January 27, 2025 ☼ The Intersection ☼ Information Age ☼ tech policy ☼ geopolitics ☼ foreign policy
With the right structures in place, India could better harness its resources, expertise, and human capital to emerge as a major power
This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint.
The Government of India must set up a Cabinet Committee on Science and Technology (CCST) to propel India into a global power of this century. Chaired by the prime minister, it should include the home, finance, external affairs, defence, electronics & information technology, commerce and education ministers.
In the current Information Age, technology is a core element of national power, the primary agent of economic transformation and an important aspect of the day-to-day life of citizens. Individual departments and States must still be responsible for governing technological aspects of their domains in a decentralised manner as they do now.
However, there is a case for a higher level mechanism to set overall policy direction, coordinate between ministries, oversee strategic programmes in various science and technology domains. A Cabinet Committees is the most appropriate structure in India’s governmental system.
There are four major reasons why we need a CCST.
First, we are in an era of where world politics is by technology, of technology and for technology. While technology has been a source of power throughout history, it is central to global politics today. The Biden administration’s moves to throttle China’s semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) industry development implicate the rest of the world. Donald Trump’s principal backers are tech industry leaders determined to promote their commercial interests in the United States and abroad. If the United States as adopted its tech industry’s interests as its national interests, China has been doing the same thing from the other direction. For Beijing, its tech industry is a tool of the Communist Party of China’s political interests at home and abroad. Geopolitical considerations alone recommend that India respond to the unfolding circumstances by equipping our strategic establishment to navigate these tides.
Second, India needs a better way to manage trade-offs across ministerial boundaries. For instance, a few years ago the railway ministry decided to completely electrify the train network to achieve environmental and modernisation goals. Yet such a goal would be inconsistent with defence preparedness. Both the Indian army and central paramilitary forces depend on railways to rapidly move their forces to areas of deployment. Decentralised, self-propelled diesel locomotives better for this grid-supplied electric ones. We need a better way to resolve such a dilemma.
Cross-domain coordination will become a lot more important in the coming years. It is hard to foresee effective public policy in nuclear energy, radio spectrum, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, advanced military systems, biological weapons and information warfare without sustained high-level inter-departmental negotiation.
Third, the old model of managing strategic programmes like atomic energy and space will not work in today’s setting. Expertise is diffused in private industry, research institutions and public sector enterprises. Getting things done require carefully navigating across tens of genuine regulatory considerations. Harnessing national capabilities requires programme structures that enlist capital, human resource and knowledge residing across the country using different types of arrangements. We now have national missions to develop artificial intelligence, quantum computing, genomics and aerospace. Some of these might call for speedy implementation, while others require long gestation periods. I have seen many reports rightly arguing for a whole-of-government approach, without being clear on how that will be achieved. A CCST is the answer.
Finally, much like the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna on the battlefield, a lot of tech policy is about determining what is more important and ought to have a higher priority. Is market competition more important than scale for global competition? Should we depend on a foreign strategic partner for technology or try to develop it in house? Can we afford the cost of waiting? Should we prioritise climate goals over building energy intensive data centres for AI? How do we respond to export controls, sanctions and coercive measures by our geopolitical partners?
As much as a CCST can coordinate at the Union government level, much of the action is at the State level. I do not know if the way it works currently allows for State chief ministers to be invited to a Union Cabinet committee meeting. It might, however, be a good idea to invite officials of the States concerned to ensure policy alignment.
Interestingly, China not only quietly set up a secretive Central Science and Technology Commission (CSTC), but seems to have replicated the setup at the provincial level too. This commission appears to oversee the science & technology ecosystem, approve mega-projects and interface with the military establishment. While there is little public information about its mission and composition, it has been set up to provide political direction to scientific and technological establishment. Mixing science with politics is not a good idea as Soviet and Chinese history has shown, but when has that stopped Xi Jinping?
Anyway, it is abundantly clear that we are amid a global tech race or a tech war which will intensify in the coming years. With the right structures in place, India could better harness its resources, expertise, and human capital to emerge as a major power. More than an administrative convenience, the establishment of a CCST is a strategic imperative.
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