Can India produce billion-dollar innovations?

Some days ago Vipin Sir (A faculty in Amrita) gave me an article written by Arindam Banerji. This post is comments to his article. I didnt find any copyrights in the article so I will upload that pdf somewhere soon.

This is what I think about his comments:

I think most of the things he mentioned in the book is correct except that I think he is a little too impatient to see India at the top. He has mentioned the problems and the solution for this cause. But I think he has failed to see the reason for that. What I feel is India today is very different from India 10 years ago. From page 12 he has mentioned some innovations from India. They may not be earth changing but still they are Innovations. All the innovations cannot be earth changing. The fact remains that you cannot simply invent a idea and keep quite. If telephone was invented now can you imgine connecting two places using expensive copper wire to communicate? If I need to communicate with a person in US I would need millions of kilometers of copper wire just to talk to that person. But grahambell knew that it had a future and started a company and invested money in it. The fact remains that now the whole world is connected. It didnt turn out to be that expensive. My point is that you or someone else need to work futher on your innovation to make it successfull and make 'the world know about it'. Most of these 'small innovations' are not properly implemented and hence the world dosent know about it. So what we want is investment. These days, I believe that Industry is the best source of investment. And unfortunately Indian industry is still in adolecent stage and they cannot probably 'risk' on such innovations. Lets wait until these companies are ready or until that time when those 'Global' companies are ready to invest and dosent want to take credit outside of India. To strengthen my point I will show you some instance. Binary numbers were not popular until it was started using in computers. Transistors were again made popular my computers. Leave all that when did the dhabba wallas became that popular?? After some companies started implementing this idea. So lets wait until someone is ready to buy out idea (probably an Indian company otherwise the patent might go to US ;) )

Earth changing Innovations:
The main complaint made by the author was that there was no earth changing innovations. Innovations can be of two kinds one for which there is a need currently and the other may be used in the future. For the earth changing innovations that are in need for the present time needs a global prespective. People ,at times should feel the need, for innovation. And the indians until recently didnt have a global prespective. Very few people had the exposure to global technologies.

Another issue that I find is that the lack of contributions from the Schools and university. Ideas should come from the universities. This is one of the very few place where ppl really 'thinks'. Sadly even now they are just a knowledge production centre. There are lots of colleges and schools everywhere but most of them lacks funds. Sadly it the number of schools and colleges are a trade of between quality and quantity. And a good number of them are only intrested in the 'business' side of it. Why should they worry about research. Do you know that an engg college in palakkad runs in an auditorium? The only real colleges in India I believe are IITs ans NIT's. Apart from some IIT's no one has lead by an example. This is where I think most of the work should be done for some earth changing innovations.