Modi's developed nation dream has no basis in reality

Asia Times

03-03-2025

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is striving rhetorically to turn his country into a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of its independence from the British Raj. Think tanks, academia and media have chimed in by projecting the country will have the world's largest economy by the late 21st century.
But these optimistic conjectures clash starkly with Indian ground realities; an Indian parliamentary debate revealed these discrepancies on February 3, 2025. The opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, delivered a bleak picture of India's strategic gaps in its high-tech industrial transformational drive.
His speech, made during a debate on the Motion of Thanks for the President's annual address to the Lok Sabha, the Indian lower house of Parliament, exposed systemic gaps in the Indian race to compete with China and the West—a race in which Gandhi argued India is not even on the track.
Yes, Gandhi's remarks are a profound—and perhaps first—realization by an Indian politician given that most politicians, bureaucrats, academics, and mainstream journalists in India often hold a self-fulfilling belief in the nation's status as Vishwa Guru—or 'global leader.'
I think there are five critical areas where India severely lags massively behind China in particular. First, India is lagging behind China with the country's sluggish green energy transition.
At the same time, China and Western nations lead in electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, solar, wind turbines and hydrogen technology, and are making significant breakthroughs in advanced nuclear technologies like tokamak reactors, Helium-3 fusion technology, and molten salt nuclear reactors. In contrast, India looks a bystander in all these sectors.
The massive shift from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles—powered by high-storage lithium batteries—is not merely a climate change imperative but a strategic industry to lead the global economy in the future.
Industries central to economic and military dominance, such as transportation, defense, and agriculture, will rely on low-cost and high-efficiency energy-tapping innovation in the future.
Yet India lacks a vanguard position in any of the cutting-edge technology sectors, including high-storage lithium batteries, robotics and optics, now reshaping global supply chains and defense technologies. India's superpower aspirations risk remaining aspirational without mastery of the green technology transition as a supplier of technology, capital goods and green development financing.
Second is India's failure to modernize its defense and strategic industry. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has demonstrated how cheap, agile drone technologies powered by electric motors and batteries can outperform traditional, internal combustion engine-based expensive tanks and armoured vehicles.
China's advances in electronics defense systems—from AI-driven drones to energy-efficient surveillance networks—contrast sharply with India's reliance on outdated platforms and internal combustion engine-based military and strategic technologies, which are less efficient and more expensive.
The future of high-tech electromagnetic warfare will be shaped by green technologies and electronic warfare capabilities, domains where India gravely lacks investment and indigenous innovation. This postures India well behind China.
Third, India suffers from a big data deficit, a crippling weakness in the age of artificial intelligence. AI's revolutionary potential hinges on access to big data—production metrics for manufacturing optimization and consumption patterns for market innovation to address consumers' tastes, preferences and choices, as in the market economy, the consumer is king after all.
China dominates global production data as China is the factory of the world on the one hand, and the United States controls consumption data via big tech like Amazon, Google, X, and Meta on the other hand. India, by contrast, neither has production nor consumption data. India has no tech platforms it owns, either.
India's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, remains a jerrybuilt of Chinese component assembly and export to third countries, particularly the US. India's digital economy is beholden to foreign algorithms on both the demand side (consumption) and the supply side (production).
This dual dependency stifles homegrown AI development, leaving India unable to compete in robotics, autonomous systems and smart logistics management. Without reclaiming control over big data, India will remain a spectator, rather than player, in the AI revolution. The ongoing AI rivalry between the US and China highlights India's role as a bystander in this sector as well.
Fourth, India is lagging behind China in high-tech manufacturing due to its technological stagnation, a function of its crumbling education system. While China and the West have overhauled higher education to prioritize STEM research and innovation, India's universities remain plagued by underfunding, bureaucratic inertia and a mismatch between curricula and high-tech industry needs.
Public school education is also grappling with issues of inadequate quality and limited inclusion. The result is a dearth of talent capable of driving reverse engineering, research and development, or advanced manufacturing.
Compounding this is India's failure to ensure Indian young talent has access to capital for start-ups. India's banking system is skewed toward large conglomerates and big businesses, and sidelines small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—the backbone of innovation in electronics, high-tech manufacturing and AI.
Without nurturing a culture of risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit, India cannot build the ecosystem required for technological leapfrogging. China's DeepSeek's success illustrates how a low-cost start-up company can achieve a massive breakthrough by leveraging a supportive and innovative environment.
Finally, despite Modi's 'Make in India' rhetoric, the country still relies heavily on imports of critical components from China, from semiconductors to precision optics. Indian factories are little more than assembly lines for Chinese-made parts, leaving the nation vulnerable to supply chain disruptions in the event of geopolitical tensions with China.
It shows India's high-tech manufacturing standstill. India needs to address the demand and urgency to develop electric motors, high-storage lithium batteries, 5G or 6G technology, and AI-integrated manufacturing systems to get in the race with China.
These technologies underpin everything from electric vehicles to satellite networks, yet India lacks the domestic capacity to produce them at a scale as will be needed to become a high-tech Industrial leader in the future.
China's decade-long investments in these fields have given it a formidable lead—one India cannot close without deliberate, state-backed strategies to foster innovation and scale up production. India is currently leading in none of these crucial sectors.
Another sobering ground reality: India's path to superpower status is fraught with sluggish India's economic and technological transformation. The green energy transition, defense modernization, big data sovereignty, STEM education reform and high-tech manufacturing are not isolated sub-sets but basic pillars of India's rise to a high-tech manufacturing economy and, as a consequence, a strategic influencer on the global stage.
Modi's mirage of a developed India by 2047 hinges on bridging these gaps, yet current policies prioritize rhetoric over substance. The danger is that if India fails to develop these five sectors, it risks becoming a perpetual 'country of the future'—a phrase once used by Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew—unless it confronts its structural vulnerabilities with utmost urgency.
Until then, the divide between Modi's ambitions and India's actual capabilities will remain a chasm.
Bhim Bhurtel is on X at @BhimBhurtel