Why the Indian Computer Failed

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[manut]

Asian Paints a paint company was the first company in India to buy a supercomputer, In the year 1970, Asian Paint spent ₹8 crores to buy a supercomputer. This was 10 years before ISRO's first procurement. They used it to collect data & analyse what colours, what quantities and what product size company is selling. No wonder Asian Paints is the market leader in paints industry even today and given their shareholders immense wealth creation.

[cva]

India in that era was scared of anything that would reduce labor, because it had so many underemployed people. But also, I think, it was ideological overhang. One big founding myth, legend, story, of Indian independence was how UK textile factories had put Indian handweavers and spinners out of work. There was truth to that, but the wrong conclusion to draw was that Indian handweavers should be protected from their own textile industry.

Even in the 1960s, India should have had vast export industries, leveraging low-cost labor.

Indian development was set back by decades. The computer story is kind of a perfect instance of the problem - oh, hey, let's force everyone to buy out-of-date, expensive domestic computers - but in fact, not everyone, because we don't want to displace labor if we don't have to. So a lot of industries don't get to have a computer at all. Insane.

And so India ended up far far behind the rest of the world, and all those domestically produced software for domestically produced computers gave Indian programmers skills that were not particularly transferrable.


Basically, India stayed poor for far longer than it needed to because its ideology (including reliance on massive bureaucracy) kept it that way.

[shantanubose]

TDC-12 Computer made at ECIL Hyderabad was NOT built using vacuum tubes, but used transistors, other semiconductors and passive components and had 4K ferrite core memory stacks as main memory. Though your picture is correct, but narration needs change. The only I/O devices on TDC-12 were perforated paper tapes and teletype. TDC-12 with real-time peripherals was used for data logging and process control at GSFC, GTRE etc. FORTRAN programs on punched paper tape for TDC-12 had to be compiled and loaded using a linking loader. TDC-12 was followed by TDC-316, a 16-bit system which was installed as automatic message switching system. Data processing peripherals of those days such as card readers, line printers, magnetic tapes and 5" floppies etc were added to TDC-316 to make it suitable for EDP applications. To start with, there was nothing like an Operating System on these machines and each application had to be stand-alone. I thought of putting this comment here, as I was hands-on at ECIL with TDC-12 & TDC-316.

[KuntalGhosh]

my computer sci teacher is one of those 1970s computer guru's, he knows crap ton about the history of indian computers, he developed many at hcl. when he studied computer control , my city (calcutta/kolkata) had only 4 computers back in 1974.

[room]

How you manage to keep these vids comprehensible is beyond me, giganerd 🎉

[pscheie]

There are current efforts by multiple universities in India to develop RISC-V chips that can be produced in India. If they are successful, it could spark a resurgence in India's computer industry. OTOH, lots of other countries are also doing this, so the competition is/will be fierce. But if competitive chips can be developed for a not-too-expensive price, with the largest population of any country on the planet, the domestic market alone would seem big enough to sustain the industry.

[bernadmanny]

The timing of this is perfect, as Indian news YT channel The Print made reference to your Indian semiconductor video in a editorial piece on the Indian semiconductor industry and I went 'hey I know about this subject Asianometry did a video on it' and then he referenced you. 😀

[akashzz]

To sum up...why indian computer failed? answer: committee, monopoly and that big fat govt

[mohd]

This channel is so refreshing, while most media is turns to shit with modern trends. This channel goes on on its own, proves that we can have a long attention span and actually be interested in technical topics.

[KomradZX]

I absolutely love all the subjects you choose to do a video on because 9/10 times I know almost nothing or only the most basic parts of your stories. They are always so interesting and keep my attention every single time. ❤

[dlshd]

India is a perfect example of what happens when talent leaves a high-potential country…. The present or past Deans of MIT Engineering, Berkeley Engineering, UPenn Engineering, etc have all be Indians

[Meower]

The British government also had a period of investing in domestic companies, trying to turn their country into a tech powerhouse. When the government changed hands, all those investments were killed off. To be fair, some of those investments were not going anywhere, anytime soon. But some of them, had the investments continued, could've been major game changers.

