[icernet] Lessons from MIT's failed Indian experiment

[Arul Selvan]

  For a country that has the third-largest scientific and technical 
manpower community in the world and a huge talent pool of technology 
professionals, India has been a spectacular under performer in inventing 
and creating technology that addresses domestic needs. For instance, if 
research output is measured by the number of scientific papers, India 
slips to 21st place globally.

It wasn't a surprise, therefore, that in September 2001, to much 
fanfare, the Indian government and the United States-based Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology (MIT), one of world's most prestigious 
technology institutes, joined hands to set up Asia's first technology 
incubator project in India, christened Media Lab Asia (MLA or MLAsia)and 
with a projected cost of US$1.09 billion.

"It is just not enough for India to show a 45 percent annual growth in 
software exports," said the then information technology and telecom 
minister Pramod Mahajan. "We have to now harness our technical skill 
base to develop ideas to benefit India's billion plus population."

And, "the overarching goal of Media Lab Asia will be to facilitate the 
invention, refinement and deployment of innovations to benefit all 
sectors of Indian society," said Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and 
chairman of the MIT Media Lab. "Media Lab Asia will not be a bricks and 
mortar initiative. Rather, it is intended to be a distributed 
organization that will work with industry, non-government organizations, 
government, and most importantly, ordinary people, to bring these 
innovations to villages across all of India."

MLA, the Asian version of the MIT's formidable Media Lab project, which 
is a globally-known brand name, was visualized as a federal structure, 
not only to grow eventually into an entity larger than the original, but 
also trigger other Media Lab projects in Australia, China, Singapore and 
Korea.

The Indian government was to provide 20 percent of the project's 
funding. The rest of the money was to come from corporate sponsors. Five 
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the country's prestigious 
engineering school, were to carry out research to develop technology 
products, while MIT's role was to provide the crucial methodology for 
product innovation and for taking research to end users.

But almost 20 months down the track, MLA remains a non-starter and India 
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now embroiled in a 
spat over its failure, with MIT blaming a clash of cultures, and New 
Delhi alleging that the facility was too expensive and yielded few results.

Source:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EE27Df02.html