Innovative India must not return to Licence Raj

At the start of the 1990s, the Washington Post ran a front-page story on a little-known city named Bangalore that was showing promise of being a powerhouse in information technology. John Ward Anderson quoted several individuals in his groundbreaking report, all of whom agreed that the city was on the way to rivalling Silicon Valley. It was during that period that IT giants such as Wipro and Infosys began to emerge, much as Microsoft and Google had in the US. In the process, those who invested in such companies became wealthy by the time the 21st century dawned, and thereafter fabulously wealthy. With the push for Digital India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the 2020s could witness the birth of companies that begin small and in brief years become unicorns. Tech giants in the US have been devoting substantial effort in seeking to prevent a 21st century model of themselves from coming up. In India, the time has come to ensure that the field is clear for new tech companies that have evolved revolutionary concepts to thrive rather than be choked by hostile acts designed to smother them at birth. If the classics of ancient Bharat, i.e. India were taught in schools in the way Greek classics are taught not just in Greece but throughout Europe, schoolchildren would be more familiar than they presently are with Kamsa, who sought to murder his cousin Devaki and her eight children, out of fear that one of them would end his life. In much the same way, too many giant corporations seek to use various ways to strangle smaller competitors that they see as a long-term threat to their dominance. New giants need to come up, and in their turn be successfully challenged by newer startups. In such a process, the private sector is key, a reality that has been recognized by Prime Minister Modi, who has unshackled private industry from several of the shackles that had been placed on it by previous governments, often acting under the influence of wary competitors whose influence was greater than their talent for constantly updating technology and methods.
India has in the past decade in particular pioneered the widespread use of digital payment systems in a way that no country has ever attempted before. Ever in the forefront where using smart ideas developed elsewhere is concerned, a few enterprises in Singapore have been working at not just using the technology developed in India but in adding to it. Those who were Startup Maharajas in the 1990s have done excellent work, but now the time has come to ensure that Maharajas of the future emerge from within India, rather than in other countries. Just as in the 1980s, when C-DAC, C-DOT and other then revolutionary institutions were conceived and set up, it is the Modi government that made the breakthroughs witnessed in the digital payments interface. In the 1980s, entrenched notions of the need for a colonial form of control from government entities stifled much of progress, although breakthroughs in telecom such as direct long-distance dialling were initiated. In the 1990s, it was the absence of a regulatory framework (that in India has often emasculated rather than empowered enterprises) that allowed the tech giants of today to reach the size and global standing that they enjoy. In a period when countries such as the UAE are encouraging private players in innovative fields, including in crypto and in other digital systems, it is a welcome move that private players in India are being given the freedom to locate external partners as well as discover internal talent, so that the First Mover advantage that Bharat i.e. India has in fields such as digital systems is not lost to another country, mostly with the induction of expatriate talent from India. The breakthrough made in our country by ensuring that payments could be made through use of QR codes needs to be followed by others. The time has come for a new batch of Maharajas to spring up in India, and in such an effort, the partnership approach followed by Prime Minister Modi in dealing with the private sector is essential. India cannot afford a slide back into the 1970s, into the permit licence raj, when it was the bureaucrat and not the consumer who decided which producer was successful.
MDN