Address At The Annual Conference Of Technical Consultancy Development Programme For Asia And The Pacific(Tcdpap)

Empowering the Society with Knowledge

I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of the annual conference of technical consultancy developmental programme for Asia Pacific. My greetings to the consultancy development centre, technology consultancy developmental programme for Asia pacific, funding institutions, consultancy organization, academic institutions, government functionaries and other participants and distinguished guests.

The theme of the conference is development of knowledge infrastructure: role of consultants is indeed a good topic.

Core competence for Knowledge Society

Knowledge has always been the prime mover for prosperity. A knowledge society is one of the basic foundations for the development of any nation. Knowledge has many forms and it is available at many places. The acquisition of knowledge has therefore been the thrust area throughout the world and sharing the experience of knowledge is a unique culture of our country. During the last few centuries the world has undergone a change and in the 21st century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. Efficient utilisation of existing knowledge can create comprehensive wealth for the nation in the form of better health, education, infrastructure etc. for improving the quality of life. Whether a nation has emerged as a knowledge society or not is judged by the way the country effectively deals with knowledge creation and knowledge deployment.

Dimensions of Knowledge Society

I was studying different dimensions of knowledge society, how will it be different from the industrial economy. In the knowledge economy the objective of a society changes from fulfilling the basic needs of all round development to empowerment. The education system instead of going by text book teaching will be promoted by creative, interactive self learning ? formal and informal with focus on values, merit and quality. The workers instead of being skilled or semi-skilled will be knowledgeable, self-empowered and flexibly skilled. The type of work instead of being structured and hardware driven will be less structured and software driven. Management style will emphasize more on delegation rather than giving command. Impact on environment and ecology will be strikingly less compared to industrial economy. Finally, the economy will be knowledge driven and not industry driven.

Knowledge Society Components

Knowledge Society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is on education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity. How do we do that?

The wealth generation is a very important task for the nation, which has to be woven around national competencies such as information technology, bio-technology, space technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, tele-medicine and tele-education, technologies to produce native knowledge products, service sector and Infotainment. These technologies and management structures have to work together to generate knowledge society. Now I would like to discuss specific areas in which consultants can play a key role through either national or multinational joint ventures for promoting societal development ventures in the whole region.

Create Bio-diesel Enterprises

As you all know, India is facing a huge import bill of nearly 90,000 crores a year in importing oil. Many other countries in the Asia pacific region will also be incurring large import bill for crude oil. To find a solution to this issue, we have been discussing about the Jatropha plantation in wasteland available many of our states through which we can get Jatropha seeds, which can be eventually converted as Bio-diesel for utilization in our transportation fleet and the power sector. There has been a successful experiment which has been carried out by Daimler ? Benz in collaboration with CSIR laboratories of running a Benz car from Pune to Delhi using 10% blend of Bio-diesel, with out any modification to the engine. Now is the time, for the consultants to come out with the proposal which can provide answers to all the questions of the farmers, financial institutions, entrepreneurs who are keen to setup the fully integrated bio-diesel plant using Jatropha seeds from the plantation to production of bio-diesel, by-products and their marketing. It is said that number of foreign consultants has shown interest in taking up Jatropha plantation and commissioning of plants in different areas in the country. Before they establish such plants, I would recommend the consulting community in Asia and the Pacific to take the lead and enable establishment of model bio-diesel plants with the inputs of Jatropha coming from minimum 1000 hectares in different states. This is the way consultants can play a proactive role of creating bio-diesel enterprises generating large scale employment for farmers in the rural sector and youth in industries. It will also provide a clean environment.

Create Green Buildings

Recently, I was invited to study and inaugurate the CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre at Hyderabad. It is a huge multipurpose complex, which has been awarded platinum rating, the highest under the Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) rating system in the world. This is the third building to be awarded platinum rating and the first building outside the United States. I had visited and seen around the green building. What a beautiful natural green environment that I witnessed.

Wherever I went, there was day light coming in, an automatically controlled light, water and cooling system is in place through the natural energy saving design of the green building. I had witnessed the rooftop designed in a successively sloping fashion to conserve the heat energy as well as to generate solar power with solar panels for the Green building. Reusing the building materials and prefabricated bricks are the unique features. I was told that it enables 30% to 40% reduction in annual operational cost of the buildings; but approximately 25% increase in the building cost for the Green building. Even though the Green building concept is at a nascent stage in India, CII is assisting seven corporates in constructing green buildings. The overall potential for green building materials and equipment is expected to be about Rs. 22,000 crores by 2010. Few green materials and equipments are already available in the country.

