More than Chipping In

Posts of CEO, CTO and CFO have just been advertised for ISM. India Semiconductor Mission(ISM) is an independent and specialised nodal agency being set up by the Government of India with a mandate to drive strategies for the development of a sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystem. These and many other posts are expected to rope in global experts to contribute to nation-building.

Today’s digitization race-winning strategy requires new electronic systems whose power consumption is low and battery backup is high, speed is very high and new designs should roll out fast, and of course, all of it should be affordable for the masses.

VLSI or very large scale integration is the stream of electronics that helps in achieving these systems by shrinking their size that is used in remotes of television, cell phone, microwave oven, AC, washing machines, Cars, space ships, aviation, weather forecast, satellites, defence and many other domains of modern life.

So far India manufactures chips for defence and space research at fabs present within IISc, SCL Mohali, and few others places. Large scale manufacturing for consumer electronics and other high-tech industries though is altogether a different ball game. The technical complexity of the domain, huge investment requirements, availability of the purest form of silica ( raw material), very stringent cleanliness requirements at the manufacturing site as well as huge water and uninterrupted power supply needs of this industry pose a real challenge for India to match the competition of Taiwan, South Korea and China.

IIT Kharagpur has one of the first VLSI labs in India, where R&D efforts in this domain and chip design seem to have come to an age with the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIS Bangalore, IIT Bombay and other institutions doing excellent work. Domestic semiconductor consumption has been consistently growing at a healthy rate and the need of the hour is accelerated progress on setting up chip manufacturing companies (also known as fab). In addition to meeting the challenges of technical complexity, Investment requirement is huge for any semiconductor fab unit. The electronic sector is one of the domains where 100% FDI is allowed under automatic route. Chipmakers are likely to get support beyond normal PLIs if they are really committed to India.

Aatmanirbharta Bharat is clearly aiming to cover the lost ground and make India one of the leaders in this essential domain of modern civilisation. Ministry of Electronics and Information (MeitY) has sought applications from 100 academia, R&D organisations, start-ups and MSMEs under its Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme. A Cabinet committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated this program to usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing by providing a globally competitive incentive package to companies in semiconductors and display manufacturing as well as design.

विश्व के सर्वाधिक लोकप्रिय नेता है PM मोदी: सर्वे

Changing Sports and Games Paradigm

The recent success at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics showcased that India is no longer dominated by Cricket. Seven medals in the Olympics and 19 and Paralympics demonstrate amply that there is a lot of potential for other sports in the nation. Schemes like TOPS and with government support, the nation can achieve new heights. These successes seem to have ushered in new and big development in the Indian Games and sports Arena.

India is the host for the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup for football for the second time in history and it begins today. The blue tigresses will take on Iran in the opening match of group A. “Our Goal for All” is the official tagline of the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup. Hosting after 42 years, the matches will be played in India in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and Pune. Next year, India will be hosting the Men’s Hockey World Cup for the fourth time. Around this time next year matches will be played in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela.

Another interesting, and green, development is the potential formula E World championships being hosted in India in the city of Hyderabad. The Telangana state and formula E have signed a letter of intent to make Hyderabad the official candidate city for hosting formula E racing. This will be a fantastic opportunity to usher in electric cars and to showcase the green progress in Telangana. Formula E is an all-electric racing series while Formula 1 showcases hybrid races with internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels. Formula E racing aims to transfer technologies from the race track to the road and inspire innovations to fix the climate crisis as we see India is taking rapid strides towards the sustainability goals for ensuring a healthy planet for future generations.

The gaming industry, particularly mobile gaming, in India has witnessed a growth of around 40% in 19-20. 86% of this market consists of mobile phone users. The gaming sector in India is growing faster than most media sub-sectors – including cinema and home entertainment, audio, and more. Recently, The Government of India announced that it will set up a National Center of Excellence for Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics to create a world-class talent pool in India to cater to the Indian as well as a global industry.

Physical to electric to digital, Indian sports are sure to come back strongly in post covid world.

IPPB : Bridging the Digital Divide

“India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) would usher in economic transformation by bringing banks to the doorsteps of the villagers and the poor.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set this goal while launching India Post Payments Bank in 2018. IPPB is the fastest-growing digital payments bank in the country to cross the five crore subscriber mark within 3 years, which has been opened in digital and paperless mode through its 1.36 lakh post offices, of which 1.20 lakh are in rural areas with the help of about 1.47 lakh doorstep banking service providers.

Goal of this ‘Digital-First-Bank’ is to make the “technology” of modern finance available to a wider population. Dealing with the post GFC of 2008, one cannot help but notice that financial technology has been abused and credit growth has been non-responsible. This is where Responsible Financial Inclusion makes IPPB a world class leader in true sense.

The first and foremost target audience for IPPB services are rural population, migrant workers and small capital entrepreneurs. IPPB is well placed to utilize last mile connectivity of DoP to serve the agenda of responsible financial inclusion and financial growth of this prime target audience.

IPPB has achieved the world’s largest digital financial literacy program leveraging the strength of 2.8 lakh post office employees. It has taken digital banking to the grassroots level in more than 13 languages through interoperable payments and settlement systems of NPCI, RBI and UIDAI. Further, about 48% of the total account holders are women.

Building on the current capabilities, IPPB has to strive to become the intermediary by facilitating relevant information and processing and monitoring capability for following and earning fee rather than profit. Three clear domains are Peer-to-Peer lending, Company loan for salaried staff and SME cash management – all helped and managed by IPPB. These and similar business opportunities need to be capitalized upon in response to the changing paradigm of payments services and financial inclusion ecosystem.

