 Chennai: "We were late to enter the field of bioinformatics and if we do not work fast in catching up with Europe and the US, we may well become mordant," warns Rakesh Dubey, head, genomics, Ocimum Biosolutions, Hyderabad. He was addressing a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) international conference, Connect 2002, on IT, communication technologies and bioinformatics on 19 September 2002.
In a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis presented by Dubey, the picture looked a trifle discouraging the strengths seem bogged down by weaknesses. But the resilience of Indians are well known and he hopes that we can cash in on opportunities, as is being done in the IT sector.
Elaborating more on the strengths, Dubey says we have a large skilled manpower in life sciences and IT, the English language was well-spoken and understood, and there is enormous bio-diversity in the country not just in its ethnic groups but also in its flora and fauna. "In short, subjects for study are abundant.
"But lack of capital and the attitude of unwillingness to invest in research and development by the government and the private sector, too many regulations and a poorly developed educational infrastructure are hampering the development of the industry." There is hardly any research infrastructure even for incubation purposes and there is a total absence of facilitating engines at the country level like NCBI (National Centre for Bioinformatics) in the US and EBI (a similar body in Europe), he says.
According to him, we also did not have a research legacy hampering headstart. Besides a weak track record in commercial biotech innovations and minuscule industry-academia collaborations, a small local market is an additional spoke in the wheel. "But there are welcome changes happening with the spurt in growth of the life sciences industry and a general convergence of medical informatics and bioinformatics."
If we guard against the gold rush mindset, where people generally cashed in on the wave with little substance to offer, and work more towards getting intellectual property rights, we stand to gain substantially, says Dubey. "Afterall, nobody will do our kind of research for us."
Anna University has made an encouraging start in this regard. Dr P Gautam, assistant professor, Bioinformatics Centre, highlighted on the research done on cholera, typhus and peculiar Indian diseases, which the western world was not particularly interested in.
Connect 2002 also saw J Satyanarayana (principal secretary IT&C, Government of Andhra Pradesh), Vivek Harinarain (secretary, IT, Government of Tamil Nadu) and Ashok Jhunjhunwala (IIT-Chennai) speaking on e-governance and rural connectivity.
"In Andhra Pradesh we followed the 6C model content, competencies, citizen interface, cyber laws, capital and change management. All these aspects were built in at the project planning stage itself for smooth functioning," says Satyanarayana.
According to him from the start the Andhra Pradesh government was clear in having open standards, scalable voice, data and video architecture. "We also wanted the service to be accessible, affordable and user-friendly to a vast majority of the populace."
Later, the government made a detailed study as to what services to be offered on the net and the kind of reengineering that is required in the procedures. According to Satyanarayana, the government will set up 500 kiosks this year to deliver e-governance services to citizens.
On the Tamil Nadu governments e-governance initiatives, Harinarain says 206 taluk offices, 325 registration offices, several RTOs and commercial tax offices have been computerised. As a measure to bridge the digital divide the Tamil Nadu government will be implementing Rural Access to Services through the Internet (Rasi), a scheme that will provide net connectivity to villages, in 10 districts.
This follows the success of the pilot project called Sustainable Access to Rural India (Sari), implemented in Melur, a southern Tamil Nadu district. "By 2004 all the villages in the state will have net connectivity," he says.
Jhunjhunwala says the TeNet group-promoted n-Logue, which is involved in the Rasi scheme, is currently offering simultaneous voice and data service on a business model similar to cable operators. "This will be affordable to the rural people, besides giving them an opportunity to improve their finances." n-Logue will cover 85 per cent of the villages in India, the balance 15 per cent is inaccessible. However, satellites could be used to enable access in these regions. Another TeNet company, Chennai Kavigal, has developed an operating system in three Indian languages including Tamil.
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