Source:www.bloomberg.com

200-year-old American publisher is completing the circle of knowledge.

Peter Booth Wiley, chairman of the Hoboken, New Jersey-based John Wiley & Sons Inc., has academics in India developing a new series of customized, electronic books that may one day become remedial text in U.S. universities.

Outsourcing isn’t new to the global publishing industry

In 1976, long before Bangalore became the world’s outsourcing capital, Harold Macmillan, the former British prime minister, used the southern Indian city to offer Macmillan Publishers Ltd.’s typesetting services to others.

However, it’s only now that the content — especially in culturally neutral fields like science and technology — is going global, reflecting the new economic reality.

It isn’t that U.S. or U.K. professors’ royalties are under threat. As long as demographics in India and China remain favorable and quick economic growth keeps boosting returns on higher education in these two nations, the textbook market in Asia will continue to expand rapidly, driving global growth.

Books used in postgraduate research and teaching will be dominated by content created in the developed world, thanks to its entrenched leadership position in technological innovation.

At the undergraduate level, however, hard distinctions between producing and consuming economies will disappear.

In India’s case, because the medium for scientific education is English, a chunk of what’s being produced for the home market is also readily exportable.

This wasn’t always so.

From Importer to Exporter

Back in the 1950s and the 1960s, the flow of scientific knowledge between the West and India was strictly unidirectional.

Popular American books such as “College Chemistry” by Nobel laureate Linus Pauling were republished in India — at one- fifth of their original price — under a U.S. aid program called PL 480.

British titles came to India under the English Language Book Society program. The ELBS books, which cost a third of the original, had “Low-Priced Edition” emblazoned across the cover.

Prentice Hall’s incredibly cheap Eastern Economy Edition in those days was nothing more than black-and-white photographic reproduction of American titles.

Of course, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, too, was a big force in the cheap textbook game as it sought out friends in the Third World. And apart from everything else, Soviet books were printed on amazingly good-quality paper.

Building Blocks

The efficacy of foreign aid to developing countries is a debatable subject today. But there isn’t a doubt that cheap Western textbooks — not to mention the first IBM computer that arrived in an Indian university in a bullock cart — triggered a transformation of the economy.

“When a generation of engineers was educated in India, it was educated on our books,” Wiley said in an interview in Singapore. “And you see now what that generation has done.”

India’s prowess in computer-software services and generic drug discovery is well-documented. Earlier this month, the journal Nature Biotechnology reported that India will also be a large player in research and manufacturing of biotech medicines.

None of this would have been possible without investments in higher education.

Knowledge Gaps Narrow

The narrowing of India’s education deficit — to a point where knowledge can begin to flow both in and out — can be seen from the sales pattern of academic publishers.

India today represents Wiley’s fastest-growing market, expanding at an annual 25 percent pace. That compares with a two- year average growth rate of 4 percent in Wiley’s U.S. sales, according to my Bloomberg. India is also emerging as a key center for developing educational content.

“It’s no longer just the West educating the rest,” Wiley said. “It’s all of us educating each of us together. The knowledge revolution is fascinating to me because it is multicentric and global.”

Oxford University Press, which has been publishing textbooks in India since 1912, is already playing a role in taking Indian- based academic authors overseas.

Homegrown Indian companies, such as New Delhi-based Narosa Publishing House, are also working with professors at the Indian Institutes of Technology and other top local universities to create scientific content for a global audience.

Two-Way Flow

Wiley’s new series of textbooks will be delivered electronically — as PDF files. They will be tested initially at second-rung engineering universities in India before being taken to China. If the experiment succeeds, the U.S. market may be the next destination, Wiley said.

Each of these books, tailored to meet very specific learning requirements, could potentially replace bulky standard textbooks. The final cost to the student would be less than $10.

Textbooks and supplies cost as much as $900, or 26 percent of the tuition and fees at a four-year public institution in the U.S., according to data reported in a July 2005 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

If low-income students in the U.S. are one day able to benefit from Indian-created books, just as generations of Indians have from American content, it will be a victory for globalization. The circle of knowledge will be complete.

