Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, should have been an international celebrity, and for a good reason.

A team spearheaded by him has developed a technology that is a buzzword in the modern telecom age - Wireless in Local Loop.

But he is neither a celebrity, nor is the world press and the scientific community talking about the development of a sought-after technology, that too at cost which is a fraction of what similar developments have cost anywhere else.And why just them, even our own government, which swears by indigenous technology, has ignored it.

I am sure if Dr. Jhunjhunwala was a Professor in some American University and had done the same work there, things would have been different.

The world would have been talking about the work and telecom companies would have fallen over each other trying to woo him, cajoling him to transfer the technology to them. The result would have been the birth of a noted, famous Professor, who incidentally, would also have been swimming in dollops of dollars.

Alas! Our Dr. Jhunjhunwala has no such luck. What could possibly explain that? There is no simple answer to this, for the situation is rather complex. There could be any number of explanations, but, even at the risk of antagonising some, one may like to point out one, pretty obvious, reason although we're into our fiftieth year of independence, we are still slaves at heart.

There is no need to get upset, but consider the following. Our countrymen always have doubts about our technical capabilities till, of course, it receives a westerner's seal of approval. Teenagers in most Indian urban centers proudly wear T-shirts which have the Union Jack or the Stars & Stripes emblazoned across the front but would feel ashamed to display their own flag.

A number of flashy cars in our cities display flags of other nations at the place meant for displaying the vehicle's registration number, with the actual number being displayed somewhere else. And, just keep your ears open and you will notice that well-educated among us carry on a conversation in their local language, but switch to English in the presence of a westerner.

Why do they do this? Simply because the sense of pride that one ought to have in one's nation is missing. Just look at the C-DoT experience. A delay of just a few months beyond its mandated time of delivery and our politicians saw red Committees were formed and the organization dammed. None cared to look at what the organization had achieved, in what time-frame and spending how little money in comparison to similar developments anywhere else. Fortunately, however, C-DoT was resilient and although late, it has delivered what it had promised.

Back to Dr. Jhunjhunwala. He developed the technology by spending around Rs.8 crore. Anywhere in the world, similar developments cost not less than ten times that amount. Alas! But we have a solution. How about our IIT Professor changing his name to Andrew Jones?