By Andy Kerr, Executive Director, Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation
The University of Edinburgh
I am back in the vibrant city of Mumbai, after a three year break, to attend events at the Make in India expo. My interest, and the associated opportunity for the University of Edinburgh, is the energy transformation that India is undertaking over the next 25 years. This includes targets to enable all 1.3 billion people to access secure supplies of electricity, as 240 million currently still lack this basic enabler of modern life; the deployment of 160 GW renewable electricity – about twice the size of the entire UK power grid – by 2022, to unlock clean sources of electricity; and models of investment, of ~US$150 billion per year, to meet growing energy demand from communities and industry for everything from cooking and heating to cooling and mobility.
I came with big questions about the underlying premise of Make in India, which seeks to make India a manufacturing hub of the world. To me, this conjured up visions of India trying to repeat the last century successes of China and South Korea and become the latest “low cost” manufacturing hub, a new sweatshop.
This issue was addressed head on at CNN’s Asia Business Forum today:
The impressive Anand Mahindra (Anand Mahindra on Twitter), Chair and Managing Director of the Mahindra conglomerate of companies, when questioned by CNN’s irrepressibly hyper Richard Quest (Richard Quest on Twitter) talked of manufacturing in the context of the three Ds:
- Decentralisation
- Democratisation
- Digitisation
CNN’s Richard Quest interviews AirAsia’s Chief Executive Tony Fernandes
How can India take a leap over existing manufacturing hubs to drive the next industrial revolution? The answer may lie in embracing the three Ds, to unleash latent innovation across India. In other words, not trying to do what other countries do, only a little better, but rethinking what is required: fewer smoking chimneys and factories to process steelwork and more 3D printing of designs from local producers.
This theme of innovation was interwoven throughout the day, with a particular focus on solving real life problems such as the intermittent supplies of energy (and related supplies of internet access). But here is the curiosity: while innovation was discussed widely throughout the day, universities were not mentioned. In other words, these civic or private institutions, which produce, curate and share leading-edge knowledge, and which should be at the heart of any new digital, decentralised manufacturing economy in India, are not the ones driving innovation. Instead, it is private companies and public private initiatives. Yet in the UK, we see universities, like Edinburgh, acting as huge innovation hubs for the local and national economy, spinning out and supporting entrepreneurs and social enterprises and working collaboratively with local public authorities. Here is a model that we can apply with our Indian partners to help them unleash their latent talent and deliver desired social wellbeing.