Factors of Production

India is a capital starved country and world is now flushed with cheap capital, thanks to shock absorption measures taken by central banks across the developed world since GFC of 2008. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid out an enticing recipe to world investors in world economic forum, Davos.

In this Digital age, India has leaped ahead in creating appropriate “Land”, e.g. a huge, secure and successful digital payments platform, fibre connectivity of gram panchayats and many more fundamental assets are ready. Further, Gati Shakti National Master Plan is strengthening connectivity like never before.

Today India is home to over 5mln software engineers and many more are working across the world. There are multiple public and private sector measures to harness the benefits of demographic dividend by providing appropriate skills to the largest young population of the world.

Today India has the third largest number of Unicorns in the world. More than 10 thousand start-ups have been registered in the last 6 months. India has also deregulated many sectors like Drones, Space, Geo-spatial mapping and made major reforms in the outdated telecom regulations related to IT sector and BPO. The spirit of Entrepreneurship is high and shining bright in the times of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

To solve the problems of Capital availability, one route is taken by DIPAM, “Asset Monetization involves creation of new sources of revenue by unlocking of value of hitherto unutilized or underutilized public assets….The objective of the asset monetization programme of the Government of India (GOI) is to unlock the value of investment made in public assets which have not yielded appropriate or potential returns so far, create hitherto unexplored sources of income ….”

Clearly, the global investor is blue to see India as a hub not just for return on Capital but also for a sustainable future. P3(Pro-Planet-People) is a viable slogan from a country which has achieved Paris commitments 9 years ahead of schedule.

Measures like PLIs across 14 sector, improvements in Ease of doing business! reforming retrospective tax, various FTAs, a Competitive corporate tax regime and Gati Shakti National Master Plan are getting noticed by Global investors and investments should spur in the country.

New India at World Stage

India has surely leapt into the front-row seat in post Covid world order due to its large scale implementation capabilities demonstrated in handling the pandemic while considering welfare of all at home with Sabka Saath and abroad with Vaccine Maitri. Achieving this in a democratic setup is indeed wonderful news for all poor and needy across the globe. This has not been accidental when one looks at the Ethos of Atmanirbhar Bharat, a mass movement, which is deeply rooted in the values of this young nation.

Framers of the Indian Constitution have set forth an enormous and unique challenge of simultaneously completing India’s triple transition across social, political and economic fields. India is one rare country of this size and complexity which has taken on this challenge of getting on to the three transitions together.

The inherent power of owning up to this arduous task seems to have stemmed from the rare surviving ancient culture of the land of this young nation. Energy of youth and availability of a belief system of timeless wisdom!

“We shall frame the Constitution, and I hope it will be a good constitution, but does anyone in this House imagine that, when a free India emerges, it will be bound down by anything that even this House might lay down for it? A free India will see the bursting forth of the energy of a mighty nation.…May this Resolution bear fruit and may the time come when in the words of this Resolution, this ancient land attains its rightful and honoured place in the world and makes its full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind.” Pd Jawahar Nehru spoke these words on 22 Jan 1947 during the closing of the debate on Resolution of the Constitution, representing the Constituent Assembly.

As Leadership in India looks to the next 25 years with a Vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, every interaction at global stage is going to be closely monitored world over.

Despair to Hope and Confidence within a Year

Celebrating 1 year of the national vaccination drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated today that India’s approach to fighting the pandemic will always remain science-based. This was evident from the very beginning, as last year Emergency Use Authorisation was granted to two “Made in India” vaccines namely, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Then Nationwide rollout of Vaccination began for doctors, healthcare workers, frontline workers including Safai Karamcharis which later on got extended to all adults in stages and even to the adolescent population this year. To ensure gender parity in the Nationwide vaccination drive, the government has made concentrated efforts due to which a total of 49% Females and 51% males have received vaccine doses till date.

As we take stock of the last one year, India is leading the world with its fastest vaccination pace. It has not been an easy journey – the sudden nature of the pandemic, the need for tough and far-reaching decisions amidst a lot of conflicting, incomplete and even wrong information were clearly baffling all across the globe. Further, huge population and consequent shortage of supply at the initial stage together with the need for Government procurement and large scale deployment, including the issue of vaccine hesitancy came as added problems.

PM Modi led from the front in tackling these challenges, especially in engagements for clear communication to create awareness about vaccine safety and building trust. His images from the AIIMS vaccination site, perhaps, boosted the confidence of citizens to go and get vaccinated.

The success of crossing over 155 crores administered doses within a year is a testament to the large scale project deployment capabilities of “New India”. Clear communication from leaders and experts has played a pivotal role in achieving this staggering level of vaccination, esp. in combating fake news and bringing down vaccine hesitancy. To know its importance one can look at the USA where governments had to announce lotteries, scholarships, saving bonds and even cash payouts to encourage people to shed fear and resistance to vaccines.

This success is not only about producing, procuring, distributing and administering vaccines. The needed healthcare infrastructure spending was a big ask. This coupled with extending the availability of food to a large percentage of the population, making provisions to support businesses to get back to production and operations as soon as possible are testaments of a country ready for large scale deployments. There is a lot to be done towards the economic recovery of MSMEs, the rural economy and the poor in the cities – the ones very badly affected by the pandemic and its handling in the form of lockdowns. India is ready and on track to overcome these challenges and make the 2020s a Decisive Decade of Growth.