Innovation Development in India-A few Significant Concerns

Abstract: Technology has made its presence felt in various sectors of India’s development in the last twenty years. Communication and information technology, manufacturing industry, transportation, defense and space technologies are some of the important sectors which have incorporated modern technology in various aspects of their development and functioning. Also, significant and visible changes have taken place in the consumer products available in the Indian market, most of them imported or locally manufactured by multinational corporations based in India. Do these changes qualify India to be considered as a technologically advanced country, and thereby making technological changes an integral part of the social change process of our society? Or are these developments restricted to certain elitist sections of society with little or negligible trickle-down effect of the knowledge bases of the technology developments? In this study a deconstructivism approach is adopted to analyses some of the processes involved in development and diffusion of technology in a society. With the exception of mobile phone technology, it is argued that even though India has strong scientific and technological capabilities, it is emerging as a bigger consumer of technology products than as a producer and innovator of modern technology