Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower (23 page)

These actions often are well-intentioned, especially when they are aimed at suppressing ethnic violence. In general, though, such policies are misguided and inimical to India’s broader national interests. Internet freedom will produce information and images that are displeasing, even appalling to many segments of society. False accusations and hateful commentary are inevitable, if unfortunate, components of the Internet mix. But trying to control what people say is a losing proposition. It’s
much better to let good speech overwhelm bad speech, using the kinds of principles that have worked reasonably well on the free and open Internet we enjoy in the United States and other developed countries.

Having witnessed India’s progress over the past decade, it is hard not to be optimistic about the next ten years. Global success and a vast improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of its citizens are within the country’s grasp, but only if India’s leaders invest in the right infrastructure and embrace the transparency and openness of the Internet.

Louis R. Chênevert

Louis R. Chênevert is chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corporation.

The Raj Bhavan in Kolkata, now the official residence of the governor of West Bengal, houses an Otis elevator installed in 1892. Known by locals as the “bird cage lift” and still in operation, its longevity is a testimony to both the underlying technology developed in the United States and the technical skills and attention to detail of the Indian staff who have operated and maintained the lift for more than 120 years. That symbiosis of skill and conscientiousness lives on in UTC’s current operations in India, including our aerospace systems factory in Bangalore and the strategic partnership between our Sikorsky business and Tata Advanced Systems Limited to manufacture aerospace components and helicopter cabins.

To fulfill the aspirations of its people, Indians will need to match the very best of their own skills and creativity with the right technologies, whether developed at home or adapted from abroad. The scale of the economic and societal transformation required is staggering: India’s middle class is expected to double to 575 million by 2025, with a similar number of Indians living in cities by then. Those city dwellers, with an average age of under thirty, will be educated, ambitious, and mobile—providing India with the prerequisites for a thriving consumption-driven economy. But these newly empowered twenty-first-century Indians deserve—and are sure to demand—a modern and sustainable infrastructure.

Can India meet the challenge? The answer to that question remains to be seen. The average infrastructure investment in countries across Southeast Asia is about 12 percent of GDP. India’s current infrastructure
expenditures amount to less than 8 percent. India’s government wants to push this figure above 10 percent, which, if done right, would present unique opportunities for accelerating growth, creating jobs in the short term, and making India more competitive and comfortable in the long term. Still, given its fiscal limitations, India will need creative solutions to make optimal use of resources and invest for future development.

India’s most pressing challenge is energy. On current trends, India’s energy consumption is likely to double by 2030. Given India’s lack of indigenous energy sources and local concerns about the social and environmental impact of exploiting those resources, the most promising solution over the short term is greater energy efficiency. On the demand side, promoting and implementing efficient energy practices is low-hanging fruit—an endeavor that can yield significant tangible returns for individual consumers and the nation as a whole for many years to come. We have observed that Indian households will invest more capital up front if they can be assured that products such as automobiles, air conditioners, and other household appliances will generate economic benefits throughout that product’s life cycle. More important, investments in energy efficiency pay for themselves over time and need not depend on government or other subsidies as is the case with investments in renewable energy.

Innovations in supply-side areas like microgrids and renewable energy must also play a major role in India’s energy future. The changes may be small: an elevator that produces electricity as it descends under gravity, for example. But in a nation as large and populous as India, even small measures can have enormous impact if implemented across the entire country. Energy efficiency offers a vast and low-cost energy resource for the Indian economy, but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive approach to unlock it.

In the medium to long term, India must focus on ensuring that the places where people live, work, and socialize are not only safe and affordable but also smart and sustainable. Technologies that integrate building
automation with other functions like air-conditioning, security, fire alarms, and lighting will become the norm, offering customers a high degree of convenience and customization en route to energy savings. In this case, the fact that India’s economy remains at an early stage of development can be an advantage. Building sustainability into a new structure is less expensive than retrofitting an old one, and only about a third of the buildings that India will need by 2030 exist today. Buildings are responsible for 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption, and technologies—particularly for air-conditioning and lighting—already exist to reduce building energy consumption by as much as 70 percent. Early indications suggest India is embracing this trend. Indian policy makers should lend their support by creating and enforcing strict whole-building energy efficiency codes, labeling standards, and regularly scheduled energy audits, hardly any of which exist today.

Beyond these individual initiatives, India must adopt a more holistic approach to energy efficiency if it is to achieve sustainable growth and find more opportunities for coordination between the public and private sectors. In Gujarat, United Technologies has partnered with six other global businesses and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to publish
A Solutions Landscape for Gujarat Cities.
This study, based on extensive research and dialogue with city officials, offers recommendations on how the four largest cities in Gujarat can be supported in their urban planning, energy efficiency, and wastewater management efforts.

The people of India should look to the future with confidence and pride. The technologies already exist to build the world-class infrastructure the country requires. Indian companies and their foreign partners have demonstrated the ability to deliver advanced solutions, and the marketplace, with appropriate government regulation and subsidies, seems set to provide the necessary financial incentives. The results will be continued economic growth, greater investment in India’s economy and its people, and quality-of-life improvements for all.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is chairman and managing director of Biocon Limited.

