Washington- ‘Normally speaking, or at least until five or six years ago, we were used to India not doing very well. India is having a lot of trouble, and so on, and the rest of the world is doing much better. It’s the other way around now; if India does well in attracting investment, this could be India’s time’, claimed Indermit Gill, Chief Advisor of the World Bank. Besides, other analysts in the US confirm this and have said that considering India’s capability in deep tech, the US has been expanding cooperation with India at the strategic level.
Deep tech includes big data, nanotechnology, blockchain, quantum computing, robotics, advanced material science, photonics and electronics, biotech, vision and speech algorithm, artificial intelligence and machine learning. This technology will be very important in the future. There have been claims that deep tech is the future. In addition, the world has noticed the steps taken by India, and the superpower United States has also shown eagerness to cooperate with India on this front.
Arun Kumar, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Global Markets and Director General for the US and Foreign Commercial Service (USFCS), also claimed he had seen India’s potential long ago. Arun Kumar said India has immense potential as it has poised to become a manufacturing hub from a country that provides software at a modest cost. Also, he explained that India was becoming US’s very important strategic partner country. Recently, India and the United States held an initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) meeting, in which the National Security Advisors of both countries participated. Arun Kumar claimed that the cooperation of iCET will become important in artificial intelligence, supercomputers, defence and the space sector, next-generation telecommunication services and semiconductors.
Furthermore, Arogyaswami Paulraj, a former professor at Stanford University in the US, said that the new industry based on India’s deep tech, i.e. advanced technology and research, has been based on semiconductors, energy, decarbonisation – green hydrogen and electric vehicles. Currently, the share of this deep tech sector in the GDP of the US has been 2.5%, which goes up to 550 billion dollars. Therefore, the US can make huge investments in India’s deep tech sector by providing great cooperation, claimed Paulraj.
Moreover, the supply chain of global technology, like deep tech, spreads across the globe. Therefore, Paulraj has suggested that India should take a wise decision to join such a group of countries. Paulraj has also pointed out that in the next decade, the share of this deep tech in the global economy will be as big as 5%.
Meanwhile, India has undertaken the Semiconductor Mission (ISM) to manufacture semiconductors. Even a strong country like China has not got much success on this front. But India today will be successful on the semiconductor manufacturing front, as Indians account for 20% of the world’s skilled manpower working in this sector, India’s Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had said.
At the same time, the demand for semiconductors in India will reach 100 billion dollars in the next few years and becoming self-reliant in this sector has become necessary for the country’s interests. In such a situation, other developed countries, including the US, have also shown interest in participating in this campaign undertaken by India. Thus, statements of American analysts in this regard bear witness to it.
