Every year I try to think about what is the most important thing that we as a country should be doing. We think that it is the most important thing that the citizens of this country become aware of not just their potential but move beyond their immediate potential and reach beyond. This is only possible as a country if we think about moonshots. The process of achieving a moonshot project automatically makes people think of unconventional means, disruptive technology and societal level scales for achieving it.
This kind of thinking is not new to the BJP government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi used this approach to empower Paramesh Iyer when he said that that Swachta has to be a jan andolan. The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was the largest behaviour change programme in the world and it achieved success because of the way Iyer and his team of bureacrats went about it. This was a moonshot both in definition and scope.
Making India including its villages open defecation free (ODF) was not an easy goal but it was achieved. It is important that on this Independence Day we remind ourselves that as a country we are able to change. We can change some of the most deeply buried behavioural instincts for the better.
Chandrayaan-3 has landed on the lunar south pole; this is really moonshot because we have not used large rockets but depended upon gravitational force. We need a similar level of innovative thinking in several other areas. And it is not just the government but top conglomerates that need to think about these moonshots; every entrepreneur and every citizen should set their own moonshot goals.
The purpose of a moonshot should be to move beyond our comfort zone targets and try to achieve something that seems beyond our grasp. When we prepare for such audacious goals we pull the rest of the world with us. This is not a thinking that should be limited to any one sector. If you have a great idea, a societal level change idea, take it to your boss or your friends. Feed it every day, discuss it every day with a new person. Learn all that is there to learn on how to execute it. Remember ideas only improve with discussion and execution is everything. Getting it done is a skill, muscle and an attitude.
This is why the normal is no longer acceptable, the audacious is what is needed. A moonshot goal needs scientific rigour-level planning and execution; it should become a way of thinking in our systems whether they are government, private sector, or even personal. We will have to do away with the knee-jerk policy response to events, issues, and needs.
Take, for instance, building manufacturing capability in the electronic industry. If we had thought this through, we would have looked at the global supply chain for this industry closely. And then picked each component in the order of its importance or its ability to be made in India and started building this supply chain of components in India. Not everything in the supply chain will be easily made in India, hence this is an exercise that is audacious and requires scientific rigour. This cannot be left to a joint secretary who has an operational role and is doing this and hundreds of other things. The meritocrats should outsource this to experts, say in an IIT as a paid timeline-bound project with industry experts and right minded think tanks to participate in it.
The democratisation of knowledge or its free availability via the Internet gives many people after reading a few clicks that they understand the subject as deeply as an expert. This is a dangerous feeling, especially when it comes to making policies that will not just affect 1.3 billion but the trajectory of a country. Hence, it is better to adopt a more scientific approach to the moonshots.
Even in pharmaceuticals there is a need to harness the combined resources of the large companies and bring certain pricing barriers down. India has the largest and the fastest growing population of diabetics and the market for insulin is controlled by three global companies. It’s time that there is an India moonshot to create drugs that are affordable for the Indian population. This moonshot has to be initiated by the government as there are a number of patent rules which would have to be addressed to build insulin and other drugs for the Indian diabetic population.
While a PLI for this segment will help, this is also about reducing the dependence of the large section of the Indian population on MNC companies. But again we should not do it in a knee-jerk manner; the supply chain of machines, ingredients and components need to be built piece by piece. This is the approach to be followed for everything; don’t ban the global supply chain but rebuild, replace and recreate one for domestic production.
Joe Biden has set 2047 as a target to halve the number of deaths due to cancer in America. Earlier this year he also set aside $37 billion for reviving the semiconductor fabrication industry in US.
India also has semiconductor fabrication aspirations but is it working with the same spirit and structure that the SBM or even what US is doing? This is a big question I don’t have any answers for it as it is early days into this programme. But there should be a plan to capture the global semiconductor global value chain in a structured manner.
There are other moonshots which are equally important especially from a long-term perspective. One is to improve the per capita income and second to improve the health span of the population. Health span differs from lifespan as it means the holistic performance of the body and as a productive individual. This is not just a health and wellness issue but also an engagement issue. One of the outcomes of a large population is that when it starts aging it is still a very large population and we have to think differently about this aging population. Is there a way to define a moonshot goal which will enhance the health span of the aging population?
On this 77th Independence Day, we should define our Independence not just with slogans and WhatsApp messages but a courage to take some moonshots to life our country as a whole.
K Yatish Rajawat is a public policy researcher and works at the Gurgaon-based think and do tank Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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