View: Where are India Inc.’s moonshots? Spending on innovations needs a boost

Now that India has become the first country in the world to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole — for less than half the money Christopher Nolan spent on the movie, Interstellar — its risk-averse private sector will hopefully be inspired to launch some moonshots of its own. Just beating investor expectations next quarter won’t get them ahead in the long game in artificial intelligence or new materials and energy.

The numbers tell the story. Just before the pandemic, India was spending a paltry 1.2 trillion rupees ($15 billion) on research and development. Since at least 1995, R&D expenditure has remained stuck at around 0.7% of gross domestic product, with less than two-fifths of it coming from the private sector. Most of that, too, is about tinkering with existing technologies, especially in pharmaceuticals, computing and telecom, rather than original intellectual property. China’s 25:1 lead over India in patent applications shows the gap quite clearly.