One of the most perplexing aspects of India’s development over the past two decades is that inspite of now having a large university system (ranking in size only behind the three large economic blocks in the world: USA, China and Europe) and inspite of receiving $40-50 billion of Venture Capital and Private Equity funding every year, India has fallen behind comprehensively in the technology which characterises Industrial Revolution 3. Whether it is AI or EVs or biotech or cleantech, in none of the foundational tech which characterises the post-industrial world does India have any intellectual property. What explains this frustrating state of affairs which, rightfully, vexes the people running our country?
K Nanjaraje Urs is a social scientist based in Australia. In this piece for the Deccan Herald he says that India’s lack of innovation could be down to the lack of safety nets in India: “Innovation is inseparable from uncertainty. New enterprises collapse. Research fails. Technologies misfire. Where failure carries catastrophic personal cost, only the already privileged can afford experimentation. Where failure is a stepping-stone, risk-taking becomes socially enabling. This difference, between ruin and recovery, quietly determines how much of a nation’s intelligence can participate in innovation.
The Global Innovation Index published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation consistently places Switzerland at the top. Close behind are Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, with Nordic countries occupying much of the upper tier. These are not minimalist states. Switzerland combines high private enterprise with mandatory health insurance, unemployment protection, and strong social guarantees. The Nordic nations operate universal healthcare, income security, robust public schooling, and extensive retraining systems.”
Some of us might retort that all of the above confuses cause and effect i.e. the developed European nations can afford to offer safety nets because they are rich countries (and not because safety nets made them rich in the first place). Anticipating that objection, the author turns to the most unequal amongst the developed economies:
“In 2017, economist Raj Chetty published research now known as the “Lost Einsteins” study. Examining patent records in the US, Chetty found stark disparities in inventor rates by race, gender, and income, with children from high-income families dramatically more likely to become inventors than equally capable children from low-income families. Crucially, measured ability was broadly similar across groups. Opportunity was not.
Chetty estimated that if children from low-income backgrounds, women, and minorities had the same opportunities as high-income white men, the total US innovation output would quadruple. The study’s central insight was simple: societies lose vast quantities of genius not because intelligence is scarce, but because opportunity is unevenly distributed.
Apply this lens to India. A country with deep social stratification, uneven schooling, and limited safety nets inevitably loses an even larger share of its potential inventors, designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. These are India’s lost Einsteins.
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