When I listened to my first lecture in 1997 about "Cyborgs" at the University of Madras from a Japanese professor, I was amazed at how advanced prothetics technology had become. I was one of the people who asked him a question at the end of his lecture. My question was whether these technologies were affordable for amputees in India and his answer was sadly in the negative. He was not expecting such a question since he had focussed all his energy on the "cyborg" concept and how philosophically and technologically sophisticated it was. It truly was, except that it does not mean anything to a poor factory worker in India with a family to support who lost his hands, or to a victim of a land mine blast in a country such as Vietnam. In India as in any other country, sophisticated prosthetic technology is available only to those who can afford it, and that is a bare minimum. The poor still have to go for the "Jaipur leg" which is by my account, the most technologically sound prosthetic for an ordinary indisposed person.
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