India’s start-ups do not lack innovation, but they struggle to imagine new progressive technologies. The problem may not be just about policy or entrepreneurship but a deeper failure of collective imagination. India lacks democratic horizons of techno-futurity.
Elites in India have reduced innovation to the latest mobile apps or AI, equating it with mere Silicon Valley mimicry. This approach has turned start-ups into props for national pride, rather than platforms for comprehensive innovation. NITI Aayog’s “R&D Vision 2035” calls to urgently emulate China’s “DeepTech” frontiers, revealing a mindset of catch-up rather than confidence in charting an independent path for the collective good.
Even the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), hailed globally as an example of India’s innovation potential, faces sustainability questions without government support. India’s deep systemic inequalities, sub-continental scale, and federal architecture necessitate greater government intervention to prevent innovation from becoming a billionaire-driven agenda like in the USA. This requires reimagining the government’s role at both the federal and state levels to open more democratic horizons for new techno-futures.
Reimagining India’s tech innovation framework
Forums are needed where diverse groups can dialogue, including farmers, gig workers, artisans, and scientists. Innovation thrives in democratized knowledge ecosystems that support the public good, but India’s knowledge infrastructure is severely underfunded.
Instead of democratizing, India has centralised innovation through the top-down implementation of Startup India’s programmes, with over 90 percent of venture funding flowing to a small elite. The cultural dimensions of innovation cannot be downloaded or imposed from a distance; they require long-term investments in education, health, and social infrastructure. The exclusion of significant segments of society from technological future-making, compounded by caste and gender inequalities, further stifles innovation potential.
The government’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme highlights the inadequate human capital for “Make in India.”
Policy areas such as welfare programs, taxation, and MSME development must be enmeshed with R&D visions, industrial policy, and the start-up ecosystem to integrate India’s welfare architecture with innovation outcomes. The vision for a techno-future should not be limited to a privileged few but should involve the broader populace in these conversations. India needs more than “DeepTech”; it needs a deep democracy of innovation, responsive to both domestic realities and global challenges.
Only by weaving start-ups into a broader social and federal tapestry can India reimagine its techno futures beyond a mimicry of Western or Chinese models.
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