Over the next two years, Agilent Technologies is planning to invest $35-million in India, money that will be spent on expanding existing capabilities, as well as, setting up a Life Science Centre in Bangalore.



The ?Agilent Life Science Centre? as it will be called, is to have a multi-disciplinary team for advanced technology focusing on chemical analysis, molecular biology and software, for creating novel and complex scientific applications on its bio-analytical instrument and software platforms.

?The initial focus will be on liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Over time, the centre will extend R&D capabilities to other platforms like micro-fluidics, gas chromatography and micro-arrays. It will collaborate with scientists in pharmaceutical and bio-technology industries to generate products and solutions to support activities in drug discovery, clinical trials, pharma-manufacturing, food testing and forensics,? Agilent President (Life Sciences & Chemical Analysis) Chris van Ingen informs, even as he confirms Agilent's Indian programme.

With similar centres, two each in USA, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Bangalore centre will be seventh in Agilent's count. ?It will be integrated into our global R&D network. With its significant base for high-end R&D pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors, India represents growth opportunity for Agilent,? says van Ingen adding India is among Agilent's top 10-markets in terms of revenue generation.

?With the pharmaceutical sector witnessing a strong growth, we expect India to climb the ladder fast. Over the next five years, we expect a business worth $200-million from India,? he affirms.

Starting its Indian operations in 1999, Agilent, an American firm engaged in communications and electronics, has 1,300-professionals on its Indian headcount. The company expects to see further growth in the sub-continent, growth that is being driven by pharmaceutical quality analysis and, food and beverage industry.

According to Venkatesh Velluri, Agilent Technologies India Country Manager: ?Over the next two years, the headcount will touch 2,000, including a few hundred engineers for the Life Science Centre in Bangalore.?

It's time for Celebrations and Jubilations, since India has come a long way from when Steven Spielberg made a film called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that portrayed India, a notoriously vegetarian country, as one where kings and courtiers feasted on stewed snakes and monkey brains, where Kali worshippers plucked the hearts out of their victims and embroiled them in flaming pits, where evil, poverty and destitution reigned until the Great White Hero could intervene to restore justice and prosperity, and where a supposedly Himalayan village, whose reality should have been stocky, high-cheek-boned Gurkhas or Garhwali villagers spouting Garhwali or Nepalese, comprised instead, of a dark-skinned, long-limbed Sinhalese speakers from that geographic jewel at the tip of India's southern most point. That island jewel, Sita's abode for many years, held captive to Ravana's intense wooing charm, even as she waited for Ram and Lakshman to rescue her from his heavy-duty enticements

Today, no longer is India viewed as a place full of snake-charmers, Sadhus impaled either on a bed of nails, or else, walking over a bed of red-hot coals. The hard work of Indians has paid off, so that the sub-continent now counts and has a place on the map of the world, a country populated by software geeks, who might be making your airline reservations or reading your MRIs or developing the software for an Indiana Jones computer game. Today, as in it's ancient past, again a land foreigners can no longer afford to be ignorant about.

While, the colossal ignorance about Indian and Hinduism in days past cannot be forgiven, even as, India has ceased being a land that could be relegated to the margins, a place of exotic inconveniences, India's dominance in the billionaires club, a list formulated by Forbes has shocked China, who regularly read that India is not shining as reported in the Western media. ?I am surprised that Indians have topped the Forbes? list of Asian billionaires,? Chen Yi, a media consultant says. ?I must change my distorted impressions about India,? she adds. However, comments, such as, ?to catch up with and surpass American economy by 2050?, as an article in the Global Times reported, it's time even Hollywood and Jones, if he ever gets out of Indiana, should realise that what he'd find in India today, isn't a temple of doom, but something altogether quite different. Call it a template for Indian Dhoom, Dhoom Machale, Machale Dhoom!