The argument is structural rather than celebratory. Three institutional foundations of an innovation economy — public research, corporate R&D and deep-tech entrepreneurship — are advancing at the same time for the first time. The authors hold that the architecture is now visible, while the transformation remains incomplete.

• The breakthrough. In March 2023, DRDO scientists at the Solid State Physics Laboratory (SSPL), Delhi and the Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Centre (GAETEC), Hyderabad announced the fabrication of gallium nitride (GaN) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).
• The strategic context. By widely reported accounts, the know-how for these circuits was refused to India under the offset provisions of the Rafale acquisition from France. GaN is a tightly export-controlled technology.
• Why GaN matters technically. It is a wide-bandgap semiconductor: it tolerates higher voltages, frequencies and temperatures than silicon, which makes it indispensable for active electronically scanned array radar, satellite communication, electronic warfare and high-efficiency power conversion.
• Diffusion into the civilian economy. The DRDO is transferring GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) MMIC technology for use in 5G/6G wireless infrastructure, on-board chargers for electric vehicles and renewable energy inverters.
• The membership claim. India is described as one of seven countries to have mastered the technology, alongside China, France, Germany, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
• The commercial handoff. AGNIT Semiconductors, a spin-off from the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, is translating the technology into commercial applications.

• The Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA) has stated the objective of contributing 10% of global 6G patents by 2030.
• Per a review by the Union Minister for Communications, B6GA members have made more than 7,700 patent filings across 5G and 6G technologies, including over 4,400 foreign filings.
• The authors’ own qualification is worth reproducing: these are applications, not grants, and not declared standard-essential patents; their eventual impact remains to be established.
• Nearly 3,000 technical contributions were made to 3GPP last year — a fifteen-fold increase over 2020.
• In WIPO’s 2025 PCT rankings, Jio Platforms Limited entered the top 20 international filers for the first time, rising more than 300 places to 19th.
• The analytical point. Participation in standards bodies and ownership of intellectual property determine who captures value from future communication networks. The claim is that India is moving from standard-implementer to standard-setter.

• Capital: government commitment to Research, Development and Innovation (RDI), alongside more than USD 2.5 billion in deep-tech commitments from members of the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA).
• Space — earth observation: Pixxel Space, founded by two BITS Pilani alumni, works in hyperspectral imaging, with six satellites in orbit and a planned constellation of 18 to 24.
• Space — launch: Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 low earth orbit launch, and Agnikul Cosmos, nurtured at IIT Madras, working towards fully reusable launch vehicles.
• Biomedical: ImmunoACT, incubated at IIT Bombay in partnership with the Tata Memorial Centre, developed NexCAR19 — India’s first indigenous CAR-T cell therapy — delivering treatment at about a tenth of typical costs.
• Medical devices: Bengaluru-based Remidio Innovative Solutions, supported early by BIRAC, uses smartphone-enabled retinal imaging with AI against preventable blindness from diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma.
• On CAR-T, for context: chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy involves extracting a patient’s own T-cells, genetically engineering them to recognise a tumour antigen, and reinfusing them. Cost has been the principal barrier to access worldwide, which is why the price differential is the salient claim.

• Standardising technology-transfer terms for publicly funded intellectual property — at present these are negotiated case by case, which raises transaction costs for spin-offs.
• Expanding examiner capacity at the patent office — directly relevant to the filings-to-grants gap identified earlier.
• Funding the translational gap between a granted patent and a first paying customer — the stage at which most publicly funded inventions stall.
• The measured conclusion: these examples do not by themselves make India an innovation superpower. What they demonstrate is that three strands are converging. The journey is unfinished; the contours are forming.

The author poses a question of principle rather than of capability. As India acquires the means to reach and mine the deep seabed, he argues that the relevant question is not how much can be extracted, but whether capability should be treated as permission.

• The premise questioned. Technological progress can generate the assumption that what can be exploited should be. The author holds that the deep ocean tests this reasoning, because the ecosystem is complex and poorly understood.
• The epistemic point. India’s own biodiversity research continues to identify unknown organisms. The consequences of large-scale seabed disturbance therefore cannot be predicted with confidence. This is presented explicitly as an argument for more science before intervention, not against science.
• On strategic necessity. Deep-sea minerals may carry genuine strategic importance for renewable energy, electric mobility and advanced manufacturing. But, in the author’s formulation, strategic importance cannot automatically become ecological permission.
• The test proposed before extraction: whether the minerals are genuinely necessary at the proposed scale; whether alternatives exist; and whether demand can be reduced through recycling, efficiency, substitution and a circular economy. Necessity must be demonstrated, not presumed.
• On the limits of adaptive management. Exploration advances knowledge without disturbing the seabed; mining physically disturbs it. Adaptive management — adjusting practice as evidence accumulates — cannot by itself guarantee protection where the effects may be irreversible.
• The reframing. The question should shift from “How can we mine with minimum damage?” to “Do we need to mine at all?” Since India’s activity remains at the exploration stage, the author regards this as the appropriate moment to set a high ecological threshold for any future decision.
• The wider claim. Investment in deep-ocean science need not imply a commitment to commercial mining; India could lead in deep-sea ecological governance as well as in deep-sea technology, treating the deep ocean as an ecological asset whose value may exceed its mineral wealth.

• Substitution has limits. Recycling supplies a share of demand but cannot meet growth in a rapidly expanding battery and grid-storage sector; some primary extraction is likely to remain necessary.
• The comparative footprint question. Terrestrial mining of the same metals carries its own well-documented costs — deforestation, tailings, displacement and, in the case of cobalt, serious labour concerns. A full assessment compares seabed extraction with the alternative, not with no extraction at all.
• Strategic dependence. Supply of several of these metals is concentrated in a few jurisdictions, and import dependence is itself a risk that governments weigh against ecological cost.
• Abstention is not neutral. If India refrains while others proceed, the seabed may be disturbed regardless, with India holding neither the resource nor influence over the standards adopted — an argument for engagement in the ISA rather than withdrawal from it.
• The common ground: both positions accept that the exploitation regime is not yet settled and that environmental baselines must be established first. The disagreement concerns where the burden of proof should lie.