Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 23, 2003
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/297045.cms
Chronicling every itsy-bitsy achievement
of NRIs and ABCDs has become a staple of the Indian media these days. Every
day there are stories about someone of Indian-origin in the west becoming
a CXO, winning some award, being appointed to a county board, or making
his fortune in some venture.
It's irritating, and does no justice
to the thousands who toil in silence and without recognition in India.
It's all a part of insta-journalism - reporters living of trends, self-promoting
press releases, and stories in other newspapers.
In fact, even in the US, some of
the Indians who have had the most profound impact on society have been
poorly chronicled. For instance, there is a good chance that you may never
have heard of Yellapragada Subba Rao, of whom it was said because he lived,
you may live longer.
A poor Andhra boy who came to the
US in the 1920s, he is credited with the synthesis of Folic acid, Aureomycin,
the first of the tetracycline antibiotics that have saved millions of lives
since its introduction in 1948, and Methotrexate, which is used to alleviate
several types of cancer, including childhood leukaemia.
Rao wasn't from Bombay or Calcutta,
and wasn't part of the Indian elite that travelled west those days. He
was born in Bhimavaram and schooled in Rajamundhry, both in Andhra Pradesh.
He thrice flunked matriculation
and studied Ayurveda before switching to the western system of medicine
after working as a night porter at a Boston Hospital because he was too
poor to pay the fees.
In fact, it is said that Aureomycin,
presented to the medical world in 1948, should have won him the Nobel Prize.
But Subba Rao died at 53, the same year as his hero Mahatma Gandhi.
Which means that the great scientist's
55th death anniversary is passing us by without as much as a decent commemoration.
There are many such stories that never see the light of day. Not all NRI
achievers grab the headlines.
Take Dr Rangaswamy Srinivasan, the
little known pioneer of Lasik eye surgery, who is the only Indian to feature
in the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in the company of greats such
as Edison, Ford, Disney, Nobel and the Wright Brothers.
After he engineered the technique
to correct shortsightedness that has enabled millions to get rid of eyeglasses,
Srinivasan wrote out the patent to IBM, the corporation he worked for.
His reward: A measly $10,000.
In a recent interview, I asked Dr
Praveen Chaudhari, the Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, who
was also Dr Srinivasan's colleague at IBM, how it felt to have such achievements
go unrecognised by the media and unrewarded financially in an age when
people were patenting age old inventions and milking millions.
"The joy lies in the discovery,
not in the reward," he said.
Dr Chaudhari should know. He engineered
the rewritable compact disc (CD), and like Dr Srinivasan, wrote out the
patent for IBM for a fraction of the billions Big Blue, Sony, Phillips
and other corporations got from the invention.
But neither man displays the slightest
sign of rancour at IBM's profits or envy at the fame and fortune of today's
NRIs.
"Between a billion dollars and the
pleasure of giving perfect eyesight, what do you think I will choose?"
asks Dr Srinivasan.
These men never send out press releases
or talk to the media. They are not rich or famous. They are sacred and
profound.
