Too Many Bright Spots on India’s Innovation Horizon

Context: The novel coronavirus pandemic provides an opportunity for reordering for posterity in innovation in India. 

Innovative Potential of India 

• Highest internet usage: with over 700 million users (projected to rise to 974 million by 2025) 
• JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile): has 404 million Jan Dhan bank accounts with 1.2 billion Aadhaar and 1.2 billion mobile subscribers. 

• Economic growth: There is a potential to add over $957 billion to India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2035 with Artificial Intelligence.

• Triad of innovation in India: that is, collaboration, facilitation and responsible regulation are advanced by cross-disciplinary collaboration.

• Realistic potential lies in “Amara law”: which says that people tend to overestimate the impact of new technology in the short run but to underestimate it in the long run.

• Collaborative knowledge creation: through summits like
• Vaishvik Bharatiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) summit: a collaboration of overseas Indian-origin academicians and Indians to ideate on innovative solutions to our challenges. 
• Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Social Empowerment (RAISE) summit: to effectively use AI for social empowerment, inclusion, and transformation in key sectors like health, agriculture and education.

India’s Start-up Innovations: Recent winners of the ‘Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge’:

• CHINGARI: it is a video communication tool. 
• SETU app: it allows customers to make small ticket payments without going to the bank.
• YELO:  It is offering neo-banking payment and money transfer services online for workers in the gig economy.
• NIRAMAI or Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence: An AI-based thermal imaging portable tool for non-invasive breast cancer screening for women.
• Qure.ai: An AI-based health-care diagnostic tool in rural India, for tackling TB and COVID-19. 
• Gramophone: offers pricing information from mandis, advice on soil and crop health and access to agricultural inputs via micro-entrepreneurs to farmers.
• Vernacular.ai: offers a voice-based AI product that can understand up to 10 Indian languages and around 160 dialects. 

Incentivising Innovation through Schemes like:

• Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scholarships

• Ramanujan fellowship scheme

• Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme

• Smart India Hackathons (SIH)

• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)

• Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme

• Setting up of the Future Skills Programme for Reskilling/Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability (PRIME)

• Scheme for Transformational and Advanced Research in Sciences (STARS)

• Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) and Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS). 

• The National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems aims to ‘catalyse translational research across 

• Al and Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT), Deep Learning, Big Data Analytics and Robotics

• Quantum Computing and Data Science

• Regulatory sandboxes for piloting new ideas: by Reserve Bank of India, Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority(IRDAI).

• Regulation of cloud services has been recommended by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Fostering Innovation for Ease of Living

• Artificial Intelligence: will transform education and health care, machine learning.
• Blockchain technology: will make commerce robust and resilient.
• Gene-drives: would exterminate invasive and harmful species.
• Gene-editing: would help in bringing back extinct species and reinvigorating depleted ecosystems.
• Quantum computing: will raise processing capability to resolve insurmountable and augmented challenges.
• Virtual reality: will change the way we interact with the physical world.

Conclusion: Innovative potential augments ease of living for citizens, dematerialise and democratise products and services.

Quote by Walter Isaacs: “Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for past ages.”