What does it mean to place ourselves strategically?
Industrially? I'm sure all the startup ideas which people in Silicon valley have thought of, could also have been thought of here, but technologies need the market base for them to be viable. The US has no shortage of electricity, so they can think of Tesla without worrying about electricity. We have a grid shortage.
I will write this in context of tech. which is something I am familiar with.
You are correct in that to bootstrap something like SV we need infrastructure and market. However, I am not talking about the 70's when SV was originally conceived neither am I under the impression that India at any time in its history had the resources to
pioneer something like this.
I am talking about the last decade, when we already had infrastructure in place in all major Tier-I cities. By 2005, Bangalore was already a major player in tech. IT parks and SEZ with stable enough infrastructure were already there and our service industry was running in full swing. That was the best possible time for us to make the next leap. In our complacency, we did nothing. Fast forward 3 years, 2008 recession hits, thousands of people are unemployed. That should have been a wake-up call that a service based industry totally dependent on the health of American economy is not the correct modal of growth for a
developing nation like India. Recession passed, we did nothing. What was lacking was not infrastructure but intent.
Coming to markets, I will take
cell phones as an example and 2008+ as the time period. India is one of the largest markets for cheap cell phones. Are there any decent Indian manufacturers in this space? Are there any industries in India that manufacture electronic components? How many non-frivolous patents do Indian researchers have in this area?
Now consider our
unicorn startups, how many spaces have our
unicorns explored? All our unicorns are either Amazon clones, Uber clones or Whatsapp clones. Others being a zillion "apps" in the food space.
Before Google came around in 1999 what was the market for targeted advertising? Market can be an excuse for traditional manufacturing industries but for tech. it is becoming less and less of an issue.
Our polity and culture of mediocrity has been myopic, we should have focused on education, research, foreign-investments and infrastructure instead of populism.
Strategically placed in terms of national security? weapons? we were coming out of sanctions imposed on us during Kargil. So a whole decade was spent trying to get back on our feet. There's no way we could have positioned ourselves as manufacturers of weapons in this time (even today, with all the awakening, our idea of positioning is still 'buying 36 Rafale jets').
Strategically in terms of alliances. Chinese plucked our neighbors from right under our nose one by one. Nepal, ffs is more pro-China now than it is pro-India. What is the status of our plan to corner China in SCS? What happened to our bid for UNSC?
Coming to the issue of equipment, it is understandable that we were denied a lot of technology post our nuclear tests in 74 and then in 98 but so was China. Our PSUs have consistently under delivered and there can be no excuse for that. Also, I am not familiar with any sanctions on us post Kargil. Can you point me to a source?
Note that Chinawas no different, first they started with the sweatshop economy and made minor items, everyone used to laugh on them. The next generation got contracts for assembling electronic goods, still people made fun of them for not being able to make their own, their next generation is now making their own hardware and selling Xaiomi phones. This is how the timeline goes.
Again, China is different because their growth modal was manufacturing. No one could take manufacturing way from them because manufacturing in U.S would have escalated the cost of products, neither the U.S government, nor the business owners were ready for that. This ensured a steady growth in industry without any hiccups.
. This is how the timeline goes. 30 years ago some vague line in the communist party's manifesto would have said "China must become a leader in electronics" and they did. They even launched their first commercial plane this week and broke European monopoly.
This is because they invested heavily in research. Chinese Universities are top class right now. What about ours?
What could we have differently? We had a handicap which could notbe wished away.
Focused more on education and research for one.
In any case, I am not predicting a doomsday scenario, just that there are lessons to be learnt and applied.
