How India and U.S. can surge to $1 trillion by 2030

Gateway House is publishing a book on the U.S.-India partnership and how it can be elevated to $1 trillion by 2030. The book shows how a unique moment exists for the two countries—led be the private sector and NGOs—to create a partnership that boosts quality of life and development in both countries. It contains research from numerous key business leaders, government officials and other experts from across industries in both India and the U.S.

Ahead of the launch of the Book, Dev Lewis, Digital Media and Content Coordinator at Gateway House, speaks to Nish Acharya, author of the book and Visiting Fellow, U.S.-India Studies at Gateway House, about the key ideas in the book and his insights into the U.S.-India relationship.

Dev Lewis (DL): Nish, You’ve written a book with Gateway House on how the U.S.-India partnership can be elevated to $1 trillion by 2030. How do you envision this ?

Nish Acharya (NA): So I think it has to start with a very focused effort on what needs to be done for both nations, and what role each nation can play in that.

So in other words, what does India need to do to really boost its economy in order to become the third largest economy in the world on par with the Chinese and the United States— and what’s the role of the United States in helping India do that? Likewise, what’s the role of India’s economic organisations – its NGOs, its companies – in helping the United States’ economy to continue to be one of the most robust and largest in the world.

I have identified essentially two things that are common across the board, that’s: (a) capacity building – the need to build up the capacity of Indian companies and organisations to execute at a high level, and (b) the role of innovation in bringing in new ideas, new business models, new technologies, new products and services, to help the citizens of India.

Likewise it’s a similar set of things where Indian companies and organisations can help the United States build capacity in a new global economy where costs are lower and budgets are tighter.

Also, innovating for the same reasons: that there’s more complex needs and issues to be dealt with, and they have to be dealt with through innovation—and sometimes the Indian organisations have figured it out before the American ones have.

DL: Over the course of your research for the book, you interviewed about 62 people from various industries and sectors. So who are the kinds of people you spoke to and what did you find out?

NA: I think this might be one of the most comprehensive set of interviews about the U.S-India relationship that’s been done. I spoke with not just government people, not just business people, but really a broad range of leaders across both sectors in both countries.

On the business side, people such as Vivek Pal, the former CEO of Wipro; Mohandas Pai of Manipal Group and Bunty Bohra, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, India, among others. On the government side, the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia on the U.S. side and the Deputy Chief of Mission Tarunjit Sandhu from the Indian side, and several senior advisors to ministers in India. And then on the NGO side, people like Vandana Goyal who runs Akanksha in India, Jonathan Redford who runs Habitat for Humanity worldwide, and many, many others.

So I think that’s what is unique about this paper, is that it really reflects the view of the “do-ers” in the U.S.-India relationship, more so than just the politicians or the talkers or the Fortune 500.

DL: PM Narendra Modi is going to be going to Silicon Valley at the end of September and addressing the Indian diaspora. In the Book you introduced an idea called “Silicon Swadesh”, which is about creating multiple Silicon Valleys in India. What should Narendra Modi’s pitch be and how can he help bring about the Silicon Swadesh that you talked about?

NA: PM Modi has to have a very clear pitch. That is that the role of Silicon Valley is NOT just about Facebook building an office in India or a venture capitalists investing in Indian start-ups.

It needs to be about much more. It needs to be about the culture of Silicon Valley.

So what I often talk about is the fact that a venture capitalist will often see a thousand business plans and they will actually fund about 10 of those, and only 1 to 2 are successful. So the success of Silicon Valley or Boston or New York, Tel Aviv, is really that there is a volume of start-ups there that are active. There are thousands and thousands of start-ups in every sector that compete and only a few are successful.

What India needs is an ecosystem in its major metro areas. Right now you see some of it in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, but not in Delhi, Ahmedabad and other places where you would like to see it as much. India needs to build that culture of start-ups in those major metros, but also it needs to bring that level of experimentation and of project development to the tier-2 cities that have over a million people, which is roughly about 35 cities. In these cities you need to develop leaders, you need to develop entrepreneurs, you need to let them succeed and fail. We need to find ways of supporting those entrepreneurs, whether its philanthropy, government, or private corporates and we need to build that culture of success and failure.

So this is what PM Modi needs to focus on, “teach us what you do, and how can do that to while being fair and equitable across India.”

DL: What are some nice snippets from your book that we can give our readers, a teaser before they get their hands on the book?

NA: So that’s a good question.

One the Indian side, one of my favourite stories is about Harley Davidson.

Usually if it’s a well-known American brand, they come in and then there are protests or political problems. And yet Harley has come in and over the course of five-six years, they’ve built a following, they’ve figured out how to attract Indian customers without attracting any sort of political backlash. And I think that’s a great story, it’s an example of what we want to see.

On the U.S. side, I think the story of GenZe and what Mahindra is doing there. It really speaks to the insights of the Indian company and their plans for the United States. They’re designing this two-wheeler in Silicon Valley where innovation is king, and they’re building it in Detroit. It’s a good example of how Indian companies are being very smart about the United States. So I think those were two of my favourite cases to look at in that sense.

Buy ‘U.S.-India: $1 trillion by 2030′ by Nish Acharya from Amazon.com

The Book ‘U.S.-India: $1 trillion by 2030’ will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016. You can read an executive summary of the book, here.

Nish Acharya is a senior advisor to Northeastern University, a senior fellow for the Center for American Progress, an entrepreneurship strategy consultant and a columnist for Forbes media.

This interview was exclusively conducted for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

For interview requests with the author, or for permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in.