With the growth of Green buildings in India annual reduction in energy consumption of these buildings compared to conventional buildings is expected to be in financial terms a saving of Rs. 200 Crore by 2010. Majority of water used in Green buildings is recycled. The fresh water consumption in green buildings is about 30% lower than conventional buildings. In addition Green buildings can lead to higher employee productivity, higher utilization of recycled materials, higher focus on landscapes and cleaner/greener environment.

Now I would like to discuss about how we can bring rural prosperity through connectivities and what may be the role of technical consultants in this national development tasks.

Economic Connectivity for PURA in Different Countries of Asia the Pacific

Providing Urban facilities in Rural Areas (PURA) consisting of four connectivities: physical, electronic, knowledge and there by leading to economic connectivity to enhance the prosperity of clusters of villages in the rural areas. The economic connectivity will generate a market and the production establishments for servicing the market. The PURA has all the dimensions to become a business enterprise. The PURA entrepreneur has to have the skill for evolving a business plan with banks and also create infrastructural support such as educational institutions, health centers and small scale industries, transportation services, tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance services in the region integrating with the governmental rural development schemes such as road, communication and transport. Can Technical consultancy Development programme for Asia the Pacific (TCDPAP) play a role to facilitate the creation of PURA enterprises and entrepreneurs with the required business and managerial skill?

PURA Enterprise: You have a large clientele and you have experience in providing consultancy to the small scale industries of different types in various regions. This sector is widespread in the country and is a promising candidate for becoming the chief and managing the PURA complexes in an integrated way. PURA enterprises can undertake management of schools, health care units, vocational training centres, chilling plants, silos and building a market, banking system and the regional business or industrial units. A new management style has to emerge for managing such type of PURA enterprises. This new PURA enterprise needs partnership from the bank, from the Government and also from the private entrepreneurs. Since, the Consultants have large linkages with the small and medium scale industry; they can start a movement in the country for evolution of new PURA enterprises in the country.

Structural Support for PURA: Consultants can be a facilitator for creating this entrepreneurship scheme through the support of the banking system and the marketing system. The regional consultants should identify the PURA complexes in their areas and adopt them right now, so that they can be developed in an integrated way. They should create a holistic plan of product, skill and entrepreneurship. Determination of products should be done on the basis of the core strength of the region and the availability of raw materials and infrastructure. Once the product is determined it will also involve infusion of new technologies for making it attractive for both national and international market and also productivity enhancement. After establishing the process and methods a vocational training package needs to be established for improving the skill sets of the local population. This is also the time for developing entrepreneurs with leadership qualities who will then create and nurture the enterprise. The selection of entrepreneurs should be preferably done from the higher educational institutions in the region. This will enable creation of the village level industries simultaneously with the establishment of connectivities in the region.

Each PURA depending upon the region will cost between Rs.100-200 crores. It has also to provide employment opportunity for 3000 employees. If we create a smallscale sector this will mean creation of approximately 10-20 enterprises per PURA complexes. This will also generate employment opportunities in service and support sector for about 10000 people. This is one way of reducing the employment gap leading to upliftment of the millions of people living below the poverty line.

In brief, consultants should generate the business plan for PURA and evolve methodologies for creating a model that would:

(a) Create a data base of core competencies in the chosen region.

(b) estimate the cost of implementing PURA

(c) measures of quantitatively establishing the economic prosperity of people before and after PURA is implemented

(d) economic returns and self sustainability

I am sure with your experience in consultancy services in different areas you can make a project implementation document that will attract business enterprises towards investing in PURA and make PURA a socially relevant and economically feasible project. This project, I am sure will be relevant to all the countries in the Asia Pacific region.

