Chandrayaan-3 has successfully landed, and India is over the moon. The country is enthused with a “can-do” spirit, and the lyrics of the song "Chalo Dildaar Chalo, Chand Ke Par Chalo" from the film Pakeezah have taken on new meaning for both ISRO and the nation.
Without a shadow of doubt, India is in the midst of a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to realize its aspirations for multidimensional growth and development for both its citizens and as a nation. This opportunity is being recognized around the world, not only by markets, investments, multinational corporations and rating agencies but also by its growing stature in rapidly changing geopolitics. It is already the world's fastest-growing large economy, with favourable tailwinds supporting its growth trajectory in the coming decades. Beyond economic and geopolitical factors and linear development paradigms, however, two critical vectors — and their responses — will also determine the scope, scale and sustainability of development in 2047, the 100th year of India’s independence. There is no precedent or known roadmap for either vector.
The first — and positive — vector is the rapid rate of technological change, which provides enormous and never-before-seen opportunities to deliver rapid, effective and meaningful development right up to the last mile and last person. The second — and negative — vector is the reality of climate change, which is already visible in its global impact and is expected to worsen over the next few decades before stabilizing if coordinated global measures are implemented in time. Both are powerful multipliers. Technology holds out the promise of acceleration, allowing India to re-envision many key sectors with the most recent technological options in terms of performance and cost while leapfrogging earlier versions that limit many other nations. Climate change, on the other hand, will necessitate more foresight, faster response, adaptability and resilience in design and development because it poses threats to human nutrition, health, safety and habitation. The availability, accessibility, affordability and absorption of India's response interventions (the four A's of development) as well as its adaptability to these vectors will determine its long-term development.
Technology Delivers
The impact of both vectors is becoming more visible. India is only the fourth country in the world to make a controlled landing on the moon. ISRO's technology and low-cost engineering capabilities are now well demonstrated, and the organization is poised to rapidly expand into commercial applications such as exploration and experimental non-terrestrial habitats through global and Indian private sector collaborations. India also has the world's second-largest, private-sector-led 5G network, after the fastest 5G rollout. With the world's third-lowest mobile data rates, India is now poised to use this multiplier to improve communication, education, financial inclusion, health and governance in completely new and innovative ways. It also builds on the previous success of the state-led Unified Payment Interface (UPI), which allowed India to leapfrog other countries' generation capabilities by developing and evangelizing a world-leading technology and industry standard. This complementarity and synergy between state and private sector capabilities in achieving sustainable development goals highlights the need to reimagine public-private partnerships (PPP).
Many other sectors are also on the cusp of massive technological disruption. From Petrovskite solar cells to sodium-ion batteries, from semiconductor photoelectrodes to decentralized energy systems, et al., the energy sector is already seeing multiple technologies move beyond the demonstration stage to potential scale production and mass markets. In the water sector, clean off-grid water supply, catastrophe modelling using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) mapping, drones and satellite-based systems for flood risk management, micropollutant filtration nanotechnology, et al., are witnessing breakthroughs. With the rise of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, many intractable problems are now within reach of resolution. Among potential game-changing applications are drug discovery, diagnosis and improved health outcomes.
The good news is also that India has demonstrated an improved ability to deliver on the four A's of development, particularly in the last decade. This holds true for both public and private sector capabilities. Both have used technology to improve outcomes and serve as network multipliers. The state's ability to leverage technology has been particularly notable. From collaborating in the development and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in one of the world's largest programmes to the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity and its foundational role in Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for targeted delivery to beneficiaries with minimal leakages; from the use of Gati Shakti to synergize and monitor multimodal infrastructure projects to the rollout of Swachh Bharat (over 110 million toilets built), PM Awas Yojana (over 30 million houses built), and Jal Jeevan Mission (over 96 million rural household tap connections), its implementation has been remarkable and unprecedented in both scale and pace.
It represents a significant shift from the glacial pace and seemingly insurmountable red tape of previous decades when a former prime minister would publicly lament leakages and power brokers for the inability to deliver public goods to beneficiaries, and the private sector would privately lament the unease of doing business, corruption and systemic impediments to delivering efficiencies of scale and cost to markets and customers. A long-term development vision, policy stability, and a canvas of scale and ease of business have helped the state empower private sector capacity and markets to supplement its own efforts in delivering development to citizens. The role of an electoral majority mandate for governance, the first in thirty years, in accomplishing this must also be recognized.
Climate Change Challenge
The vector of climate change impact, however, has not yet received the attention that it will increasingly require. Climate-related disasters have become more common in recent years. However, because the impact of climate change is still perceived as localized and dispersed across space and time — for example, monsoon floods in the Himalayas or a summer heat wave in Central India — the public mind has perhaps not yet fully grasped the larger dimensions of this growing challenge. In the coming decades, South Asia, particularly India, will face significant climate-related change affecting its large and vulnerable populations. By the mid-century, temperatures are expected to rise by 1.2 to 2 degrees Celsius. Apart from weather unpredictability, extremely hot days, defined as when the heat index (a measure of air temperature and humidity) exceeds 51°C and reaches a level dangerous for humans to step outside, are expected to last for up to 100 days in parts of India. In such a scenario, the likely impact on food security, water availability, livelihoods, health and habitat necessitates urgent and comprehensive assessment, action and mitigation.
The government must initiate and lead these efforts. While PPPs can be structured for specific components, the challenge is greater due in part to what is known as the "tragedy of the commons". Interventions are, however, likely to be met with short-termism and political populism, particularly in the land-agriculture-food grains and water sectors, as evidenced in the past. To sustainably increase farmer incomes, the government is working on alternative solutions to bring about market efficiencies in crop patterns, procurement and logistics. Among the initiatives being pursued are farmer-producer organizations, cooperatives, land pooling for contract farming, et al. These, however, need to be supplemented by closed-loop crop, vegetable and fruit-specific farm-to-fork PPP projects that showcase the sustainability of significantly increasing farmer incomes while reducing their crop cycle risks at the local, district or cluster level. And which can be subsequently scaled up. Climate-resistant, fast-growing, high-yielding seeds at reasonable prices, on the other hand, require state-led development as a public good, as was the case with the Green Revolution.
There are numerous emerging opportunities to use technology and markets across sectors to accelerate sustainable progress. The design, speed and scale of these interventions will determine the altitude of India's sustainable development orbit in 2047. The task is challenging. But the stars are favourably aligned. And as the Greek poet Horace put it, "Carpe Diem." It is India’s moment to seize the day.
Sandeep Hasurkar is an ex-investment banker and author of `Never Too Big To Fail: The Collapse of IL&FS’. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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