“A bird cannot fly with one wing.”
Not a gender story.
A beach city in Europe welcomed over a hundred thousand visitors for a week last month. Around ten thousand of them were Indians from India. Some say a thousand of those may have been from Surat alone.
It was such an important destination that it brought the Indian Ambassador to the city from his home in that country’s capital.
It’s another matter that his office goofed up on why he was there and who had invited him.
The title for this story was used by FM Sitharaman in her speech when she presented the finance bill in Parliament last week. She was referring to women but it struck me the phrase was applicable to the economy as well.
There is tremendous focus on using technology to deliver growth. The schemes, the exemptions, the waivers, the readiness to speedily resolve vexing issues of the technology sector is there for all to see.
This is good. It is needed.
But what technology is this really?
Is it, as Professor Tarun Khanna observed , the software centric and mobile centric type of technology that now defines entrepreneurship ?
The tendency to think that everything can be solved through such technology appears to have influenced policymaking to an extent that there is some anxiety that investments and infrastructure are being viewed by policymakers through the prism of a mobile phone alone. If you have an app, you are in business. You get attention.
Here are four new ideas that made a debut in that beachside city. They may or may not have an app but their rollout could have a bearing on the way natural resources are viewed, used and reused. These new ideas will matter to India.
a. Digital Thread Dyeing
An Israeli startup firm has developed a machine that uses solvent based inks to digitally dye polyester sewing thread. This builds on the technology of digital printing that is rapidly growing in India .
The idea is simple : snap a picture using a colour matching mobile app (yes an app, chuckle, chuckle). Algorithms analyse the colour and send it to the machine which dyes the little cone of grey thread immediately. No water, no chemicals to be handled, no pollution control board jhanjhat. A plug and play, small scale, high tech solution to a vexing problem.
Has the NIT Warangal alumni Rajiv Sharma, who steered Coats to invest $5 million for a 10% stake in the company, ever been invited to a Startup India event?
b. Integrated Shredder Extruder
A single shaft shredder and a double feed ram system combine in a single automated line to transform all types of plastic waste — be it packing tape or bags or heavy fabric — directly into recycled pellets which can enter the production process again. The Austrian company that has patented this technology could be on the cusp of making current processes of plastics recycling obsolete.
c. Airlaid Fusion Technology for Nonwovens
Upcycling and recycling are moving to a different plane. A Danish company has patented a system that uses either natural fibres — from sisal to seaweed or recycled materials — be it newspaper or polyester — to create completely new fully formed products — from insulation panels to disposable plates to storage cabinets.
d. Lasers for Denims
Two new systems may be poised to upend the way our jeans look. Personalisation and detailing of a very high order means traditional operations like sandblasting, abrasion, washing could be replaced by laser marking where a roll of denim fabric could be inserted into a machine and a different pattern, design, finish could be had for each leg and each pocket.
The savings will be on inputs and the lower exposure of operators to chemical environments. The extensive application of lasers as design tools means the greening of blue jeans is underway.
Blue skies look good on more than report covers. Acumen and capital will be needed to build a workforce with future ready skills. It will require investments in tertiary education, collaborative research and technology. It will require attention from policymakers at very high levels.
A bird cannot fly with one wing . Apps can take us only so far.
