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Sept. 15, 2004 – Mention India and technology in the United States and Europe, and the response will likely include the words software services and outsourcing. But within India, nanotechnology is frequently taking a prominent role in presidential speeches.
India’s president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is promoting nanotechnology as the vehicle for increasing wealth and improving the quality of life in the impoverished nation of more than a billion people. An aeronautical engineer recognized for his work with launch vehicles and satellites, Kalam has been encouraging the scientific and education communities to embrace the opportunities nanotechnology offers.
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“Two technologies are unfurling for further investigation, development and application,” Kalam said from India during a joint India-United States videoconference on space. “One is the reusable technology with multiple launching capabilities and another is through nanotechnology.”
Kalam repeated the message in late July during an awards ceremony at the Indian Space Research Organization Satellite Center. “Nanotechnology is knocking at our doors,” he said. “It is the field of the future that will replace microelectronics and many fields with tremendous application potential in the areas of medicine, electronics and material science.”
In 2003, India’s Department of Science and Technology initiated a nanoscience research program that began to take shape this year. The agency earmarked about $400,000 for research equipment. The country is said to have allocated $26 million overall to nanotechnology recently.
The Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research and universities in Madras, Pune and Benaras are among the top contenders for funding that could exceed $1 million this year.
The Times of India reported in late June that Kalam asked his administration to develop a plan for yet more nanotech funding. He is about midway through a five-year term in which he is stressing technology’s role as a catalyst for economic development and stability. He says his goal is to “transform India into a developed nation by 2020.”
In the meantime, he has continued to raise nanotechnology’s profile among children as well as adults. Addressing an audience of schoolchildren in a town outside Bangalore this summer, he predicted that fields such as nanoelectronics would dominate their future.