India's Techade powered by Jai Anusandhan

A key highlight of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day Speech from the Red Fort marking 75 years of Independence was his call for “Jai Anusandhan” following up on Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s “Jai Vigyaan” and Lal Bahadur Shastri’s “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”. PM Modi’s call to action on boosting Indian research and innovation underscores the critical gap in realising India’s Techade at a time when Techno-nationalism has taken centre stage in geo-politics.

American President Joe Biden recently gave his assent to the CHIPS and Science Act, which allocates several million dollars to domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Also embedded within the CHIPS and Science Act is significant funding to sunrise technologies. As an example, the Act authorises new investments in core quantum research programmes to accelerate the discovery of quantum applications and to expedite “lab to market” transition of emerging technologies such as quantum sensors. The American efforts to boost homegrown science research and innovation comes in response to recent Chinese efforts to create national champions in areas as diverse as electrical storage technologies, AI and semiconductor design. With the race to dominate emerging technologies becoming the new arms race, hi-tech skills and talent will be the critical gap between nations.

Writing on this critical gap, a recent article in the Politico magazine quotes a member of the US National Science Board on how from “electrical engineering to computer science”, the United States currently does not produce enough PhDs and masters students domestically, and is thus dependent on immigrant hi-tech workers with advanced STEM degrees. Putting an economic figure to this talent gap, a study by Deloitte estimates that nearly half a trillion dollars in manufacturing GDP would be lost by the United States due to the skills shortage. Identifying India as one of the biggest sources of immigrant STEM talent, the Politico report cites US immigration figures that show a backlog of nearly 300,000 Indian hi-tech workers awaiting US visas.

The geo-political significance of Indian STEM talent becomes even more apparent when one considers some stunning facts revealed by a recent McKinsey report on quantum computing. According to the McKinsey analysis, globally, India has the second-highest concentration of graduates with quantum technology-relevant skills. Both China and the US trail India on the density of quantum-relevant engineering graduates per million inhabitants. This, however, stands in stark contrast to other very pertinent metrics with India at ninth position as far as universities with quantum technology research programmes go; and barely one Indian university offers a masters programme in quantum technology. Even more stark is the global picture on funding quantum research across public and private sources as well as the number of quantum start-ups, with India nowhere in the picture while the US and China dominate on various counts.

Illustration: Binay Sinha

The Prime Minister’s twin calls to action for Jai Anusandhaan and Atmanirbhar Bharat come at a time when Indian talent is powering global research and innovation, bridging a critical skills gap in the advanced economies while domestic research and innovation is playing catch-up. However, if India has to leapfrog with technology and emerge as a developed nation by 2047, as envisioned by the Prime Minister, it would require dramatic changes in our national approach to research and innovation, apart from substantially increasing the spending towards research and innovation by both the public and private sector. It is a shame that despite the large number of unicorns and the strides in digital commerce by homegrown start-ups, there has been very little output in terms of core technology. If one were to draw an analogy with Amazon and how its e-commerce business has over the decades spawned a wide range of general purpose technologies, from cloud computing to smart devices, Indian start-ups have very little to show.

In fact, the most consequential technology efforts in India have been public-funded OpenStack development efforts such as UIDAI, UPI and most recently, the Account Aggregator framework, while the Open Network for Digital Commerce framework is on the anvil of disrupting the e-commerce landscape in India. While the success of Aadhaar and UPI is well documented with the explosive growth in digital payments across India, the Account Aggregator framework is set to dramatically impact lending and availability of credit with more than 500 million accounts and 150 financial entities within the ecosystem. Perhaps most exciting of all these publicly led OpenStack technology efforts is Bhashini, the AI-based platform for Indian languages that can widen the reach of digital applications and services to the remotest corners of India through AI-powered linguistic accessibility.

However, neither the mass-scale OpenStack technology efforts nor the digital commerce-focused unicorns will help bridge the critical gap for India to realise its aspirations of the Techade. The strategic thrust for Jai Anusandhaan has to be hi-tech research and innovation with entrepreneurial approaches to leapfrog rather than take a linear incremental path where Indian science and technology either ends up merely reinventing the wheel or isolates itself academically in the pursuit of abstract problems which don’t easily translate into hi-tech products and services. From the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the funding model for research and innovation should borrow from the lessons and best practices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science foundation (NSF) and In-Q-Tel on how public spending can create an ecosystem of start-up ventures resulting in strategic impact technologies. Private sector spend on hi-tech R&D innovation will have to match the public efforts if the hi-tech talent has to be retained in India and if India has to see the emergence of the next Google, Amazon or Apple.

To prevail over the geo-politics of Techno-nationalism and to secure India’s Techade requires innovative entrepreneurial approaches that will both deliver on the promise of Jai Anusandhaan and achieve the goal of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. From trade negotiations to incentive schemes such as production-linked incentive (PLI) for Make in India, creatively leveraging the large pool of Indian hi-tech talent and skills will be essential to ensure more hi-tech research and innovation happens in India.

The writer is former CEO of Prasar Bharati