India is growing at a rapid pace in almost every sector, the GOI is also making sure to improve every part, industry and sector in the country. The budget for 2025 shows the government’s positive intention towards India’s growth. From startup culture to infrastructure development to rural development to Make-In-India initiative to boosting defense & space export to improving educational institutions to supporting agriculture and clean energy, the GOI is determined to make India great again.
However, there is one area where we are not doing great is innovation. We are exporting IT services but not innovating much that we surely need to improve to avoid dependency on other countries and become self-reliant. The western and European countries have been innovating for 1000 of years in different fields and that’s why they are ahead of us in many ways. We can also do that but there are issues that have stopped us from growing in the technology field, will discuss later in this blog.
Recently, 500cr has been allocated to build an AI centre, as well as 50,000 tinkering labs are being set up to help students and youths to grow in technology and science fields. The government has also announced that India will have its own gen AI model in the next 8-10 months which is a great move. But the question is, are these projects enough to grow or what do we need to do more? What are the issues that are holding us back? So we need to address our issues first and find a solution considering those.
Here are the issues that are stopping us from growing:
- Money Problem – The majority of Indians are still poor or middle class; they don’t have money to spend much on their kids’ education. Even if they send their kids to higher education, they expect their kids to earn money immediately after college so the family situation will improve, forget that they will pursue technology for a longer time as research & innovation take time.
- Bad Education System – Apart from reputed educational institutions, such as IIT, IIIT, NIT, and some other private colleges, many engineering colleges’ education levels are not up to the mark. They mostly teach theory and are less practical, as well as equipments are either outdated or not working or teachers are not that skilled to teach how to operate those machines so how will the students learn? This creates a bad environment where everyone is only running after marks and getting a degree, not thinking about innovation at all.
- Brain Drain – Every year, thousands of highly skilled engineers migrate to other countries in search of better opportunities and packages. The Indian Govt must do something to attract them to stay in India and contribute to their own country.
- Mentality – In India, many kids grow up hearing they need to get a govt job or get an engineering degree or medical degree or CA degree so they could earn a good amount of money and get a quality life. It is understandable for those families who are not rich and they need money to improve their lives and they can’t wait for long. But, what about rich families, they also have the same thinking, very few giving their kids ample time to pursue in tech and innovation field while many kids these days from affluent families becoming YouTubers so our mentality and environment holding us back and we need to improve.
- No Startup/Innovation Culture – The most important one, there was no startup culture in the country before 2016. The GOI launched the Startup India Initiative on Jan 16, 2016, to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. It has scaled up as the country has now more than 1,00,000 startups, more than 100 unicorns and 100+ soonicorns but still, we need to do a lot. The GOI needs to support MSMEs and startups more, as well as need to open more tech centers across the country and modernize educational institutions to get more skilled and high-tech engineers.
- Funding Issue – Another big issue is Funding as without capital, no company can scale up, they need money to survive, invest in research and innovation. Apart from GOI, our own entrepreneurs, business tycoons and reputed educational institutions need to come forward to support innovative startups if they have the capabilities to do something great.
The solution lies in the problem itself, we all need to understand the above issues, including the Govt, Educational Institutions and us. Some we need to figure out in our society such as changing our mentality and environment so our kids get a quality education and pursue something that helps themselves as well as the country. Educational institution needs to provide quality education and training, hire skilled professionals so students don’t suffer. The GOI to make sure this startup culture spreads across the country, improve educational institutions, open more technology center/tinkering labs to innovate more.
