India stands at a historic moment. The country has scaled up its economic size, achieved global recognition in services and delivered groundbreaking innovations like the India Stack. Yet the future will not be shaped by size or past successes alone. In a world where nations are valued for the technologies they create, India must now focus on building ecosystems of innovation that are resilient, sovereign and globally indispensable. This is the essence of the journey toward Viksit Bharat.
The next phase requires a fundamental shift in mindset. For decades, India’s strength has been as the “job shop” of the world—offering cost arbitrage in IT services, back-office functions and manufacturing. This model helped create millions of jobs, but it cannot carry the nation into the future. The middle-income trap looms closer than ever, accelerated by robotics and artificial intelligence. Countries that rely on cheap labor as their competitive edge soon find themselves undercut by new technologies or by nations with even lower costs. To break free, India must stop aspiring to be the world’s back office and instead become a hub for producing technologies that others depend on.
Global relevance no longer comes from GDP rankings alone. The real test is whether a country can produce technologies that the world needs but cannot easily replicate. Consider the case of Taiwan. Foxconn, the manufacturing giant, is far larger in revenue terms than TSMC, the semiconductor leader. Yet, when the West speaks of defending Taiwan, it is not Foxconn’s assembly lines they care about—it is TSMC’s critical role in the global technology supply chain. The lesson is simple: services can create jobs and scale, but ecosystems that nurture world-class product companies create power.
India’s record in building services firms is impressive—telecom operators, banks, airlines and hospitals are proof of this strength. But the next challenge lies in creating product companies backed by supportive ecosystems. Here, India has one advantage: it knows how to innovate differently. The success of the India Stack is a striking example. Despite accounting for just 3% of global trade and 7% of global GDP, India drives more than 50% of the world’s digital transactions. This extraordinary leap was possible because of an architectural choice—building interoperable, open and inclusive digital public infrastructure.
What India needs now is to replicate such breakthroughs across sectors. That requires what experts describe as the Triple Helix model: research, policy and markets working in concert. Research generates new knowledge, policymakers design enabling frameworks and markets provide the capital and demand to scale innovations. When these three strands twist together, they form resilient ecosystems capable of withstanding shocks and competing globally.
History has shown that even superior products can fail without strong ecosystems. Nokia lost its dominance not because it built poor phones but because Apple created an ecosystem around the iPhone that was far more powerful. The same logic applies at the national level. For India to lead in fields like quantum computing, artificial intelligence and green technologies, it must ensure that researchers, regulators and markets act in unison.
Among India’s cities, Bengaluru has already taken significant steps in this direction. With its concentration of research institutions, technology companies and entrepreneurial talent, the city is positioned as the research and innovation hub of the country. It has proven that bottom-up innovation, combined with supportive digital infrastructure, can create breakthroughs. The culture of collaboration between startups, academia and global players in Bengaluru offers a blueprint for how India can scale ecosystems in other sectors.
Yet ecosystems cannot be built on research strength alone. They require policy vision and market participation. This is where Delhi and Mumbai must step up.
Delhi, as the policy-making capital, plays a critical role in shaping India’s innovation trajectory. But bureaucracy, by its very design, focuses on stability and compliance. While this has served the country well in maintaining order and continuity, it is not suited to driving moonshots. Transformative projects—whether in space, nuclear energy, or digital infrastructure—have historically succeeded in India because they were led by technocrats, not administrators.
For India to achieve its next wave of breakthroughs, Delhi must empower technocrats who are capable of thinking big, taking risks and driving change. Bureaucrats remain essential as stabilisers, but when it comes to cutting-edge innovation, the mantle must pass to those who combine vision with technical expertise. Encouragingly, India’s experience with the India Stack shows that when policy frameworks and technological capabilities align, change can happen at scale. The challenge is to institutionalise this approach rather than leaving it to exceptional cases.
If Delhi must evolve in how it frames policy, Mumbai must transform how it views markets and investments. The city is home to India’s most profitable corporations, many of which reported profits exceeding $10 billion in the last financial year. Yet their collective investment in R&D remains just 0.1%—far below the global average of 2% or more. For India to become a hub of innovation, corporate India must see research and development not as a cost but as the engine of future growth.
The opportunity is enormous. Even modest increases in corporate R&D investment would unleash capacity across sectors—from clean energy and health tech to semiconductors and quantum research. Mumbai’s markets can provide not just capital but also the validation and demand that turn research ideas into globally competitive products. A mindset shift here could transform India’s innovation landscape as dramatically as Bengaluru’s rise did for services.
The path forward is neither to retreat into old-style Swadeshi isolationism nor to rely excessively on foreign global capability centers. True digital sovereignty requires building strategic value chains at home, nurturing indigenous innovation and enabling researchers to become entrepreneurs. This does not mean rejecting global partnerships, but rather ensuring that India develops the critical capabilities that protect its long-term interests.
Innovation in India has often thrived through bottom-up energy, driven by volunteers, startups and researchers rather than top-down mandates. Respecting and enabling this culture will be essential. By creating spaces where local talent can flourish and by aligning policy and market incentives, India can ensure that its path to sovereignty is rooted in inclusivity and resilience.
The good news is that India today has the confidence to dream big. The aspiration to become a developed nation by 2047 is not just rhetoric; it has become a shared national goal. This closing of the “aspiration deficit” is itself a transformative step. Once a nation gives itself permission to dream, it unleashes forces of change that can alter its trajectory.
The challenge now is to translate aspiration into action. Bengaluru has shown readiness. Delhi and Mumbai must rise to match it. If research, policy and markets come together in the spirit of the Triple Helix, India will not only avoid the middle-income trap but also establish itself as a sovereign, innovative power shaping the technologies of the future.
The journey to Viksit Bharat will not be easy, but it is within reach. The way forward lies in collaboration, in unlearning old habits and in embracing ecosystems over silos. The Triple Helix model offers the framework; India’s talent and ambition provide the fuel.
Bengaluru has already lit the torch. With Delhi and Mumbai joining hands, India can ensure that its next leap is not forced by crisis but chosen by design. That would be the truest measure of sovereignty, innovation and confidence for a nation ready to lead.
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