Only Deep Tech  and Digital can make India  a superpower by 2047

India will not become a superpower without a 10X growth in its rural income. That alone will motivate youngsters to continue to live in Rural India and transform village life.

India today has made huge gains in providing decent telecom and Internet services to most Indians at affordable prices. Thirty years back, we had only seven million phones and one had to wait for up to eight years to get a mere telephone. This has all changed, with 4G telecom and Internet services available to almost all our citizens today at very affordable prices. At the same time, the per capita real income of Indian households has gone up by about seven times in the same period. This has indeed taken a large percentage of Indian households out of abject poverty. But simultaneously, the gap between the rich and the poor has been increasing, such that 85% of households continue to live with income less than `25,000 per month.

Rural household incomes are much less and an average farmer household earns about `10,000 per month. Programs like NREGA, Midday Meal Scheme and free rations since Covid, has enabled people to survive. But rural India continues to struggle with large unemployment and under-employment. This forces youngsters (especially those with minimum education) to migrate to urban India, where high-tech manufacturers employ some of them, though mostly for low-end jobs (including security, housekeeping, construction, and other manual work). As urban India is already very crowded, migrants often have to live in crime-infested slums. With increasing environmental degradation, life is tough, unhealthy and with the slightest crisis (like during the pandemic), the slum-dwellers face brutal onslaught from law-enforcement agencies.

The tasks are therefore clear. India has to leverage all its past-gains and digital advancement to make the next leap based on understanding its strengths. India has a very large young population, with its peak being between 20 and 24. This young population is the biggest strength of India, provided they are trained and employed. They are very creative and have a strong urge to improve their living conditions. One has to empower them and they can be as good as one can imagine.

The second biggest strength of India, again due to its large population, is that of being a large market. However, as Indian incomes are low, this market is for affordable products. India would thus have to design and develop affordable products for its own market as well as for export. This would also open up manufacturing of subsystems, components, and machinery required for manufacturing.

We need to also strengthen work on materials, so that we can create environmentally friendly products and recycle everything fully. Deep Tech research and development would be required towards this, leveraging its young population; and it is this R&D to commercialisation that would result in manufacturing in India with significant value-addition. The current focus on import-based manufacturing may be all right to begin with but will not sustain for long. Understanding this sooner is advantageous for us. This alone will result into India becoming a manufacturing nation, which would not only employ large number of youngsters but also provide improved employment to them.

The second focus of digital and Deep Tech has to be rural India. India will not become a superpower without a 10X growth in its rural income. That alone will motivate youngsters to continue to live in Rural India and transform village life.

First of all, we should help set up a data-processing center in each of the villages. This could employ fifty to hundred people, providing decent income to young school and college graduates. Many would then prefer to live in villages, as life there would be much better than that in the urban slums. These youngsters would think for the village and work towards improving its infrastructure. Through leveraging all the digital technologies, education and health can take them to a higher level.

India would thus have to design and develop affordable products for its own market as well as for export. This would also open up manufacturing of subsystems, components, and machinery required for manufacturing.

With agriculture being the largest employer (even with under-employment) in India, all efforts are required to strengthen it. This requires rural service companies, which would provide every service that a farm requires. Tractors and agricultural equipment’s should be available as a service; and farmers should be able to just call the companies to come, bring equipment and manpower to carry out fencing, ploughing, soil fertility testing, tilling, draining, excavating, clearing, rotating, fertilizing, applying herbicides and pesticides, composting, irrigation and harvesting services.

Similarly, these rural farm services companies should be able to provide seeds and all inputs required for farming at the doorstep as well as provide transport for inputs to the farm and transport crop from the farm to the market. Besides, one could have advisory services companies, which would not just provide advice, but help obtain finance and insurance to ensure maximum benefits for the farmers. The rural youth could set up such companies. Setting up these companies as a franchisee of agricultural startups committed to rural India is also a possibility.

In a similar way, one has to aim for ZERO waste of perishable agricultural products, like fruits and vegetables; 40% of such produce is known to perish in India today. One should be able to get rural youth to set up a village food-processing center (VPC), which would take any perishable farm-produce, when its price falls below a certain threshold, process and package them to ensure a longer shelf-life. The products can then be sold online and delivered to the increasingly large urban middle class. Once again, setting such centers through village youth themselves, maybe as a franchisee, could be possible. Farmer’s Producers Organisations, located today in most villages, could possibly set up the machinery required, lease it to VPC and also have a stake in the VPC. Setting up VPC as a franchisee of a FMCG start-up would link the VPC to the market.

As villages prosper, they would require many more services. One could have a transport business, where electric autos and tempos run from towns to villages at regular intervals like public buses, transporting people and goods. Businesses would be required to repair and maintain all household products and farm machinery, like mobile phones, refrigerators, mixers, TVs and pumps in the villages itself. Water management service businesses and construction businesses would find significant traction in the villages, as rural wealth grows.

Deep Tech startups, leveraging digital, can make all this possible. Without all these, the dream of India becoming a superpower in 2047 would be like any other slogan. Finally, all this would be meaningless, unless each of these activities pay special attention to climate change. At every step, renewable and environmentally friendly technologies are essential, so that India can become a circular economy.

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwal

The author is President, IITM Research Park & IITM Incubation Cell.

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