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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Dr. Sudhir M. Parikh Founder, Chairman & Publisher Ilayas Quraishi Chief Operating Officer Ela Dutt Editor T. Vishnudatta Jayaraman Washington D.C. Bureau Chief Archana Adalja Contributing Editor Arun Shah Ahmedabad Bureau Chief Peter Ferreira, Deval Parikh, Freelance Photographers Bhailal M. Patel Executive Vice President Chandrakant Koticha-Rajkot, India Executive Director Business Development Jim Gallentine Business Development Manager - U.S. Shahnaz Sheikh Senior Manager Advertising & Marketing Sonia Lalwani Advertising Manager Shailu Desai Advertising New York Muslima Shethwala Syed Sheeraz Mahmood Advertising Chicago Digant Sompura Consultant for Business Development Ahmedabad, India Hervender Singh Circulation Manager Main Office Editorial & Corporate Headquarters 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Tel. (212) 675-7515 Fax. 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Postmaster: Send address change to News India Times, 1655 Oak Tree Toad, Suite 155 Edison, NJ 08820-2843 Annual Subscription: United States: $28 Disclaimer: Parikh Worldwide Media assumes no liability for claims/ assumptions made in advertisements and advertorials. India@100 A t a meeting in Palo Alto, United States (US), with biotech leaders on October 14, Rajesh Gokhale, secretary of the department of biotechnology, discussed the advantages that India provided in medical research: A vast population with many needs, an abundance of scientific and technical talent, and the government’s willing- ness to remove obstacles to innovation. Gokhale spoke of new policies to ethically and safely implement technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 and the ability to launch major clinical trials in months rather than the years it takes in theWest. The Silicon Valley execu- tives agreed that India can lead the world in medical research, as it leads in information systems, digital payments, and in producing vaccines and generic drugs. This is because of the exponential advances in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), comput- ing, robotics, genomics, and sensors, which are now inexpensive and available to entrepreneurs and researchers worldwide. The CRISPR technolo- gies are a new gene-editing system derived from bacteria that enables scientists to edit the DNA of living organ- isms, making it feasible to eradicate hereditary diseases, revive extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, and design plants that are far more nutritious, hardy, and delicious than those evolved through natural selection and epigenetics over hundreds of thousands of generations. Imagine banana and mango plants that could thrive in the desert of Rajasthan. That is what may be possible. The challenge has been that the CRISPR technology has been unregulated, leaving start-ups fearful that any innovations would be banned as genetical- ly modified organisms (often rightly), a problem India has solved. As far as medical research goes, what Gokhale talked about was exactly what I rec- ommended to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when I met him in Kevadia, Gujarat, in October 2019: India could launch the largest clinical trial in world history, genetically sequence patients and make the data available to research- ers. India could become the global hub of medical inno- vation, because, with its size and scale of research, it can do what the US can’t. With no legacy companies, infrastruc- ture, and interests to protect, it can rethink and dramatically advance medical research — and make it more equitable for all. And, such a project is being implemented across India by Karkinos Healthcare, which is working on integrating and upgrading India’s cancer care system and gathering the data and bio-samples needed to cure cancer. That is because this is a data problem. Symptoms, diseases, genes, and proteins are all linked in a complex web. The key to curing a disease may lie in analysing these data for cor- relative patterns. Human be- ings have difficulty seeing such complex patterns, but that is what AI excels in; and it’s what India’s technologists can use to analyse the massive data that the Indian population could provide. It’s not only in medicine that AI may provide break- throughs; it has advanced to the point where it can analyze large sets of data and help improve decision-making in every sector, from agriculture to finance and transportation. The same tools used by engi- neers at Google and Microsoft, and government research labs, are available to start-ups everywhere. Robots are beginning to do the jobs of humans in facto- ries, grocery stores, pharma- cies, and making deliveries. The humanoids of science fiction, too, are becoming a reality. The actuators and sen- sors necessary to build robots that resemble Rosie fromThe Jetsons or C-3PO from Star Wars are already commonly available and inexpensive. AI will soon take a few more leaps forward and provide these with the capability of acting intelligently, just as we’d imagined them. There is no reason that Rosie, or Ritu the Robot, can’t originate from Jaipur — and speak Hindi or Marwari. Today, industrial robots can thread a needle and work hand-in-hand with humans. They can do almost every assembly job and pack the boxes in which the goods are shipped. The opportunity for India is twofold: To become a manufacturing hub for Asia and to help theWest bring manufacturing home from China. It doesn’t make sense to ship raw materials across the globe to have them assembled in a faraway land and then ship them back. India has to start learning new manu- facturing technologies, set up low-cost manufacturing centres to undercut China, and then show theWest how to do the same. A major opportunity arises because American businesses aren’t geared up to take advantage of manufacturing robots because they don’t have the know-how. This is where India’s outsourcers could help. They could master new technologies, help American firms design new factory floors and programmes, and install robots. They could provide management consulting in optimising supply chains and inventory management. And, they could manage manufac- turing plant operations re- motely. This is a higher margin business than the old informa- tion technology (IT) services. Americans would cheer India for bringing manufacturing back to their shores rather than protest at its having taken their IT jobs away. These are just a few ex- amples of what new tech- nologies are enabling. In the next decade, we will also see 3D-printing household goods, entire buildings, electronic circuits, and even our food. We will design new organisms that improve agriculture and clean the environment. We will be delivering our goods — and perhaps even trans- porting ourselves — by drone. We can also build futuristic cities, which use only renew- able energies, are clean and self-sustaining, and provide incredible comforts. I am confident that India’s entrepreneurs will work hand- in-hand with its scientists to take advantage of all of these technologies and opportuni- ties — and be- come a developed country, leading the world in in- novation, by the time it reaches 100 years of Indepen- dence. Vivek Wadhwa is an academic, entre- preneur, and author and tweets at @ wadhwa. ByVivekWadhwa Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the authors and Parikh Worldwide Media does not officially endorse, and is not responsible or liable for them. Opinion News India Times November 25, 2022 3 Photo:Linkedin India can and will lead in solving global problems A woman checks her mobile phone as she walks past a mobile store of Reliance Industries’ Jio telecoms unit, in Mumbai, India, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade Photo:videograbTwitter @PMOIndia Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching 5G services in India at Pragati Maidan Oct. 1, 2022.

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