India's Mars mission: Why it makes sense to reinvent the wheel

By S Murlidharan It is not only luddites who baulk at research, inventions and modernity. Don’t-reinvent-the-wheel school also is equally vociferous in its protests and discouragements when money is spent on research on a matter that has already been addressed elsewhere and on products that are already available elsewhere. Skeptics, who abound both in India and abroad, are questioning the wisdom of India spending Rs 450 crore on its unmanned Mars mission Mangalyaan on two grounds — you can, after all, learn from the American, Russian and European experiences (futility of reinventing the wheel) — and there is grinding poverty in vast swathes of Indian hinterland. The rationale for the second reason is that the money could have been used more productively in poverty alleviation than investing in a project with an outcome that is uncertain. Fruits, if at all, might be accrued in the distant run, they argue. [caption id=“attachment_1219149” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reinventing the wheel is recommended not only for reasons of pride or vanity. PTI[/caption] People with this stance are not bohemians or luddites but well-meaning economists worried about the man at the bottom of the heap. Therefore their concerns, seemingly genuine as they are, must also be analysed and answered. The argument that the wheel need not be reinvented is specious. No country bares its chest to outsiders. In the commercial world, inventions and esoteric knowledge are monopolised in perpetuity either through trade secrets or through ever-greening of patents. The US patent office has attracted flak for granting patents for life science inventions relating to gene sequencing despite international consensus not to monopolise anything that is nature given. The ravenous appetite for patents and clinging on to it at any cost is as much to invent as to frustrate third world nations, where poverty and diseases stalk, from maintaining a fierce independent stance in making improvisations. And as far as knowledge harboured by official apparatus of a country-like the Nasa of the US, they are not for sharing much less for sale outright or for royalty. In fact, the US government employs bright Indians and others in Pentagon, the Nasa and other sensitive establishments only when they foreswear their existing citizenship and acquire American citizenship though that is no guarantee by itself that secrets cannot or will not be passed on. India’s prowess on the space front is thanks largely to its independent soldiering on in this challenging area of science and technology. And for its efforts it has been amply rewarded. We are able to make weather forecasts, carry transponders for Indian and foreign television channels much to the envy of our neighbours and the distant, condescending western nations. But why Mars, the skeptics ask with injured innocence and self-righteously add that monitoring the Earth from space for cyclone is one thing-it warns the hoi polloi against the impending nature’s fury. Invading a distant planet is both romantic and wasteful, they say. They forget that just as mother Earth has within its bountiful bowels enormous and varied resources, other planets too could be repositories of such resources. Americans are crazy about Mars not only for tourism purposes. Reinventing the wheel is recommended not only for reasons of pride or vanity. There is a compelling argument for doing so lest one becomes a soft target for economic blackmail sooner or later. The US in the 1970s condescended to offer India free wheat under its PL 480 programme. The nation must remain beholden to Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, for politely rejecting the offer as much on logistical grounds as on self-reliance considerations. Had we acceded, we would have become another client state of the US. Iraq’s conscience would be tugged forever when it had to beg the world for wheat and baby-food in the face of the US intransigence in taming the rogue nation, though the main albeit unstated purpose was to lay its hands on its oil. Had we followed the free trade theory and theory of relative cost advantage, both rooted in don’t-reinvent-the-wheel theory, as holy writs, we would not have become the automobile web for many leading auto manufacturers of the world. Technology transfer is largely a pipedream but could be ultimately realised or internalised if only we persuade foreigners with cutting edge technology to set shop in India which incidentally also provides employment to our masses. There is nothing like the last word in the world of research and inventions because that would be the end of innovation. It is not only to prevent monopoly that patents are almost universally restricted to 20 years, but also to foster further improvements because in the hands of the original patent holder improvements may not come about out of sheer complacency. A scientist is the ultimate narcissist. It often takes another scientist to make a healthy challenge to the original invention. Looking askance at reinventing the proverbial wheel also condemns the rest of the world to vicarious existence and pleasure. The world of literature and art has mercifully refused to obey the diktat you-don’t-have-to-reinvent-the-wheel so much so that the law of copyright does not frown upon the idea being lifted so long as the form is different. This is as it should be. Japan, which spearheaded the silent Asian movement of value engineering, indignantly dubbed as reverse engineering by the western world, could not have fluttered the dovecots of the American car industry, but for its persistence in reinventing the wheel, both figuratively and really. Inventions trickle down to the men on streets only when they are transformed into mass products from their original esoteric status. Cars and computers are obvious examples. These two would have remained out of the reach of common folks but for miniaturisation that would not have been possible had one taken the don’t-reinvent-the-wheel adage seriously.