Inaugural Address In The International Summit

Multi-dimensions of Bio-technology ( Can it be an instrument for economic development ? )

I am indeed delighted to participate in the International Summit on "Knowledge Millennium-III: The Business of Biotechnology" organized by ASSOCHAM. It is indeed the right choice of topic at the right time for the right type of gathering. Information Technology and Bio Technology almost simultaneously started in India in 1980s . Service sector that includes Information Technology has become one of the core competencies of the nation, contributing to about 40% of the GDP growth rate. Information Technology has established an export potential of about 10 billion dollars currently and it has got potential to reach many folds in future. Information Technology, by combining with healthcare leads to tele-medicine, by combining with education leads to tele-education, by combining with management and administration leads to e-governance. Also bio-informatics has emerged in combination with bio-technology & information technology and bio-informatics will assist in characterizing the protein synthesis by gene expressions. Bio-informatics effectively utilizes the potential of bio-diversity, computational advancements and also significantly influences the health sector.

Magnitude of business in bio-technology

At this stage, let us discuss some of the potential aspects of bio-technology. What will be the scope of bio-technology in the next two decades in India? How it will influence our agriculture sector both fertile and arable land, environmental upgradation? Above all, how is it going to enhance the economic prosperity? Recently I have come across a website those talks about the global bio-technology business opportunities. It says, today the size of the bio-technology market is only in the order of US $ 35 billion, whereas, it is expected to grow up to US $ 160 billion in the year 2010. India's share in this potential business is very small. Our core competencies are, rich bio-diversity, growing information technology capabilities, heritage healing and skilled human power. Combination of these four areas will provide us competitiveness to build our bio-technology business. It is also recognized that biotechnology is not only has business proposition but also it has social implication. I am sure, at the end of this summit, this forum will definitely provide information about the expected bio-technology business turn-over in the next five years.

Knowledge Society

During the last century the world has undergone a change from agriculture society, where manual labour was the critical factor, to industrial society where the management of technology, capital and labour provided the competitive advantage. Then the information era was born, last decade, where connectivity and software products are driving the economy of a few nations. In the 21st century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. This knowledge society component will consist of information technology, space technology and bio-technology linked by innovations. Efficient utilisation of our existing knowledge in biotechnology can create comprehensive wealth of the nation and also improve the quality of life in the form of better health, education, infrastructure and other social indicators. Ability to create and maintain the knowledge infrastructure, develop knowledge workers and enhance their productivity through creation, growth and exploitation of new knowledge will be the key factors in deciding the prosperity of this Knowledge Society. Whether a nation has arrived at a stage of knowledge society is judged by the way the country effectively deals with knowledge creation and knowledge deployment in all sectors like IT, Industries, Agriculture, Health Care and other vital sectors for national development.

Bio-technology applications

Almost in all the sectors, bio-technology can find significant application particularly for enhancing agricultural productivity and healthcare. I recall a talk by Nobel laureate Prof Norman Borlaug at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi. He has been associated in the first green revolution of India. At the age of 87, he was unfurling the audience the vision of wheat production for the world population for the next two decades. He said that, today the world population is 6 billion people. In 20 years time it will increase to 8 billion people. Food production has to double with the same available area and water or even less. Only technology and efficient management can help doubling the food production by improving the existing agricultural practices, efficient management of water and fertiliser both organic and inorganic. Bio-technology will assist in getting pest resistant seeds that would lead to increase in the productivity by about 10%. In my opinion, plant biotechnology has tremendous potentials to enhance agricultural yield by using the seeds that are transgenic resistant to pests and other abiotic stress such as drought and salinity.

Bio-fertilisers

Integrated nutrient management continues to be a focal issue in dry lands as the fertilizer use is not likely to pick up significantly unless water supply is assured. One of the reasons ascribed to low response of bio-fertilizers in dry lands is their low status of soil organic matter. Soil fertility in dry lands can be sustained only through maintenance of organic matter and achieving better fertilizer-use efficiency through integration of moisture-conservation practices along with soil-fertility management. Strategies for on-farm generation of organic matter in non-competitive way need to be evolved.

