Anyone who reflects deeply on the widening gap between India and China in economic and military power will not miss the huge technological advances Beijing has made through a concerted national effort. Today, the tech war between China and the US is intense enough to make America jittery over the advances Beijing has made in areas like 5G and big data analytics.
China has catapulted itself to dizzy heights of technological power by adopting aggressive long-term strategies in specific domains like Made in China 2025. Many Western companies investing in China were forced to transfer technology. Chinese researchers working in American institutions stole critical data and findings. Chinese institutions found willing collaborators in leading American universities that funded them liberally for advanced research. Chinese universities were among the top recipients of funds for collaborative research in the recent past. The nation perfected intellectual property theft into a fine art in its effort to acquire cutting-edge technology. Its unquestioned dominance in the manufacturing of iPhones and solar panels was achieved through its strategy to monopolise the extraction and trade of the rare earths in a manner that outsmarted the rest of the world. Today, the entire world is dependent on China for rare earths. The Chinese universities of Peking and Tsinghua promote research on every conceivable new-age technology like AI, 5G, robotics, quantum communications/computing, cyber-security and the like. China launched its “Thousand Talents” programme to acquire the best brains from all over the world. The forcible adoption of civilian research findings in military research—euphemistically called civil military cooperation—has accelerated the design of a new generation of weapons that are redefining the paradigms of warfare.
India’s efforts to rise as an economic and military power will be seriously constrained by its lacklustre performance in R&D and technology development. India’s spending on R&D at 0.7% of GDP is way below those of countries like China and South Korea. The nation needs to adopt aggressive strategies to revamp its research institutions and create a powerful ecosystem not only to attract world-class talent but also retain it. One of our big mistakes in the past was how we unwittingly handed over our brain power—the creme de la creme—on a silver platter to advanced countries like the US. Beginning with the 70s, we have been seeing an exodus of IIT graduates and the cream of other premier institutions to the US in search of good career prospects and a good life. India, then hobbled by the licence raj and red tape, had no place for this talent. Many flocked to the Silicon Valley and multinational corporations (MNCs), contributing to the rise of America as the foremost technological power. Even after India opened up its economy, we could not plug this haemorrhage of talent as the country had neither the vision nor strategy to be a technology power. It is true that a group of IIT alumni created one of our best IT firms, but it did not aspire to be a technology leader like Microsoft or IBM. Our failure to catch up with China and the US in cutting-edge technologies makes us vulnerable to national security threats like never before.
MNCs that run research facilities in India tap the available talent to do it for their own enrichment. The fact that Indian companies pay billions of dollars as royalties and licence fees to patent-owning multinationals is an instance of how the nation is being drained of its wealth even after 75 years of freedom from colonial rule.
But few of us shed tears for the country’s loss of talent and the dismal state of R&D. When talent migrated in droves in the 70s and 80s, our sense of resignation found expression in the wisecrack that brain drain was better than brain in the drain! Decades after that, we take pride in the prosperous two million strong Indian diaspora of the US and derive vicarious pleasure from tales of Indian brilliance holding the American flag aloft. Why did so much of our technical talent leave the country for greener pastures? While hefty salaries and easy prosperity may be dominant reasons, our failure to provide the right ecosystem for attracting the talent is equally responsible. In India, the R&D culture has been uninspiring, plagued by bureaucracy, poor work culture, internal politics and, above all, poor funding. Barring a few honourable exceptions, a pursuit of world-class excellence is alien to this culture.
While we chafe at the yawning tech gap between India and China, no major effort to attract talent back to our homeland by providing a vibrant R&D ecosystem is visible. Tech graduates need to be offered challenging research projects, a congenial environment and attractive incentives to continue in India. The new educational policy speaks of a national research foundation, but if it embraces the current ethos of our R&D, a great opportunity will be lost. Frontier areas of R&D should be identified by the government and the brightest talents including those among the Indian diaspora need to be invited to lead projects. These projects should have flat structures and a high degree of autonomy unconstrained by baneful rules and procedures and should offer compensation matching international norms. They should work in close coordination with the industry. Public-private partnerships backed by liberal government funding have to be facilitated. There is hardly any time to lose.
G Mohan Kumar
Former Defence Secretary
(gmkumar1955@gmail.com)