Japan is notorious for investing in domestic companies, turning them into international powerhouses. And when that investment dries up, many of the companies either died off, shrank or got acquired.

No one seems to have figured out how to "do it right, " such that the companies can be safely weaned off subsidies, government-enforced monopolies, etc. such that they continue to be powerhouses without government support. Since many technologies need multiple years of R&D become significantly profitable, job gains from such things will take a while to arrive; voters may not be that patient.

[ravindradaundkar]

You missed C-DAC's Param1000 success. Indian computer history can't be complete without it.

[analyticphil]

I have noticed how hard it is for you to source images for this video, some places you found authentic original relics, others you just used black and white images of modern India with some filters to make it look authentic and few other instances you just straight up said "yeah this pic has no relation to what I'm talking about." like the one with the theater lines😂😂. Never the less, the analysis remains gold, especially the part where as an Indian I used to think the License/Permit Raj was used really a thing of corruption by the central govt. which included really influential people abusing power but never realized was a naive policy to support incompetent govt institutions which eventually led to the monstrocity that the License Raj was. Hope you make some Indian buddies as your channel grows, you might need them. Love from India❤

[rishithakur]

License Raj was the real culprit behind intellectual drain in India. What License Raj took were companies and firms which were profitable and innovative of smart people and what it retained was farm lands, MSP, Agriculture land, etc. It made India less industrialized country and because of that as people were now discouraged to innovating anything on their own because govt. would take away their company and all assets and profits generated by them. Hence, people were more encouraged to seek govt. jobs in the name of service sector, other low manufacturing jobs and mainly retain in farming industry rather than create a sophisticated innovative startup which requires a lot support from government but license raj just became an enemy for all the creative engineers and other innovators who left for the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and other developed industrialized majorly english speaking nations. Our failure Government took those assets from intellectuals and highly rich, influential and philanthropic people and with corruption they successfully converted them to liabilities. Such policies made India lagging behind the world and especially China as they prospered while Indian Intellectuals fled the country and the average Indian suffered . India’s underdevelopment is in part due to our previously elected government’s policies.

[krishnanunnimadathil]

Kerala state set up a body called Keltron with an aim to make electronic devices including computers. MGK Menon was hired by the Kerala state government for that as well. It ended up making calculators at best. As gifted as MGK Menon was, the incentives just did not exist for the kind of innovation which would make such endeavours worthwhile.

The basic problem continues to be the failure to recognise that private enterprise with the profit motive and an absence of price controls delivers better results due to the right incentives, especially when it comes to innovations.

Keltron still functions, and shows up from time to time as a sort of an undying zombie.

Having said that, failure precedes success; and all the failures of the time were part of the background which made India the tech powerhouse it is today. We would not be here if it were not for the strong base provided by the exertions of that time. The Indian engineering community has done wonders over time.

Great video with some amazing research and details. Most Indian YouTubers would not have a clue about the matter you are presenting. I am a subscriber.

[keithammleter]

Asianometry said the Indian TDC-12 vacuum tube computer, the size of 5 large fridges, was said to be similar to the DEC PDP-8, a transistor "flip-card" desktop computer. Well, they were both 12-bit as seen by the programmer. That's a bit like saying a tuk-tuk is the same as a Mercedes Benz car - after all they both have wheels.

[kartz]

India might say, we were denied a lot of things by other countries, so we tried several things by ourselves. Some of the attempts failed but others like space exploration and atomic energy were successful. We may have failed, but at least we tried. How many countries in a similar situation as India can say that they tried?

[mayurkanth]

The whole period from 1947-2000 was disastrous for India as a whole.
> India's gdp growth rate was less than 3% during this period with per capita growth less than 1.5%
> India was the 6th largest economy in 1950 but due to Nehru's disastrous economic policies, India slid to 13th position by 2000.
> India's share in world GDP was 4.1% in 1950 which declined to 1.9% by 1991.
> The Number of poor people in India basically DOUBLED b/w 1950-1980.
India Basically wasted first 50 years of its independence in pursuit of a failed Import Substitution Closed economy.

[TheSapta]

Can you please cover C-DAC’s Rudra and PARAM Siddhi-AI or in general C-DAC and its accomplicements!!