Bhartiya Heritage in Engineering and Technology

The Ancient Indians had a capability to design and make surgical instruments, chemical apparatuses, furnaces and other auxiliary appliances and astronomical instruments in their hoary past. This would imply that they possessed a fairly high level of mechanical competence and technological skills. Various texts starting from Rigveda, the Upavedas, epics, Puranas and other manuscripts refer to a large number of mechanical contrivance s. The Samarangan Sutradhara of Bhoja describes various Yantras including robots. It may also be recognised that before the advent of foreign rulers India had a very high share of the world market. At the beginning of the British Raj India’s share in the world market was more that 20 percent. After sixty years of independence our share is not even one percent. If India has to occupy her rightful place in the contemporary world, she must use her talent, resources and capabilities to evolve a technology capable of meeting the current challenges. The food security, energy security, technological security are all to be preserved and protected in order to safeguard our economic and above all strategic security. The high capital, high energy and low human resource based but environmentally hazardous, western technology has thrown a serious challenge before us.
We have to convert this into an opportunity by identifying our strengths and weaknesses. We have to be innovative and original. What the developing world is suffering is the tyranny of the western technology. Let us redeem ourselves for developing a technology with human face and a sensitive heart. Let us promise a new techno-economic order based on spirituality which assures a non-violent, non-exploitative world order.