that Chief among these attainments are the Padma Vibhushan the second highest civilian honour in India and the Fellowship of the Royal Society what is also remarkable about Dr. Mashalkar is his ability to explain the most complex scientific concepts in simple terms intelligible to a 13-year-old it's wonderful that are easily accessible to everybody the rapt attention with which this August audience has heard him is a testimony both to the importance of the topic and the erudition of the orator I do not have adequate words to thank you Dr. Mashalkar it is truly an honour to have you with us today we wish you all the very best in all spheres of life I would request you to stay in touch with SR and guide our activities at the ANU Sandy Hawk Margaret Eicholzer Yan Hong Oang and Thieu Nguyen helped out with the organisation of this event RSPE students Mr. Deepankar Chugh and Mr. Vidhur Raj Singh have provided critical support at this event today my colleague and former PhD student Paul Burke has helped organise the PowerPoint presentation and Lisa Fleissen at the University House has helped in organising the event today all these people have worked tirelessly and selflessly to ensure the success of this event thank you all very much


Hi, welcome to this another episode of a series of the Central Vista and as our viewers remember, we had done a long series on the Central Vista when this whole idea was conceived. It was the initial phase of planning and now when it is being executed, we are finding now voices of different hues are actually joining and actually condemning the government they're condemning for various reasons. One happens to be that during the pandemic when the government should have focused on reaching out to the poorest of the poor is spending more than 20,000 crores on the on the on the redevelopment of the Central Vista that comprises the new parliament, a palace she'll mention for the prime minister underground dungeons, bunkers, and whatnot and of course the vice president house that is to come up and of course the stretch of the Rajput that Rajput that is going to have a complete redevelopment. So yeah different voices are there from the ecological aspect from social, political and economic aspect and today we have with us, Romy Khosla to discuss on on on the Central Vista. So, Romy, thank you for joining with us and it's been really a pleasure to discuss the whole issue of the Central Vista. Would you like to throw some light you know after the new paradigm dimension that has come up. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court laid its stamp it said hey I mean you have to go ahead with the redevelopment but you know the kind of work that is happening during the pandemic, and it's been termed as a national emergency. I mean national emergency in the sense that it's a very essential work and putting lives of more than, I mean hundreds of workmen who are at risk coming being ferried from the labor camps to the working site. But more than that I think, not just to focus on the pandemic. I mean how do you see this entire project I mean, do you think this is kind of, you know, what we've seen eras of different emperors the Roman emperor, and the Roman Empire. Similarly we had, we have seen the German emperor and the German Empire the workshop that was being prepared that was being designed. So do you find some kind of similarity happening then and now. How do you actually see this entire Central Vista redevelopment project going on. I think there are some very special specific issues with regard to the Central Vista in relation to Delhi and India first of all, we have to understand that this Central Vista was created by British colonists, designed by Edwin Latians, and basically was stretching from India gate right up to Rajasthi Bhavan as a processional route. In other words, even so often the king of England or the viceroy of England would come down in processional form, down this Rajpath, and which was called Kingsway in the old days and So the population was therefore given place on the sides of this in the lawns and also there is a, if you know the Central Vista very well as you go up towards the hill that I see in a hill. There are a series of steps which are in in the garden there, which lie ignored, but where the clapping public was to be placed. Now it's quite possible that when you have, even though we are in 2021, when you are being ruled by a system of governance, which is not very well informed about the modern world. It is quite possible that the similar delusions about having a grand entry down the ceremonious pathway is haunting your dreams that one day. What does that mean I mean in simpler terms. One day the people who head government may be able to drive down this avenue in their grandeur and go to the top. So it's also a psychological problem. I mean this was the first time we have it hearing that. First of all, there is an issue about making a ceremonial pathway.  