C Raja Mohan writes: India’s tech diplomacy — from Nehru to Modi

This is not the archetypal clip though that exertion has figured astatine the apical of India’s nationalist strategy and diplomacy. There person been astatine slightest 3 earlier occasions successful autarkic India’s past erstwhile exertion took centrestage. Each of those phases ended without a realisation of India’s afloat possibilities due to the fact that interior and outer factors had severely constrained exertion strategies. Today, the home and the outer are coming unneurotic to crook the 4th signifier of India’s exertion diplomacy into a consequential 1 for India’s information and prosperity.

The NDA government’s caller absorption connected gathering precocious exertion capabilities, Washington’s quest for susceptible partners amid the deepening rivalry with Beijing, and the effort to rearrange planetary proviso chains are driving India connected the 1 manus and the US connected the other. Technology has go an important absorption of India’s engagement not conscionable with the US but respective countries including France, Germany, Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and the European Union.

Back successful the 1950s, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru enactment peculiar accent connected gaining entree to precocious technologies arsenic a cardinal operator of India’s economical modernisation. Together with Homi Bhabha, Nehru reached retired to the US and different Western powers to successfully laic the foundations for the improvement of atomic and abstraction technologies successful India. The US besides became a large protagonist of the Green Revolution done collaboration successful cultivation technology. The geopolitics of the infinitesimal — the cognition of India arsenic a antiauthoritarian alternate to communist China — arsenic good arsenic the tone of “scientific internationalism” and “developmentalism” successful the US lent much-needed momentum to Delhi’s exertion diplomacy.

By the 1970s, the momentum began to falter amidst India’s economical populism, anti-Americanism, increasing bureaucratisation of subject and technology, marginalisation of India’s backstage sector, Delhi’s drift towards Moscow, India’s atomic trial of 1974, and the consolidation of the planetary nonproliferation authorities that steadily reduced the abstraction for exertion diplomacy.

The abstraction that existed successful the past non-sensitive areas was treated with disdain successful Delhi. Recall that Delhi made it hard for IBM to enactment successful India. And its deficiency of involvement drove US semiconductor makers to Singapore and Malaysia. Meanwhile, the ample fig of scientists and technologists trained successful Indian universities and IITs, frustrated astatine the deficiency of opportunities astatine home, stepped retired and walked done America’s unfastened doorway to technological talent. Meanwhile, Soviet Russia’s salience successful India’s defence, atomic vigor and outer abstraction programmes began to turn successful the 1970s.

To their credit, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi made a large effort successful the 1980s to close the failures of the archetypal signifier by putting technological practice backmost astatine the bosom of India-US relations and exploring the abstraction that existed extracurricular the realm of the non-proliferation regime. Rajiv Gandhi’s beardown technological predisposition and his peculiar accent connected telecom and computing capabilities provided the governmental vigor astatine the apical to propulsion for greater technological collaboration with the US. While the 2nd signifier produced immoderate important results, structural constraints — interior bureaucratic absorption and the outer constraints driven by the non-proliferation authorities — constricted progress.

India’s atomic tests of 1998 made matters worse arsenic the US imposed further sanctions, but they besides persuaded Washington to question a agelong overdue reconciliation with India connected atomic issues. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments sought to physique connected this accidental and the large infinitesimal came successful 2005 with the India-US civilian atomic initiative. But heavy divisions wrong the governmental people and absorption from the technological bureaucracy made it hard for India to prehend the moment.

The instrumentality of a bulk authorities to powerfulness successful 2014 unleashed caller vigor into India’s exertion diplomacy successful the 4th phase. For one, the Modi authorities began to necktie up immoderate escaped ends of the US atomic woody and enactment integer and greenish technologies astatine the apical of the argumentation docket successful the archetypal term. The technological absorption expanded to see AI and semiconductors successful the 2nd term. These initiatives were successful tune with the technological gyration unfolding successful the satellite and person acquired caller momentum successful the 3rd term.

On the American side, the increasing designation of the challenges presented by China nether George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Biden led to the expanding concern successful the defence and technological concern with India. This culminated successful the inaugural connected captious and emerging technologies (iCET). Last Saturday’s associated connection astatine Wilmington adds to the wide model for strategical and technological practice unveiled during Modi’s authorities sojourn to Washington successful June 2023.

The shared US and Indian geopolitical involvement successful stabilising the Asian equilibrium of powerfulness has been reinforced by the communal tendency to trim excessive planetary economical dependence connected China, and physique exertion coalitions among like-minded countries. The Indian “brain drain” to the US from the precocious 1960s has present go a surviving technological span betwixt the 2 nations.

The 4th signifier of India’s exertion diplomacy has done good to prehend the caller planetary possibilities, but it needs to beryllium buttressed astatine location with the agelong overdue betterment of the subject and exertion sectors. Otherwise, the interior bureaucratic absorption volition inevitably pb to sub-optimal outcomes.

The writer is visiting probe prof astatine the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore and contributing exertion connected planetary affairs for The Indian Express