Making India a technological innovator in its own right, rather than just a provider of services based on outside technologies, will be key to the World Bank's strategy there.
Michael Carter, the Bank's Country Director for India, said technical innovation is central to its efforts to help ensure that the country's rapid growth does not leave its poorest people behind.
The Bank, which has just released an overview of India's 'knowledge economy,' now plans a report looking at the environment for innovation. 'India has great incipient strengths in technical areas, but that has been very much focused on the adaptation of knowledge from elsewhere,' Carter told Emerging Markets in an interview yesterday.
'There is the view that an important step in India's movement toward being a fully developed country will be that India itself will begin to be a source of innovation.'
The Bank also has plans to fund public expenditures for computerizing civil service functions and record-keeping. Development experts see enormous administrative burdens in the shape of huge volumes of forms, fees and red tape in general as an obstruction to development.
The Bank now plans a programme that will computerize access to civil records such as birth certificates, drivers' licenses and utility bills, Carter said. A few states, such as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, have seen great success with such 'e-government' initiatives, which reduce the scope for corruption and remove administrative burdens from daily life.
The Bank is now working with the Indian government to craft what will probably be a fund that can be drawn on to extend such services to the entire country, Carter said. 'We hope that within the next year this will be in place.'
These initiatives come on top of the three-year, $3 billion-a-year programme the Bank recently put in place for India, which includes a $3 billion rural infrastructure component.
Carter cited Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's belief that 'the challenge is inclusive growth'. The challenge, Carter added, is to grow 'in a way that creates fundamental changes in the standard of living for the poorest people.' More than 250 million people live below the poverty line.