So, first of all, make it into a restricted zone. So, first and foremost, there is this desire to have a ceremonial way, because quite frankly, there is no need for it. Because once a year the Republic Day parade goes down at this crowd round the lawns we sit and we clap and we see the democratic achievements of India. So that it is fine. You don't have to redo this thing in order to have some kind of a ceremonial parade unless you have something else in mind. Okay, there is another warning issue in the sense that when you have a government government being led by people who are not very scientifically inclined. Even in our ancient wisdom, even at the cost of confronting new kinds of problems. So, here what has happened is that the vastus have indicated have been indicating for some time and vastus are very influential people, particularly in the south but now this has happened in the north. So, you have maintained that you can never get peace and tranquility or strong governance in India because you have a round parlor. That's funny indeed. So they quote the fact that you can't have opposition, the British parliament has very much two sides to the chamber in which the opposition sits on one side. There are locations of opposition where people sit in a circle. So, originally the British had made this for the council, and they were addressed by the by the viceroy and the council needs various positions sat around in a circle. In the democratic system, there is a strong opinion of the vastu that you must make a square and place it within a triangular form so that it is close to Sri Andhra. Okay. Now, in addition, now this is entirely my own conjecture. Alright, I am not going to quote anybody except my own self, it is to say that certain dates have been set down for this. Oh, that's interesting. They are very critical for the vastu that beyond that date, if you are not able to complete these projects, the country will be ungovernable. So, that's why I mean just to dam the pandemic, dam the lives of the people, you just go ahead for the dates and that's very interesting, please. So, this is the only reason because what happens in there, we are as architects continuously in touch with vastu. Many a client of ours comes and tells us that do you mind if a vastu sits with you, or that's the design and we are saying fine, I mean absolutely no problem. And to give you an example, somebody will say master bedroom south. Kitchen should be the kitchen should be the water should be in the north entrance should be from the east. So, these are these are vastu rules with which we are very familiar. We are also very familiar with the fact that I have been told personally by vastus of people whose houses are built, hey, are you so into date to cut them. Okay. So, because I am familiar with the way in which vastu work, I realize that something on a grand scale may be happening which is replicating my own experiences. Yeah. Quite evident, definitely. I can't find the reason for this. Why do you bring forward dates and obviously the idea that you have to have a new house for the heads of government etc is also connected with this. You see, you can, a vastu can come to me and tell me, you know, this building is made on the wrong inclination. Its entrance is wrong. Its whole room layout is wrong. You will have lot of illness here. If you do this, you will go bankrupt. It is very common for us. Now, you can listen to it. And the house that is built, you get scared. You say, hey, change it. You go bankrupt. Yeah, I agree. We have to argue about this thing at this level. Now, come to the issue of money. Why is 20,000 crores? 20,000 crores, nothing. If you know it, its stake is the whole of the governance of India. Yeah, yeah. I agree.  Okay. This is things that are very easy to do. And you can say, some statues are being removed. Our historical, as if a statue lying under a canopy, which belongs to British emperor is going to affect my life today. It is the lack of imagination. It is the desire to change history. It is one. It's part of that historical understanding or what you said. I mean, which draws from the unscientific, complete unscientific thought. Yeah. Not only that, it comes from a very, very inadequate understanding of history where you imagine that history can be wiped out.  Right. So what it means is that you would love to have people with no memory. And when I go down Rajput and I see Rajasthapati Bhavan and I see Latvians work. I also recall that we were under a colonial rule and they gave some magnificent buildings, which we have. I mean, I don't have any. I have been you have seen Rajasthapati Bhavan. Do we need to knock it down and make some Indian looking. What is this nonsense going on? It is because you want to change history. History can't be changed. You want to change history. There are two ways of doing it. One is you rewrite the textbooks. All right. And secondly, you wipe out the in the heritage of physical heritage of the history. So these both things are being attempted. And in a sense, of course, I certainly agree with one comment that Tolstoy made. That is history. Answers questions nobody has asked. True. What is happening now is we are being given a new history, which nobody wants. But I think this is one more. I mean, there's one more element that I would like to add and you to correct me and comment on that. You know, one of the series that I've been doing on the central Vista, one of the historians pointed out that when this dialogue was taking place between Baker and Latvians. So Baker was instrumental into telling Latvians hey, if we have to govern and that was the central Vista is also an answer to the rising national