Interestingly, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi these days speak on a common subject – the ‘revolutions’ India missed or failed to catch up with. The PM’s references were to the first, second and third industrial revolutions (IRs). He said India could not take advantage of the first and lagged behind in the second and third IRs; that we cannot afford to miss the next and must build further on infrastructure. Rahul Gandhi, in an interview during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, said we missed a latest in the making – the drone revolution.
The first IR that came about in the 1760-1840 period in Britain marked the shift to machines from the era of handmade products. British Rule in India started thereafter. The first train ran in India in 1853. The second was the technological revolution starting shortly before the 20th century that had stressed on electrification and steam power resulting in mass production. Independent India under Jawaharlal Nehru took some advantage in terms of steel plants, but Nehru’s socialist policies had also killed the spirit of enterprise. The third IR was in the form of the IT-digital revolution, wherein Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership at that juncture helped India position itself in a robust manner. In between, under the Nehru/Indira Gandhi era came the Green Revolution which hiked up foodgrain production and the White Revolution resulting in a major rise in milk production. India also had the Telecom revolution, wherein with help from technocrat Sam Pitroda the nation’s archaic telecommunications sector was modernized – another credit to the Rajiv Gandhi period. The Vajpayee government, initiated infrastructure development, starting the modernization of the nation al highways network. The Manmohan Singh period modernized the airports and ports systems. The Modi government followed up on these in more active ways. China is making major leaps in the drone sector, producing and marketing it to other countries as well. This and the civil aviation sector as a whole have huge scope for future growth.
Put together, India’s gains are substantive. But it is yet to cover a lot of ground, evident also in its low export volumes; China having six times that of India’s. Our exports have seen a quantum leap in the past few years, of the order of 30 per cent, but Chinese exports grew six times higher than that of India, based on its feverish push in both manufacturing and innovation/invention fields. India’s gross expenditure on Research and Development is $43 per capita, among the lowest in the world and forming 0.66 percent of the GDP. Worse, this percentage is showing a downward trend. The top spenders are the US, China, Japan and Germany.
