The Inherent Importance of Invisible India
Invisible India has no physical borders, no official recognition. It is an India of irresistible ideas. In the bustling streets of Kochi, a chaiwalah stands at his stall. In one hand, he holds a kettle; in the other, a smartphone. He manages orders through a digital payment app. A technology startup in Bengaluru commences its day with meditation, not as a fad, but to align the team’s energies—connecting to a cosmic mainframe before engaging with lines of code.
India’s engagement with technology is born of necessity. With a population exceeding a billion, solutions are not found by thinking outside the box. The box itself is repurposed into something entirely unexpected. When this mammoth human population becomes human capital, India will lead the next revolution. Europe led the Industrial Revolution, the US the Digital—India will lead the Cognitive Revolution, the next great leap for humanity.
The so-called chaos of India is a stubborn illusion. Behind the chaos is the invisible system. The honking traffic somehow moves, a taxi driver makes up his own route as he defies Google maps. The street vendors make a living without an ounce of marketing strategy, and an entire country agrees that a tea break is an essential human right.
India is not just a country; it’s a living civilisation. History thrives in its people, not museums. Invisible India isn’t in power corridors but in villages where resilience reigns. In a town with daily power cuts, a boy pedals a bicycle-powered generator, lighting his sister’s UPSC studies. It’s innovation beyond textbooks—simple, powerful, and uniquely Indian.
Take yoga and meditation. Once the domain of sages atop Himalayan peaks, they are now integrated into wellness applications worldwide. In a multilingual country like ours, AI-driven translation tools bridge language divides. A Tamil-speaking grandmother attempts to converse via video call with her Bengali-speaking grandson, each hearing the other’s words in their native tongue. Imperfections persist—occasionally, “I love you” translates to “I tolerate you”—but the underlying sentiment remains clear.
Challenges persist. An AI chatbot introduced in a government office aimed to streamline services. Programmed in formal Hindi, it faltered when faced with local slang. Requests for ‘paani’ (water) yielded weather reports instead of plumbing assistance. The remedy? A local engineer taught the bot regional dialects, rendering it as conversant as the neighbourhood gossip. Invisible India does not resist change; it assimilates it, infuses it with local flavour, and presents it in a manner both familiar and novel
In India, technology is not about monumental leaps but incremental steps that ease daily life. A doctor in Delhi consults with patients in Ladakh, diagnosing ailments over unstable internet connections. Prescriptions are sent via SMS, and local healers combine them with traditional remedies. It may not capture headlines, but it resonates with ingenuity and warmth. In a world fixated on the visible, it serves as a gentle reminder that profound innovations often operate quietly in the background.
In 2007, a dedicated team of 20 Indian engineers, led by Vasantha Erraguntla, contributed significantly to the development of Intel’s ‘wonder chip’. Their expertise underscored India’s critical role in global technological advancements. For a well-touted and visible Intel chip inside a million computers in the world, there is an invisible Indian silently chipping away and synthesising high-tech with high-touch!
Debashis Chatterjee
Author, Professor & Director, IIM Kozhikode
successsutras@gmail.com