Abstract: India is currently beset with a number of economic challenges. Along with the poverty alleviation of approximately 300 million Indians who need the basics of primary education, health care, clean drinking water, nutrition etc, we have the effects of climate change and the imperatives of sustainable development. A heavily skewed rural to urban proportion and a growing and already massive youth population means providing employment will be extremely challenging. Addressing these issues needs the deployment of resources in the form of money, infrastructure, a skilled and adept workforce etc which are limited considering India’s focus on self-reliance and wariness of external investments. Considerable National resources are deployed towards the defence of the country. While this may seem non-negotiable, it may be worthwhile going deeper to understand the current and future threats to the security of the nation and the people. This holds importance in the light of recent shifts towards providing human security from a wide range of threats in areas such as food, health, finance etc etc. and which need immense resources to be deployed.
The talk will dwell on assessing these threats, the economic angles to them and the opportunities that exist to divert precious resources into more productive areas for the overall well-being of the people of India.
About the speaker: Colonel Kevin A. Desouza (Retd) is a BTech, MTech in Electronics and Radars respectively, and has over 25 years of experience in the technical maintenance and management of enterprise-wide support to a wide variety of weapons systems in the Indian Army. He was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Defence Economics and Industry at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi where he authored six research articles and a book on the Transfer of Defence Technology to Indian agencies. He has subsequently continued his research in the area to find the best way forward for the defence industry and is positioned to author a paper on Finding the optimal balance between ToT and IDDM for India’s goals of Security, Self-Reliance, Economic development, and National Pride.
His search for the way forward has recently led to the analysis of the real threats which India faces so that viable and productive counters to them may be visualized and pursued. He has voiced many of his queries through his articles in The Kind Questioner, a newsletter on the Substack platform over the past year. He has kept himself updated with latest developments on the borders, factors driving Pakistan and China, technological threats and connected economics aspects. He has shared his understanding of the economic angles to building defence capabilities in forums conducted by numerous think tanks and is currently working on how best India could enable economic development without compromising on National / Human security.