When I set out to create a biotechnology business in 1978, the environment in India for such start-ups was hostile at best. Venture-capital funding was nonexistent, bank credit carried usurious interest rates, and the license raj was unparalleled in its ability to throw up obstacles to entrepreneurial innovators. The business initiatives that did find favor focused on reengineered low-cost technologies often under license. Those companies viewed R&D as little more than a tax break to pad earnings, whereas I saw it as integral to my strategy. More than three decades later, Biocon, the company I created, is a globally recognized maker of affordable products that have changed the lives of millions—from patented enzymes to generic statins, and from biosimilar insulin and biologics to patented novel molecules.

Today the license raj is largely just a painful memory. Indian entrepreneurs have become famous around the world for their remarkable success in the most advanced markets, particularly Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, my youthful counterparts, the entrepreneurial innovators of 2013, face many of the same obstacles here in India of that bygone era. Investors are far more interested in stable returns than in backing high-risk but potentially high-reward start-ups. Although the bureaucracy is
less obstructionist these days, it shows no inclination to nurture the sort of start-ups that could be game changers, particularly in the biotechnology field.

Such innovation is essential if the Indian economy is to overcome the challenges facing it. Industrial output is down, exports are declining, inflation is high, and the fiscal deficit has reached worrying proportions. India’s biotech sector, with annual revenues today of $7.5 billion, has the potential to promote socioeconomic progress by transforming energy, health care, the environment, and agriculture. The effect would be to create a new “bioeconomy,” based on India’s rise as a leading biotechnology hub. Start-ups and existing firms have launched potentially transformative technological solutions in a piecemeal fashion in pilot projects, but for this sector to reach its full potential, India must do more than incrementally remove the hurdles that face start-ups. We must now plot a strategic road map for biotech that enables these innovators to replicate and scale up across India.

Biofuels.
India’s dependence on imported energy, particularly transportation fuels, is exploding to keep pace with economic growth. Biofuels could replace significant amounts of conventional liquid fuels and are a renewable source of energy that offers the option of clean power generation. Indian firms have already begun to harness the energy found in the microalgae and seaweed that grow abundantly along India’s coastline using novel enzyme technologies for fuel alcohol. Biotechnology has the potential to make India energy independent, just as Brazil has done with its bioethanol production from sugarcane bagasse. But just as the Brazilian government supported the creation of that industry, India must institute fiscal policies that provide grants and tax credits in order to build specialized skills as well as scale that enhance investments in developing new manufacturing technologies and capacity building in biofuels.

Health care.
India is already one of the world’s leading manufacturers of generic drugs and vaccines at the lowest cost. A “made in India” vaccine immunizes a third of the world’s children just as one in three generic
drugs is of Indian origin. India can position itself as a laboratory and pharmacy for the world by offering cost-effective research capabilities to develop affordable drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for use globally. One area of particular concern is the increase in mosquito-borne diseases. Every year, more than twenty million Indians contract malaria and millions more get dengue fever. Research to develop both conventional and DNA-based vaccines to combat these communicable diseases is well under way, giving India the opportunity to have a first mover advantage to provide such vaccines for the world.

Public sanitation.
About half of Indians do not have access to proper toilets. The illnesses, lost productivity, and other effects of this inadequate sanitation cut India’s GDP by 6.4 percent in 2006, according to a World Bank study. Biotoilets, which use bacteria that digest waste and turn it into biogas and odorless compost, can change all that. At about $100 each, these biotoilets are not only economical to set up but also eliminate the need to build sewers and sanitation treatment plants, and they cut water use. The Biocon Foundation has partnered with the government of Karnataka in building both community and individual household toilets as a means to offer safe sanitation to several villages.

Agriculture.
Although more than half of India’s labor force works on the farm, agriculture accounts for less than a fifth of our GDP. Biotechnology can usher in a second green revolution by providing scientific techniques that optimize the use of available resources without placing additional demands on land or water to boost yields. These solutions can easily be scaled across the country while improving the quality of the produce with disease-free and nutritionally enhanced varieties of crops. The early benefits of biotechnology already are being reaped by Indian farmers as they increasingly opt for genetically modified Bt cotton seeds to improve productivity, converting India from a net importer to a net exporter of cotton, further supporting India’s job-generating textile industry.

Apart from genetically modified crops, agricultural biotechnology is leveraging molecular markers in crop breeding for the selective propagation of genes that improve yields and resist disease. Beyond cultivation, biopesticides and biofertilizers have the potential to help farmers move up the value chain. The government needs to put in place a clearly articulated policy on agribiotechnology that provides checks and balances to ensure safety instead of making ad hoc decisions under political compulsions.

Biotechnology is a powerful enabler for transformational economic reform. We must embrace an innovation-led path ahead that combines new technologies, new methods, and new knowledge. India acutely needs new economic policies that go beyond removing barriers to innovative entrepreneurs and actively supports them. Only through this approach can we reimagine an inclusive and enlightened economy that ensures a better quality of life for all of India.

Frank D’Souza and Malcolm Frank

Frank D’Souza is CEO and Malcolm Frank is executive vice president of Cognizant.

At Cognizant, we have had a problem—one that is welcome but daunting. A surge in demand for our services has obliged us to hire more than twenty thousand people per year on average over the past half decade, two-thirds of them in India. In fact, some years we have hired more than twenty people every business hour to meet client requirements for the information technology, consulting, and business process services we provide. Fortunately, we have been able to bring these recruits on board while also increasing client and employee satisfaction. That is a testament to the strength and vitality of India’s technology sector, which exported $40 billion worth of IT services and $16 billion in business process services in 2012.