00:00Joining us right now from New Delhi, Bloomberg News senior reporter Dan Strump.
00:03Dan, good to have you here with Joe and me and Lisa this morning.
00:06We got to talk about this. So go back to 1947.
00:10That's when India became independent after, what, 200 years of rule by Britain.
00:16Country is increasingly a force to reckon with.
00:19What stood out in this speech from Modi that will get them there?
00:26Yeah, so this was very much a forward-looking speech, a speech about India's economy, a speech about India's development.
00:35As you said, really the sort of top-line takeaway was a sort of reiteration of this long-standing goal
00:41that this government has,
00:43which is to sort of make India a developed country by 2047.
00:47That is the 100-year centenary anniversary of India's independence.
00:52Being a developed country, you know, it's a bit of a term of art, right?
00:55But it really means, you know, raising up the economy, making sure that the country is technologically competitive,
01:02that its companies and businesses and financial institutions are competitive, that its people are educated at a high level.
01:10And so that was really the big takeaway from the speech.
01:14And some really high-level ambitions set out to sort of get there.
01:20High-level indeed, Dan.
01:22The country will have up to eight more chip plants, he said, in the next seven to eight years.
01:26That alone is something the United States can't even seem to do.
01:30Can they pull it off in India?
01:32Well, you know, it is very ambitious, right?
01:35And India is already well on its way, actually, when it comes to the chip industry.
01:40I mean, it's primarily a force right now in chip assembly, which is on the lower end of this sort
01:46of value chain when it comes to chips.
01:48But getting there is a big priority.
01:51And it really speaks to this high-level ambition that India has to be a technological force to be reckoned
01:58with.
01:58So, I mean, it's not just chips, but it's AI.
02:01It's a high-tech assembly.
02:04That's right.
02:05Nuclear power was a big highlight of this speech as well.
02:08Are they as power-hungry as we are because of AI development?
02:12Oh, I mean, totally.
02:14I mean, this is also a big priority for India is to become a big data center hub.
02:18And as we all know, I mean, these data centers are enormous hogs of power.
02:23And so, you know, I mean, building more nuclear capacity is a huge sort of, you know, plank in this
02:29pillar to kind of get there and be a player in AI.
02:32And so that goal for nuclear power is actually 100 gigawatts, which is 11 times the current capacity in India.
02:40But, you know, this is the goal, and that's where they want to get to.
02:43Hey, you know, I do think about, though, the youth problems that we see around the world.
02:47We certainly see it here in the United States.
02:48Folks that can't find jobs come out with a college education, even those that do not.
02:53India has seen also its share of issues.
02:56How is it dealing with that?
02:57How does it create some programs and policies that actually address that significantly?
03:02They've been dealing with some protests recently.
03:03Not necessarily directly related, but this is certainly an issue for them.
03:08Well, no, I mean, it really is quite related, and it tied into some of the high points of today's
03:14speech.
03:15You're right.
03:16I mean, India is just coming off this weeks-long protest movement.
03:20I mean, you can see that you've got some of that footage right there.
03:23A lot of these protests got very heated, very violent.
03:26It was led by this youth, this sort of student-led movement called the Cockroach Janta Party, which was kind
03:33of what began as a kind of a satire, but turned into a really powerful student-led movement protesting sort
03:43of shortcomings in the country's education system, feelings of frustration that young people are not getting a payoff in terms
03:51of employment, in terms of opportunities from the education that they're getting.
03:55And, you know, a sense in India that young people are feeling a bit left down, left out and let
04:01down.
04:01And you do have a real unemployment crisis in India generally, but it's particularly acute among young people.
04:09Something like 40 percent of young graduates in India with a college degree can't find work.
04:14And so, you know, that's a real problem, of course, for people's livelihoods.
04:18But it's a big political problem for this country as well because, I mean, we all know that, you know,
04:22young people are out of work without much to do.
04:25This can be a problem for any government.
04:26And so this was part of the speech.
04:29I mean, Modi does want to address this problem.
04:31He has been taking steps to show that he's listening to these young people.
04:36There was a major announcement.
04:37Maybe the biggest announcement from today's speech was this announcement to introduce free coaching for young people who are taking
04:44competitive exams.
04:45And so that's kind of one way that the government is trying to sort of listen to the young people
04:49and show that it is kind of hearing them and, you know, attentive to this jobs crisis.
04:55We just got 30 seconds left, Dan.
04:56Self-reliance came up repeatedly in this address.
05:00Who does India not want to be reliant upon?
05:05It's a great question, and it's a huge highlight for the government these days.
05:09You know, India is a major importer of lots of important goods.
05:14It's a huge oil importer.
05:15It's a huge importer of weapons, of defense.
05:19It's the world's second largest importer of weapons, in fact.
05:23And so it's a big priority for this government to be more self-reliant in these areas, to be more
05:29self-reliant in manufacturing, and to overall be a stronger, more self-reliant economy.
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