“India is getting five billion dollars,” said my neighbour excitedly.
I nearly dropped my teacup.
“From whom?” I asked. “And more importantly, when do we divide it?”
“It is not for you,” he said gruffly. “The American company Applied Materials plans to invest five billion dollars in India over the next decade.”
“That is excellent,” I said. “What do they manufacture?”
“Equipment used to make chips.” “Potato chips?”
He stared at me with the patience generally reserved for elderly relatives attempting to operate a smartphone.
“Computer chips,” he said wearily. “The tiny things that power phones, cars, medical equipment, satellites and almost every modern machine.”
I looked thoughtfully at my phone. It had fallen twice that morning, refused to recognise my face and changed “good morning” to “goat mourning” in a message to my priest.
“That little fellow inside seems overworked,” I said.
Yet this is genuinely encouraging news. For years, India has sent some of its finest brains abroad. Now there is an opportunity to do more than supply brains to the world. We can build the laboratories, factories and skills that allow those brains to create here.
Semiconductor chips may be tiny, but the industry around them is enormous. A country that can produce and support such technology gains not only money and employment, but confidence. It begins to move from buying what others make to making what others want to buy.
My neighbour nodded wisely.
“This could make India a major technology centre,” he said.
“Provided,” I replied, “the application form for building the factory does not require seventeen photocopies, three affidavits and the signature of an officer who retired in 1996.”
He stopped nodding.
Investment alone will not be enough. I thought to myself, even as I stretched across and welcomed the cup of tea he handed to me as a celebration. We must make it easy for talent to work, research to grow and ideas to become products. We must teach our young people not merely to use technology, but to understand and create it. Most importantly, we must reward ability rather than loyalty, curiosity rather than conformity, and innovation rather than obedience.
Applied Materials is placing five billion dollars of faith in India. We must answer that faith with efficiency, education and integrity.
For too long, we have carried a chip on our shoulder, complaining that the world does not recognise our greatness.
Now, perhaps, we can remove that chip from our shoulder, place it inside a machine and let Indian talent show the world what it can do..!
