Indigenous Technology And The Order Of Currency

By Gyanesh Mohan

Paul Michael Romer, an American economist and Nobel prize winner for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis, brought into focus a major factor which is responsible to increase the prestige of a currency of any country in question. It is not the produce, not the products but the technique or the novel method of their production which brings the currency of any nation into fashion. Simply, it is the intellectual property of a nation which gives its currency the prospects or wings to fly. In fact, 'gaining in currency' is a term often used for certain highly popular ideas in scientific community or even a certain personality. So, the word itself denotes something popular, something sought after and something largely trusted upon. In other words, it is not merely a monetary currency which people trust, it is the substance behind it - the promise of innovation in life sciences, security (food, boundary and future) , and even the space beyond. It is this promise of the nation to nurture and promote talent that makes people repose their trust in a particular currency - that trust is largely quantified as money.

Now the question arises: what sort of technology? Could this technology just be bought or borrowed? Should the people developing it need be indigenous as the technology?

We will follow LIFO (Last In First Out) system and answer the last question first. No, the people need not be indigenous but could be from anywhere. Your land should hold the dreams of every man on Earth in highest esteem. Such a land is America (largely before Trump's diatribes but even he seems to acknowledge the fact that the talented individuals from around the world are key to prosperity of his own land by promising to grant citizenship through H1B route, the politics behind it notwithstanding) in today's world. Although India is the favourite destination of FDIs, the large chunk of profit accrued by their activities continue to elude India - leaving it with taxes amounting to peanuts ( all lost in translation due to several loopholes in company's law and as is evident in Vodafone case and many others).

The answer to our second question: Borrowing or buying certain technology could benefit us in the short run but this should be exception rather than norm. If it is not, we will end up being at the mercy of others - our policies would become a slave to their whims ( this is largely the case in most of the African nations - being naturally endowed with wealth but at the mercy of UN and other such powers). There should be an innate zeal to innovate and develop that indigenous technology to be self-reliant such that others could repose their trust in us and thus in our currency.

The answer to our first question: the technology should be such, that apart from taking care of our current situation, it should hold a promise for a future which could dazzle the rest of the world into believing that it is us who are "the Gold". And this lure would surely convert into our currency being most sought after.

P.S : The thought still revolves around the concept of nation-state which is the current order. Had it not been the case, had there been a concept of a truly one globe, one nation, the mode of exchange could have been something more interesting but I cannot fathom what. The whole pricing scheme seems to be skewed in favour of a world which is exploitative in nature as it ruthlessly exploits both natural and human resources although under the garb of "sustainable development". So what pricing scheme should we follow? Certainly not "the rarer, the pricier" model currently in vogue. The determinant should be more on the line of "necessity and efficient mode of production". We will try to elaborate on it sometime in the future.

By Gyanesh Mohan