Law of development

I am sure the consultants assembled here will facilitate creation of competitive industry in their country and enable creation of wealth for the nation in the global competitive environment. I was studying India?s competitiveness in different dimensions such as technological sophistication, firm level technology absorption, company spending on research and development, nature of competitive advantage, degree of customer orientation, strength of auditing and accounting standards, where there is scope for substantial improvement. It is true to number of Asia-Pacific nations also.We have the necessary scientific and technological human resource and managerial skill available in sufficient numbers. To make ourselves competitive, consultants can definitely play a role in improving the countries standing in the areas which I have stated above. At this stage, I would like to discuss with you the law of development. How to become competitive? I was studying the development patterns and the dynamics of connectivity between nations, especially in trade and business. As you all know, the world has a few developed countries and many developing countries. What is the dynamics between them and what connects them? Developed country has to market their products in a competitive way to different countries to remain as developed country. The developing country to get transformed into developed country; they too have to market their products in other countries in a competitive way. Competitiveness is the common factor for both. Competitiveness has three dimensions: quality of the product, cost effectiveness and supply in time. Indeed this dynamics of competitiveness in marketing of products by developing and developed countries determines the law of development. Consultants can play a major role in evolving enterprises with the competitiveness index in mind.

Emergence of an Advanced Missile Technology Centre

When I am with the Consultant Community I thought of sharing with you my personal experience with consultants. In the year 1985, we had an urgent need to create missile integration and test facility for the entire missile programme. We had nearly 2500 acres of barren land in which 600 acres were demarcated for creating the missile complex facilities. This facility included missile integration centers for five projects, guidance laboratory, control laboratory, environmental testing laboratory, five axis simulation laboratory, electro magnetic test facilities and the support facilities. There was a need to create this centre in a time bound manner for ensuring the availability of the facility for the integration and evaluation of the system before flight trials, as adequate area with safety was not available at the mission development laboratory, DRDL. This centre thus emerged as the most advanced technology centre for guided missiles called RCI (Research Centre Imarat), Hyderabad.

Since we found that it was not possible to execute the completion of the facility within the existing procedures of the department, the Guided Missile Board approved the appointment of a Consultant for execution of the programme along with an empowered committee using the state-of-the art builders, architects, town planners and equipment installers. The Consultant started with the preparation of the master plan for the whole complex. They took the qualitative requirement of the user, prepared the specification got it approved and prepared the detailed design of the facilities. After approval of the design they prepared the tender documents and floated the tenders to selected vendors based on vendor evaluation by the consultant.

The responses of the vendors both technical and commercial were evaluated and submitted to a high power committee for selection of the best vendors for awarding the contract. Based on the selection by the high power empowered committee the contract was awarded and the work commenced. The Consultant provided online supervisory support during the execution of the contract by the vendors and suggested mid course corrections. Finally, when the facilities were ready they were certified by third party building certifiers before payment was released to the builders. Subsequently when the buildings were all complete the consultant assisted the laboratory in the procurement of the facilities and arranged commissioning of high cost facilities in the buildings. Thus the Consultant was with us and became a partner in the programme on concept to completion and during the warranty period. The salient features of performance are as follows:

(a) Proper design of the lighting system of the complex provides the lumens per square feet area at a minimum cost.

(b) The roads which have been prepared in 1988 is still trouble free and is in the same condition.

(c) The contract commenced in 1985 and the inauguration of the facility done in 1988.

(d) The Consultant enabled selection of best contractors available in the country leading to healthy competition and cost effective performance.

In nutshell, the Consultant enabled completion of the facility as per specified quality, at competitive cost and within the time frame specified by the user. This became a model in defence ministry for execution of specialty facilities in a cost effective time bound manner.

Conclusion

Consultants assembled here can definitely synergize their efforts through value addition using the core competence of individual countries in the region. For example, Gramin bank concept of Bangladesh can be combined with the self-help group of India to promote rural financing leading to large scale employment for the rural population. Similarly Nepal, Thailand and India can join together and promote spiritual tourism and other types of tourism. Similarly India and Nepal can work together in harnessing the flood waters through creating the layered wells and Dams in selected area, primarily to control flood. It can also be used for generating power and use of stored water in layered wells during drought season. With the availability of EDUSAT, the experience in tele-education and tele-medicine in India can be used for providing knowledge connectivities to partner countries of the Asia pacific region.

These are few examples which could be considered by this conference. I am sure the discussions with various participants would lead to many collaborative ventures which can benefit participant?s countries. This can become a vital contribution of the Consultants for enhancing the wealth generation capability in different sectors of the economy of all the members? nations.

My best wishes for all of you for promoting regional prosperity in Asia Pacific region through this conference.

May God bless you.