An Analysis of the India-EU Technology Action Agenda

Options for India-EU Technology Collaboration

Authors

David Matthews of Science|Business, a Brussels-based news organisation reporting on European research and technology policy, interviewed me about the areas of research and technology where India and the EU might want to cooperate in the future. Given below is a list of his questions and my full answers.

Q1: Both are clearly keen not to rely on Chinese technology too much. But following the Trump administration’s foreign policy turn, is India also keen to extricate itself from US technology stacks, as Europe is? Is it possible for them to work together in some areas, such as digital identities or wallets?

You can read David’s article on this topic here

A1: Technological strategic autonomy is the guiding principle for both these Unions. India’s dependence on Chinese consumer technologies is minimal. Many apps like TikTok are banned in India, while Chinese firms are currently ruled out from investing in critical infrastructure such as 5G telecom networks.

But India and the EU are both intricately linked with the US technology ecosystem. India’s Amazon is Amazon, India’s Facebook is Facebook, India’s Instagram is Instagram, and India’s Google is Google. Many of these firms’ major development centres are also in India. Local alternatives exist, but they haven’t been able to dislodge the dominant players. So, extricating from the US ecosystem is not a realistic possibility.

But there are some domains in which India has charted its own path. For example, India’s advances in large-scale digital public infrastructure– peer-to-peer payments, digital identity, data sharing through aggregated consent, open credit enablement, and open e-commerce networks—offer a fundamentally different alternative to the US and Chinese ecosystems. It is for this reason that countries like France and the Philippines have been trying to implement parts of this digital stack suited to their needs. This DPI is definitely a domain where India and the EU can work together.

Another natural fit is open technologies. Both Unions understand the strategic importance of open source software and hardware, but are doing little collaboration in this domain. There is a need to forge an Open Tech Maitri (Friendship) that will support open hardware projects like Libre-SOC (an open GPU architecture), open standards in select strategic domains such as telecoms or cybersecurity, and crucial open-source software dependencies. The resulting technologies can provide a useful backstop against coercive measures like denials and export controls frequently deployed by the US and China.

The Open Tech Maitri idea is explained here

Semiconductors are another domain where complementarities exist. The announced agenda states that implementing the EU-India Semiconductor Memorandum of Understanding is a priority. This includes collaboration on R&D in chip design and semiconductor manufacturing, as well as reciprocal talent exchanges.

I have previously written about the potential for India-EU collaboration on semiconductors for this report by Clingendael.

Joint manufacturing of mRNA vaccines can also be a mutually beneficial project of broader importance. India has biomanufacturing capabilities, while the EU has major players in precision medicine. The announced agenda does talk about this domain and calls for deepening collaboration to ‘advance bio-manufacturing and other areas of biotechnology.’

Q2: What’s the current state of cooperation? I get the sense that there have been a lot of announcements, like the TTC, but I’m not sure how much this amounts to in terms of joint research. So, do European firms have R&D locations in India, and vice versa?

A2: India is home to more than half of the world’s global capability centres (GCCs). A GCC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a multinational corporation that handles strategic, high-value, and global functions like R&D, IT, and analytics, instead of simple outsourcing. Most of these GCCs are either American or European, and they operate across domains such as semiconductor design, engineering, automotive, and others.

The Indian corporate sector has traditionally underinvested in R&D. Estimates pit it at 0.25% of GDP, as against the global average of 1.4% of GDP. This is an area of concern that the Indian government is now trying to address through alternative funding mechanisms.

Q3: What is the Indian government’s or universities’ attitude towards Horizon Europe association?

A3: Indian scientific labs have been doing staff exchanges under the Horizon Europe programme through a co-funding mechanism for the last three years. Details here.