Source: www.business-standard.com

One wonders what the Tiger of Mysore, India’s first freedom fighter i.e. Tipu Sultan would have to say if he were around to find out that the Tier II city of Mysore is to have its first MNC, when the IT department of a US retail chain, Target, opens shop on a 21-acre site at Koorgahalli, next door to Infosys Technologies.

According to M. N. Vidyashankar, IT, BT and S&T Secretary of Karnataka government, Target will invest Rs. 65-crore within the first two years and hire 1,500-employees, while upping the employee headcount to 3,000 and raise its investment to Rs. 300-crore in the first five years,.

Target, which has a presence in 80-countries, has already had land allotted to it in KIADB’s new industrial area. Meeting Deputy Commissioner Selva Kumar, earlier in the day, Vidyashankar requested him to take possession of the land and hand it over to the company without delay, while informing reporters: “With Target setting up shop in Mysore, I am sure others will follow.”

And, in order to meet IT industry requirement for faster travel between the state capital and Mysore, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has written to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav requesting him to introduce a non-stop AC chair car between the two cities.

Confirming the fact, the IT secretary said: “We will take up the proposal to the logical end when we visit Delhi next week,” adding one train could leave Bangalore in the morning and the other in the reverse direction in the evening.

What would Tipu Sultan have to say to all this, Tipu Sultan who fought so bravely, so long and hard, fought to the finish, spilling his blood to give colour to the dusty brown of his native land, all to expel the cursed firangis, the intolerable British from his sacred motherland. A freedom fighter par excellence, he was a formidable foe the British had never confronted before. Refusing to compromise the main principles of his life, Tipoo refused to submit himself to the supremacy of any foreign power. His plan of action to free India from colonial shackles forms an illustrious chapter in Indian history, even as he used every means, energy, strength and resources for freeing his land and his people from the yoke of the British Raj. His maxim was: “It was far better to live like a lion for a day than to live like a jackal for a hundred years.”

Will he turn in his grave at this invasion from the West? Even, if he does, who will pay heed, as India Inc. in order to control the talent crunch sets up institutes, even as the West off-shores / outsources just about everything and anything they can. The lure of the dollar proves to be far stronger than faded echoes from the past.

As sectors like infrastructure, real estate, microfinance, animation and organised retail witness phenomenal growth, training institutes or job-specific courses to impart skills required for these businesses. This, even as BPOs, in order to control the high attrition rate, have come out with a novel idea to retain talent by offering employees opportunities for higher education , apart from offering the enhancing strength of the in-house trainings, with many BPO firms considering similar kind of alliances with educational institutions e.g. tying up with US-based Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (for offering courses to the employees) to Insosys BPO tying up Karnataka University, and Genpact’s agreement with Association of Certified Chartered Accountants.

No doubt, the lure of ‘paisa vasool’ will reduce the attrition rate, as BPO associates whose salary structure is relatively bad compared to other sunrise professions, will be provided with the scope of higher education, while working.

But, what are we to do about putting the spectre of Tipu Sultan to rest? Perhaps, the fact that his country is prospering from the trend of off-shoring / outsourcing, the fact that slowly the country is getting back on to its feet after being knocked under for a six by the departing British will allay his fears, put to rest his doubts at having firangis, walking on the sacred earth of Mother India, once again! Better luck this time, no British Raj or for that matter US Raj! But, with the US Navy hankering for a berth in Indian ports, will the doubts of Tipu Sultan and those who are in tandem with his thoughts and his emotions, be allayed!

If, the US Navy wants a presence in Indian waters, then no, we cannot push the angry spectre of Tipu Sultan in the background. We need to be alert and alive to the devious cunning of the West, if we don’t want another Afghanistan or Iraq or Philippines! Say no, to the presence of US forces, either on our shores, or in our waters, or in our skies, even as we rake in the big money dollars from US off-shored / outsourced projects!

Take a leaf out history’s book; learn a lesson from the past, all the control must be in Indian hands, even while we provide the West with our skills and our talent, albeit for a price!