But when it comes to manufacturing, the story suddenly changes. You hear the stories of India losing giant factory outlays to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia. Why? Our laws, bureaucracy and rules come and stand in the way—they are inflexible and coercive.

Much of the services push has had state support in terms of political will. A UPI was not possible without the regulators and the government putting their weight behind the infra backbone. Why a similar exercise cannot be done in manufacturing is not clear.

Is it because the bureaucracy does not understand tech that well and could not derail those changes?

This brings me to the second change that we need. Our rule book has colonial DNA hard-coded into it.

Take the highest administrative authority at the grassroots level as an example. She is called the district collector. Collector. Collector of taxes for the British raj.

He believed that Nehru had committed a Himalayan blunder, which the British had forestalled for so long