An experience of sugarcane yield and agro bio-technology:

Development of variety of sugarcane and its yield takes a large amount of time. The typical research potential in sugarcane development are the following. (a) Less water cultivation (b) 12-18 months growth cycle (c) cost of input for sugarcane cultivation and also sugar production (d) regulated growth cycle of sugarcane so that factories can get continuous supply of sugarcane. Recently in India, our scientists have been able to evolve newer sugarcane varieties through micro-propagation so that new transgenic varieties can be grown.

Apart from the genetic engineering research has to be intensified on molecular characterization of the sugarcane genome, molecular diagnosis of diseases and molecular biology of sugarcane pathogens and nitrogen fixing micro-organisms. The molecular characterization of sugarcane genome will be useful in early selection of desirable plants in the breeding programme on the basis of molecular markets. It is also envisaged to isolate desirable genes (for resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses) from the wild relative species of sugarcane so as to transfer them in the cultivated varieties. Molecular characterization of the disease causing organisms like viruses is useful in controlling the diseases. Development of higher nitrogen fixing microbes will be useful in sustainable and low cost sugarcane production. Several major crops plants, including corn, oilseed canola, soyabean, and cotton, have been engineered with genes that make them resistant to insects, pests or to herbicides, so that farmers can apply the weed killer without fear of wiping out their budding crop. This technology can also be applied for other type of crops.

Value Addition

India is rich in herbs, germ-plasm and micro-organisms. Industrially developed countries are importing these bio-resources in the raw forms and add value to them for export to developing countries including India as special seeds, medicines and bio-materials, fully protecting patents of such products. Instead of allowing export of such resources and importing value added products at high cost, India must add its own technology for conversion of such resources to value added products for use in domestic requirement and also for export. Technologically advanced nations and high bio-diversity nations have to work together in realizing the herbal drugs for mutual benefits in short period in a cost effective way. Herbal molecule to drug conversion also takes about 8-10 years since it involves various types of tests from lab to clinical. Efforts need to be made to minimize large time durations for realizing the economic benefits particularly in herbal areas.

Human Mind potentials and Biotechnology

I would like to share with you friends, some of the predictions of Ray Kurzweil written in his book "When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence - The Age Of Spiritual Machines". World Wide Web will make tremendous impact in the way we communicate and live. Most of the computers and accessories will be of micro sized, wearable and will have wireless communications with each other. Moderately priced PCs capable of performing about billion calculations per second today, will be able to perform about trillion calculations per second within next 10 years. And by 2020 computational ability of an ordinary PC will exceed the capability of human brain. By 2030 the capability of a normal PC would be around 1000 times of human capability.

By the end of this century there would be a strong trend towards merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence that the human species initially created. When there would no longer be any clear distinction between human anatomical brain and computers, how are we going to retain the supremacy of man over machines? Computers are going to give us a challenge. It is not only for the biologists and bio-technologists, the entire scientific community would have greater responsibility of keeping the mankind above the man-made computers. Fortunately, the creativity and imagination components of human mind would be always superior and would subjugate the machines. The human genome is full of software that is yet to be fully activated to unleash the ingenious potentials of human species. We have the key.

Biotechnology in Healthcare

I would like to share my experiences while I was in Anna University, Chennai. An unique research effort resulted in getting a patent for a new molecule discovered from a herb as an anti cancer drug. This came out of the fusion of two great minds, one was a bio technologist and the other was a traditional siddha medical practitioner. The traditional system of medicine like Ayurveda, Siddha etc have advocated and practiced preventive and curative medicinal recipes specific to individuals. The body, mind, food and environment were looked at holistically to suggest a preventive or curative approach to health. New technologies such as human genome sequencing, proteomics, pharmaco-genomics, ultrahigh throughput screening are revolutionizing drug discovery. Medicinal plants offer enormous scope for development of drugs. We need to create database of traditional medicinal plants for specific bioactivity and lead for development of new drugs. India has got tremendous potential for herbal farming and research.