independence movement. And he said, the British architecture, primarily Tudor and Gothic was left in Calcutta in my town where I come from Simla. So this daily was a mixture of, you know, Mughal and our old, I mean, dome shape. So if you have to answer the rising freedom movement, then it has to be in jail with what Akbar brought in the Sulaikul, and he mentions that. And then she pointed out that this is not their heritage, actually, this is our heritage, heritage of the modern India. And for a long period actually we've probably the discourse, the present discourse that we have in the country or the government that is running this this country for currently doesn't believe even an out of bit in this modern country, especially the struggle against the British, don't you think I mean that is also one of the reasons why they want to just knock down the older buildings and probably construct a new, I mean, do you find some validation? We have to look historically at what was happening in the 1930s. And then the vice-roy announced that there would be a capital in India because the British were under the impression that forever. Let us make a capital for ourselves. At that time in India, there were a number of British architects, building buildings in Agra and Lucknow, etc. And they petitioned the vice-roy that the Indian style is Indian Sarsenian, it is a combination of western and Indian motifs. You find the buildings in Agra and Lucknow. And he listened to them. And when he discussed it at Westminster in England, the Westminster cabinet and the Prime Minister thought, let us send somebody new. Okay. So they found Edwin Latians. Edwin Latians was part of their club. He was not good at making, not known for making cities or anything like that. Okay. He was actually used to design country houses for the aristocrats. He has done a number of beautiful expansive states. And his wife also was very well known at that time as a theosophist. So he was appointed as the architect above all and others who were here already settled and doing practice for the British. You see the British government here was there building all the time. So they had their own architects, British architects settled here. So when Latians was appointed for this very major task, he got a bit nervous. And he wanted to look around to see who was who could work with him support him on such a big scale. And he identified Herbert Baker was making capital complex in South Africa. And that's why when they both came and started working on it, it is true that they fell out and the, the most memorable example of their falling out was the final slope that leads to the rastapati power. As you know that from Vijay Chowk, you drive up to rastapati power. And what Latians, Latians used to go back by boat and be in England for seven or eight months and then used to come visiting Baker was situated here. So what Baker did was the north and south block buildings, he brought them right up. And the rastapati bovan or the vice rise lodges at the back, and he made the slope at an angle. So that when you went up the slope, you couldn't see the rastapati, the vice rise house. You couldn't see it at all. You saw all Baker's architecture as you approach. Okay, so that's interesting. So Latians wrote a very angry letter to the vice rise. He said, I went to England to do my architecture. See what he did for me. He misbehaved so much. So that was installed permanently. So if anything drives up there, they will see what the fight was. But otherwise not, they of course stopped talking to each other after that. So now they have appointed only single architects. Yeah, so that's what I was pointing out. I mean, the last question that I may ask is many of the fraternity, they said, the central vista is fine, but you know, there should have been some transparency, transparency into design. Why is there no transparency? Or is it completely transparent within the government and within the people who should know what it should be like? Take this work. Transparency has not been a quality of our governance for some time. An issue. They are not going to get transparent about it because transparency means that there's democracy. You can't have autocracy and secrecy, democracy and transparency. So you cannot suddenly switch systems. We are in an autocratic system without transparency on any issue. Why only the central vista? On vaccines, is there transparency? Is there transparency on any issue? No. Was there transparency on economic issues such as when the GTS was put or when the notes were put? So there's never been transparency. Why would I expect it? I do not expect any transparency in the present form of governance because it's not democratic government. And when I say transparency, I mean it in the extreme sense, in the sense that this is not even shared at the cabinet level. How let alone public. So I don't expect it and I don't think that we should. You see, for me, when we want to oppose the project, we must understand its full dimensions. We must work to autocracy, we must connect it to us to ancient knowledge. It is when we combine these things together and think of it on a broad front, will we understand what is happening? It's a narrow view and say you have not put 20,000 crores somewhere else. Tomorrow the government turns around and says we have