Reevaluating India’s Chip-Making Strategy in Light of Huawei’s Success
India must develop R&D and production capability, and fund domestic start-ups, universities to develop technology and gear needed to achieve semicon self-reliance.
Category Center for ICT for Development
India Beyond GDP: Evaluating Ambitions versus Real Conditions
Is it not time to finally give up our pretences about India’s improved economic development, or will it take some existential global storm to wake us?
The Crisis of Safety: Vacancies and Negligence in Indian Railway
Railways has an estimated 2.74 lakh vacancies, of which 1.7 lakh are related to ensuring safety. Running an organisation with such a huge number of vacancies, especially in roles that underpin safety, is gross managerial failure.
Strategic Intervention for Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT) Programme
The Strategic Intervention for Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT) Programme is designed to incentivize the supply side of green hydrogen production through financial incentives aimed at the domestic manufacturing of electrolyzers and green hydrogen production. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), through the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI), is tasked with implementing this scheme.
Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS)
The Government of India's Startup India Seed Fund Initiative aims to build a robust startup ecosystem that nurtures innovation and provides opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs. Launched by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) on April 19, 2021, the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS) has an outlay of INR 945 Crore to provide financial assistance to startups for proof of concept, prototype development, product trials, market entry, and commercialization.
Understanding the Smart Cities Mission: An In-Depth Explanation
How are smart cities defined by the government? What are the two major aspects of the Smart Cities Mission? Why is the mission considered to be exclusionary to many? Did the SCM override the 74th Constitutional Amendment?
The story so far: The Smart Cities Mission (SCM), a flagship programme of the NDA-1 government, has taken a back seat in this year’s list of poll promises and achievements.
What are smart cities?
The term ‘Smart City’ has been used widely ever since 2009, after the great financial crash. Smart cities were defined by urban practitioners as new Silicon Valleys built with a strong integration of a network of airports, highways, and other types of communications, a so-called intellectual city with advanced ICT.
AI makes social emancipation imperative
Artificial intelligence (AI) is many things to many people: a gold rush for venture capitalists and young entrepreneurs (besides the smart alecks who simply append AI to their company’s name in a public offering of shares), a potential destroyer of jobs, a multiplier of skills for those who know how to wield its power, a solution to missing manpower in countries with falling birth rates and dwindling populations, a possible threat as potent as nuclear weapons when deployed to control swarms of deadly, autonomous drones targeting a faraway enemy.