Souvik Basu

Educated Indian elite - I count myself in this - accepted what is known as the "Washington Consensus", with globalization driven by the World Economic Forum, Davos. That era received a mortal blow during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-9, died during the pandemic and today we perform the last rites. Here is how I believe we should navigate this new era, treating this challenge as an opportunity. 1. Every tech we do not have is deep tech and I do not mean LLMs (alone) here and it includes advanced metallurgy, composite materials, DC motors, batteries, medical equipment, network equipment, drones, jet engines, robots, bioreactors and so on and on. 2. A 5-10 year sprint to catch up in every such "basic deep tech". In some areas, like GPUs or fighter jets, it may take 10-15 years, but we must put our heads down and do it. China has done it and it can be done. We have the raw human talent in abundance and we can train. This much I know. 3. We need a long term orientation. Venture capital with 7-8 year exit cycles cannot do it. It promotes a short termism that is at odds with what our nation needs right now. More broadly, quarterly earnings cycles are a poor match for the long term catch up investment we have to make. This essentially mandates that our big industrial houses must invest heavily in R&D, keeping in mind that catch-up R&D (in particular) is not expensive, it is time-intensive. 4. More broadly, we don't want our smartest talent going into high finance - we must realize we are borrowing what failed America. It is a colossal misallocation of resources. The mortal blow of the GFC I referred to was all due to "smartest talent going into finance" in America and ultimately that is what led to MAGA, once Occupy-Wall-Street failed with the left - it is a different matter that MAGA got coopted by Wall Street. India cannot afford to be addicted to high finance, it would lead to societal ruin. We must view making money on money with the appropriate caution that our ancients taught us. 5. I will come back to talent, the most important point of all. There is a lot of raw young talent in rural Bharat that is waiting for the opportunity. Patient capital is about nurturing this talent, bring it on stream. Once you discover what we have discovered, you will stop fighting about reservation and so on. My own R&D team reflects our society in a deep way and without any compulsion from the government. JEE, NEET, UPSC etc do not capture the essence of this talent pool. I do not care about any of those exams, I ignore all those "signals" and go with the evidence of our own eyes to discover and nurture talent. 6. Climate change. Have you noticed how quickly the silicon valley elite dumped climate change and got on board the "energy to the max" with AI? We need EI - Energy-efficient Intelligence. Climate change is also a life style issue and Bharat has to be the light to the world in showing how to live in harmony with mother nature while building a technologically advanced society. Bharat Mata is mother nature. We have faced far worse adversity before and we will face this. If we seize this moment, we will come to see it as a blessing in the long term. Bharat Mata ki Jai 🙏