Knowledge Management for Atmanirbhar Bharat
The focus of self-reliance through knowledge management is needed in the small scale and the micro industries where people lack the skills to document their innovation. — Alok Singh
Knowledge is the foundation of progress. There is difference between owning the knowledge and applying the knowledge. Knowledge documentation on many occasions is missing and this is unaffordable in today’s market driven system. Even raw data is an asset today. So, knowledge getting killed is costly to the organization, to the society and to the country.
The standard procedure to accept any research as knowledge demands that it passes through the process of publication steps in blind peer reviewed world ranking journals. The publication of knowledge in each journals needs satisfaction of certain templates, themes and or parameters.
The Covid 19 vaccine development and its emergency use approval processes is reflection of how the market driven knowledge actors behaved. We could progress our own Covid 19 Vaccine ‘Covaxin’ developed by Bharat Biotech and save it from market-based knowledge politics. We survived the pandemic on our own resources as we could develop, preserve and satisfy the contemporary acceptance procedure of knowledge. We saw the worldwide knowledge-politics or politics on the shoulders of knowledge, demeaning one country’s science over the other, it was also labelled as vaccine nationalism. The recent illustration of manipulated success in knowledge management is the acceptance and further sales of Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer. It was successful as it got all the approvals for vaccination use and after two years at the World Economic Forum 2023 held in Davos the CEO of the company evaded questions related to the efficacy of the vaccine and could not clear the doubts about its well documented and well researched scientific outcome. Such experiences raise doubts about the documentation, statistical tests and approval process itself.
We are today seeing many technology companies which are driven by ideas- for example ‘Twitter’ is an idea, and so is ‘Facebook- resulting in huge valuation of such technology companies in a shorter and shorter period of time. Their knowledge is documented, patented, copyrighted. The market accepts such companies, so such companies are successful as per the market driven measuring scale of success. But there is difference between success and sustainability. The shelf life of such success is itself decelerating.
Big corporations and big organizations and big manufacturing units have a dedicated team to perform the task of knowledge management. Knowledge management is a part of the job profile of information system management. Within information system management knowledge management is a tough job. Within the organization itself there is huge data and the job is to document and preserve data so that the knowledge can be verified whenever need arises. Preserving all the data at all times is expensive, but the knowledge should not get killed, is more important than the cost of preserving data. The task of figuring out special data and the junk data from the whole data is a challenge. The data which are the foundation of knowledge are the special data and without such data the data driven research is not possible. This process is expensive and organized companies with sufficient research and development budgets perform well. The customer feedback system is also data. The way the indigenous companies collect the customer feedback whether it be home appliance, automobile or banking services, all these reflects the commitment of our indigenous companies to march ahead on a global platform.
The concern is of those knowledge which are getting killed every day on construction sites, on the floors of micro and small factory floors, on the streets of cities by the rickshaw puller, by the street vendors, by the carpenter, and so on.
For illustration, if we look at construction sites then we can see that many personnel who are not researchers or PhD’s but diploma holders complete the tough task with on spot ideas and the work is accomplished without recognition of the innovation, i.e. lack of documentation of such activities is like killing knowledge. If next time such troubles happen on another construction site or when another human personnel are there then the lack of such knowledge in documented form is like rework, reduction in productivity, wasting time for again figuring out ways. The patents and publications from China are much higher from Polytechnic institutes than from universities. But in our country, we lack the documentation of knowledge which is created at, in or by polytechnic institutes, whether it is on a work site or on the manufacturing floor.
The focus of self-reliance through knowledge management is needed in the small scale and the micro industries where people lack the skills to document their innovation.
But we need to document it and not necessarily for profit making. We have documented the methodology of preparing fool proof, duplication proof digital infrastructure like Aadhaar, UPI, and Arogya Setu. We have not earned any money by selling or patenting, or asking for royalty to any country which comes to us to help them create such digital infrastructure. We label our digital infrastructure such as UPI, Arogya Setu, and Aadhar as digital public infrastructure. The owner of this infrastructure is not an individual and this system is not for profiteering. UPI is successful because of many reasons, it is quality, acceptance and the zero-merchant discount rate (MDR). It is easy to target MDR as the success of UPI and failure of other digital payment systems. The design, the architecture and the algorithm of the UPI makes it special and the world desires to have it. It is the design, architecture, and the algorithm of the Arogya Setu that makes it special and the world desires to have it. The world has many such patented and copyrighted knowledge which feeds the companies, for example the Coca-Cola has a unique patented recipe and just because of that recipe and its marketing budget it has a huge market share in the soft drink business.
We need to create a digital infrastructure for knowledge management of those that are getting killed. Yes, knowledge gets killed if knowledge is not documented or not passed from one person to the other or not passed from one organization to the other. We have to compete globally and our micro and small-scale manufacturers are source of huge knowledge which is not recognized. Knowledge which is unique to an individual or to a small factory owner, unfortunately don’t get the reward for their ideas, for their efforts, for their experience, for their innovation, for their ‘Jugaad’ which is frugal innovation, (there is no exact word for Jugaad in English, so frugal innovation is nearest in meaning and is used by many authors of management science).
Policymakers should promote and support Knowledge Management at all levels.
(Alok Singh is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Indore, a freelancer academician, and associated with AGET Business School, Jhajjar.)
Share This