Stem Cell Research

Stem cells are one of the most fascinating areas of biology today. Stem cells have two important characteristics that distinguish them from other types of cells. First, they are unspecialised cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division. The second is that under certain physiologic or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become cells with special functions such as the beating cells of the heart muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Research on stem cells is advancing knowledge about how an organism develops from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells in adult organisms. This promising area of science is also leading scientists to investigate the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat certain diseases. As scientists learn more about stem cells, it may become possible to use the cells not just in cell-based therapies, but also for screening new drugs and toxins and understanding birth defects. It has been hypothesized by scientists that stem cells may, at some point in the future, become the basis for treating diseases such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and heart disease and brain disorder.

A number of experiments over the last several years have raised the possibility that stem cells from one tissue may be able to give rise to cell types of a completely different tissue, a phenomenon known as plasticity. Examples of such plasticity include blood cells becoming neurons, liver cells that can be made to produce insulin, and haematopoietic stem cells that can develop into heart muscle. Therefore, exploring the possibility of using adult stem cells for cell-based therapies has become a very active area of investigation by researchers. Stem cells, directed to differentiate into specific cell types, offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis. In people who suffer from type I diabetes, the cells of the pancreas that normally produce insulin, are destroyed by the patient's own immune system. New studies indicate that it may be possible to direct the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells in cell culture to form insulin-producing cells that eventually could be used in transplantation therapy for diabetics. To summarize, the promise of stem cell therapies is an exciting one, but significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research.

Bio Informatics

At the crossroads of biochemistry and information technology a new discipline is emerging. Bioinformatics studies the informational aspect of biochemistry, and is trying to provide the software that is becoming indispensable for almost all biochemists. Computer networks are becoming the new channels through which biochemical data can be transferred fast and reliably. Electronic databases and sequence analysis are becoming the basic tools for many types of research. The field of Bioinformatics has been reaping the benefits of advances that have been taking place in Information and Communication Technologies. ICT specialists have been building machines that can be used in decryption of secret messages - a field known as Cryptography and Cryptanalysis. One of the major advances made in this field by the computer scientists is the design of special machines that can match strings of characters very fast - about 1000 times more faster than a PC at around the same cost and the size of a PC. It is not surprising that the Human Genome Project benefited enormously from this work in Cryptnanalysis. In fact the awesome power of the Information Retrieval algorithms that have been nurtured and matured by computer scientists became part of the Bioinformatics. Encryption is man made coding while the DNA is God's coding- no wonder they both converge. Recently Data Mining tools have become popular in computer science to convert vast amount of data into intelligence.

Technology and Societal Transformation

Time has come for us to prove our abilities in the field of bio-science and bio-technology for harnessing these technologies in multiple fields for wealth generation and for societal transformation. Technology is the most nonlinear tool that can effect the most fundamental changes in the ground rules of economic competitiveness. Science is linked to technology through applications. Technology is linked to economy and environment through manufacture. Economy and environment link technology to the society

Conclusion

I am glad to note that this international summit is going to deliberate on these important issues related to the business of bio-technology. I am happy to inaugurate the summit and hope that the outcome of this summit will provide a new impetus to the commercial application of bio-technology for the national development and enhance the quality of life. Also this summit can suggest a framework to evolve a national bio-technology policy by giving an integrated focus on bio-research, development, production and marketing.

For the nation today, what is needed is a combination of technology and leadership using the technology to bring economic prosperity. 'Developed India', as defined by us can only be powered by economic strength. The economic strength has to be powered by competitiveness and competitiveness has to be powered by knowledge power. Knowledge power has to be powered by technology and technology has to be powered by innovation and business. Business has to be powered by innovative management and management has to be powered by creative leadership. What are the characteristics of creative leadership? The creative leadership is exercising the task to change the traditional role from commander to coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitate self respect. The higher the proportion of creative leaders in the field of bio-technology, the higher the potential of economic success of biotechnology leading to one of the important instruments in realizing the vision "Developed India."

My best wishes to you all.