a lot of money. Just dipped into the reserve bank and taken hundreds of crores of rupees. So I won't fight it on that issue. So lastly, how do you look at it? I mean, finally, if everything is interconnected, I think it is also interconnected to the 2024 elections that we are going to have. I mean, what is going to happen? I mean, if I may ask you. Just not forget our vast difference. Who knows what the prediction is for 2020. Who knows what is the requirement that is required to be finished before the election can take. So it is all integrated. Tell me, you have a very extensive political understanding of the scene in India. I mean, it's not an electoral issue. You can't go to election and say I completed a Central Vista project. It has to be much deeper connected to some other thing. It's not an electoral thing. The completion for the election is not. If I was completing 10,000 hospitals, I could say that this is a little. Central Vista was the election. It's some ancient knowledge which is coming into this case. So probably this is the new banning tree. I'm absolutely. But this is my own personal. Yeah, not a fine. No, definitely, especially bringing in that whole psychological. I'm so important to the psyche of the present discourse. So thank you for joining with us from me and it was really wonderful talking to you. And I wish that I mean, as has been pointed out, it's an interconnected issue. Definitely. It's not just the Central Vista that we're talking about. Thank you so much. We have to learn to start thinking in a much more broader fashion about our problems. Realizing that there's no single cause for them. There is poverty, health. These are quite very big rethink on many, many fronts. Thank you so much. Thank you.


Like it's the same as what when I talk about like the use of autism as like a negative term like within like the gaming communities I don't know if you guys are a part of those communities, but the word autism is used typically To light or you know, they say they do something bad within the game or they do something Silly or or anything of that nature.  Let's say something along those lines and I'm fine with an autism joke, you know, I Think you got to be careful in the online spaces But you know, I like a good autism joke if it makes sense it makes sense That's the thing and from my interpretation of these videos it feels like They kind of the sort of insinuating that Autism means that you do stupid things which doesn't make no sense to me


Banks, what are they good for? We trust them with our money. They have huge power. But do they really have our interests at heart? Banks sit at the heart of our economy and enjoy billions of pounds worth of public subsidies every year.  Banks aren't just a place to store our money. They create it too. When they give out loans, the bank doesn't hand over thousands of pounds in banknotes. It creates a deposit, the size of the loan, out of thin air. That's where most of our money comes from. Instead of using this power to support businesses and create jobs, banks lend most new money into the property and financial markets where they get the highest return for themselves. But with so much money flowing into the property market, house prices go up and up. And because most property and financial wealth is owned by the rich, inequality keeps on rising. Meanwhile, banks do little to support investment in the useful parts of the economy, like small businesses or manufacturing. The city of London is booming, while many parts of our country are struggling. Big banks also do a bad job of providing the basic banking services ordinary people need. We've seen 3,000 bank branch closures in the last three years alone. And they've lobbied to slash the amount they pay for cash machines, which are now closing at a record rate. Having access to money and banking services is fundamental to everyday life, like having access to water or electricity. Without them, life is much harder. It's clear that this banking model is broken, because banks aren't serving ordinary people and society's needs. Instead, we're serving them. Positive money believes it doesn't have to be this way. Our research shows the government needs to break up some of the big reckless banks that are beyond repair. We need new banks with a mandate to invest in small businesses and the green economy. And people's access to cash and to basic money and banking services must be protected. One solution could be a new public digital currency, so that we don't have to rely on private banks to make electronic payments. And instead of pumping new money into financial markets and property, it should be spent on useful areas of the economy, like social housing and green infrastructure. These changes, amongst a few more, would help bring down inequality, make our economy more stable with fewer crises and less private debt, provide society with the things it needs, affordable homes, a green economy, reliable well-paid jobs. Positive money is a people-powered campaign organization. We do research, influence politicians and the media, and meet up locally to get the word out to our communities. Please help us create the changes to money and banking that our society so desperately needs. Please support Positive Money today. Follow us online. Join the local group. Become an ambassador.