Harnessing Diffused Creative Knowledge

The interplay between society and technology has intensified, each influencing the other, and its full force is being felt in India, declares L. K. Sharma in ‘The India Idea: Heralding the era of path-breaking innovations’ (www.wisdomtreeindia.com). Reminding that satellites and mobile phones are providing education, expert advice, weather information and other critical information to farmers and fishermen, patients, and students, Sharma paints a reassuring picture of the Indian villager who once had to trudge miles to sell her farm produce at whatever price she got: “Today, she gets the mandi price on the cell phone before setting out for the market, averting exploitation.” Likewise, “On a Village Resource Centre (VRC) computer, the farmer sees an image of his small plot taken by a remote sensing satellite, gets to know its soil characteristics and a list of recommended crops.”

Adding that much more is yet to come, Sharma observes that growing technological connectivity, IT’s open source movement and crowd-sourcing-based research and development can harness diffused creative knowledge. Foreseeing that, with its core competence in the field of IT, India is going to be a major contributor and beneficiary of the open source software movement, he mentions, as example, the initiative of CSIR (the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) to develop a TB drug through crowd-sourcing...