Indian bureaucracy has failed Indian entrepreneurs. Tax terrorism compounds it. A failed and gamed legal system completes the challenge. Viksit Bharat has to start with a Samarth Bharat.
The total purchasing power of the IIT alumni community is around USD 5 trillion. The ai bubble will notionally double it. Maybe even quadruple it.
But almost all of it is outside India.
India is a non player in ai. Ai is not led by Pentagon or driven by the U.S. Govt. It is private enterprise with governments around the world as helpless spectators and potential meal tickets for ai monopolies. Ai for Bad is the most likely scenario. The Good may or may not happen.
IIT engineers are India’s best export. Reducing it or reversing it is the most asinine approach we can adopt. We need an export council to export talent and a framework to recover costs incurred on them.
Prof B Nag used to say, “Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.” Every smart ias and politician exports his kids.
And inspite of 75 years of independence – bureaucrats harass entrepreneurs day in and day out. One of the SEZs is down to being an extension of the Gutka trade and most of India still sees a govt job as the fastest route to illegitimate wealth. In preference to entrepreneurship. Untill that is corrected, Viksit Bharat has no hope.
The good news is that we now have some IIT Btechs (not MTechs) who hold the promise to change things. From Anurag Jain at Niti Aayog to Sanjay Malhotra at RBI to Shashank Mani in the Lok Sabha to Ashish Chauhan at NSE. Whether Viksit Bharat delivers or fails will depend on these few individuals. Credit must go to the Prime Minister for empowering these individuals. They are scrupulously honest, extremely hard working and have taken on a role they didn’t have to. Academic brightness of a IIT Btech was never in doubt.
Each of the original five IITs and the three converted IITs (Roorkee / BHU /Dhanbad) have cost an indicative Rs 1000 cr pa (at current prices) to the taxpayer. That translates to Rs 5 lac crores+. Closer to Rs 10 lac crores actually if you add the new IITs and IISERs as well as premium colleges like ICT, DTU, Coep, walchand, HBTU etc. About USD 100 billion in all, to date. All told.
The IIT Delhi Alumni Impact Report 2026 offers one side of the story. Out of 65,000 BTech alumni, it takes credit for 2000 alumni startups which have generated close to 5 lac jobs. Irrelevant numbers for a country of 1.5 billion. IIT Bombay is better but nowhere near where it can be.
For every IIT, and for every institution aspiring to serve a rising India, the challenge is to convert alumni networks into engines of national transformation. An alumni network is not simply a collection of accomplished individuals. It is a reservoir of knowledge, capital, experience, influence and goodwill waiting to be mobilised for a larger purpose.
#IITDelhi#AlumniImpact#NationBuilding#HigherEducation#Innovation#SamarthaBharat