Nor is it enough to catch change by the forelocks. As advances are interdependent, if we falter in one discipline, we will be drowned in a cascade.

Fifth, keeping up requires huge investments. We have had one major electronics complex — in Mohali, near Chandigarh. Even to this day it is not able to fabricate chips and the like at the submicron levels that have become customary. Building a new fab with the requisite capability costs $3-4 billion a piece. China is building six of them in one go. Countries that cannot muster up that kind of investment will have to forego those technologies or become hopelessly dependent on others for them.

The effects will not be just on consumer items, and exports. The fabs are vital for national security. Not being able to construct the latest ones is to put the country in danger. Countries which waste resources on boondoggles - like the Employment Guarantee Scheme, or unaccounted subsidies - don’t just put themselves at a competitive disadvantage but at risk.

Next, the new technologies require ever higher, ever more complex and ever changing skills. “The masses”, “the common man” just do not have them, and are not going to have them in the foreseeable future. It follows that countries which allow standards of higher education to fall; countries which do not institute systems to continually upgrade skills; countries which appoint and promote personnel on considerations other than merit (e.g., birth); countries which lose their best minds to others, will fall behind.

... contd.