The ‘Make in India’ programme has given a push to some native manufacturing, however it’s merely an meeting job with imported expertise and parts. The result’s a low value-addition. As we purpose to grow to be a developed nation, we have to perform design and improvement in India, use as many native parts as doable, make equipment for manufacturing and personal a big a part of IPR (mental property proper) for the merchandise. We have to try to be amongst the expertise leaders in not less than just a few areas. How can we go about doing it? We have to first perceive India’s strengths:
We now have an rising variety of younger scientists and engineers with high-quality experience, having obtained the very best coaching out there. They’re raring to go and to guide, if the nation can present the fitting push and help.
We have now a big pool of recent engineering graduates, and they are often good even when they arrive from lesser recognized schools. They have to be motivated to work arduous for lengthy hours, study from one another, and take up unimaginable challenges. Happily, the price of such expertise in India is far decrease than elsewhere.
We have now a really giant market, however just for inexpensive merchandise. This makes the duty of growing such merchandise a problem, however overcoming it could push us in the direction of a management place in expertise.
Given these strengths, what can we do? We have to, in fact, put money into R&D and design merchandise. However once we make investments say $100 million in AI, nations just like the US would make investments a number of hundred billion {dollars}. Making an attempt to compete head-on with the West in areas with very giant capital investments will not be going to get us far. As an alternative, we have to give attention to some massive issues that our society faces and for which we’ve got no resolution at current. If we predict out of the field and convey collectively expertise experience from a number of domains, we’ll create momentum in the fitting course. We must work extraordinarily arduous, be able to fail, fall and rise up once more to have the ability to make progress. As we resolve such unimaginable issues, we’ll emerge as expertise leaders in a number of areas. Let me illustrate this with two examples.
Recreation-changing methods: In the present day, in a metropolis like Chennai, it takes over an hour to journey about 15 km between residence and workplace. Losing over two hours on a every day commute can’t be our future. It’s more likely to worsen with rising city migration and automobile possession. Suppose we design a transport system that might make this journey doable in 20 minutes, even in peak time, whereas addressing some further points—be probably the most energy-efficient transport system (ruling out concepts like flying), and use solely inexperienced electrical energy; scale for tomorrow’s peak site visitors and supply a really comfy experience (say with air-conditioning); be deployable in current cities with all their constraints; and have a complete price (together with depreciation, curiosity and working expenditure) lower than that of travelling by a two-wheeler at this time. To conceive, construct and operationalise such methods could be game-changing, not only for India, but in addition for equally crowded cities elsewhere. This can require a number of applied sciences and push us to be a world chief.
Digital consultants: Allow us to take one other Indian downside. About 70 per cent of Indian households have month-to-month incomes lower than `15,000. When a lady from such a family needs to begin a nano-enterprise and wishes a mere Rs 1 lakh mortgage, the primary alternative is invariably to go to casual sources, the place annual rates of interest might be as excessive as 36-60 per cent. Over the past 15 years, microfinance and NBFCs have emerged to supply such loans at about 25 per cent rates of interest; their price of funds, price of dangers, and price of operations are such that bringing the charges a lot decrease is a critical problem. There are consultants who may go to the lady at her residence, speak together with her for about 10 minutes, and pose the subsequent query listening rigorously to every reply, in order to evaluate the chance related to the specified mortgage precisely. The issue is that such consultants don’t scale and sending an inexperienced particular person to do the job will increase the dangers significantly.
It’s right here that new applied sciences can resolve the issue non-linearly. Happily, cell phones and WhatsApp video calls have reached even such low-income properties. Suppose we leverage applied sciences like AI, video and speech processing to ship a pleasant-sounding Digital Professional, who speaks within the native language and dialect with the lady. It will look at the phrases, expressions and tone of every response and on the identical time seek for any details about the lady and her monetary transactions to pose the subsequent query. One wouldn’t solely have the ability to decide dangers related to the enterprise and the mortgage however may additionally use related calls to hold out collections. The prices related would thus go down significantly, and loans at 15 per cent rates of interest would grow to be viable. There isn’t a purpose why India can’t construct such a expertise, use it broadly to excellent it and take it to the world.
There are certainly many such giant avenues to grow to be the expertise chief on the planet. We will get there provided that we predict afresh and have a powerful will.
The writer is an Institute Professor, IIT Madras
Tune In
