Many of you have been part of this journey. I see friends here who were there even when this had not started. On behalf of the trustees, I really want to express my gratitude and thanks to all of you who have supported us so far. We have several parents and alumni in the mix in the audience here today, and they too have been great supporters. For a parent to be able to send their kids to a new university takes a brave decision. So thank you for all your support over these years. We set up the Rakesh Jhunjhunwala School of Economics and Finance to really honor Rakesh Bhai and the support that we received from him. He was a true champion and I was reflecting today that he would always go around touting us as the next Harvard of India. Even when he's not here today, we are here to tout Ashoka in front of you, enabled by him. So it's quite an interesting coincidence that this lecture is also giving us a chance to talk about the university. You got involved with us in 2016. We wanted to pay a tribute to him not just by the naming of the school, but also to portray the man himself. We did a book on him last year. The man who was not just the investor but the philanthropist, and above all somebody who really held an unwavering belief in India and cared passionately for the country. He would always speak his mind. He would always say it like it is and energize people around him. Whenever we met him, wherever he would go, he would come to our board meetings. We all think of him very fondly. Even in the brief time he was associated with us, we have stories about him and talk fondly about him. One of the things that we always say to our donors, which we can very respectfully refer to him and everybody accepts it, is the fact that when he committed the funds to us, he said, 'Listen, I'm contributing but what you do with my contribution is your business. I don't know anything about education. I want to support you, and you are the most qualified to decide how the contribution is to be used. I'll leave it to you.' That's not how we often find donors. People who give their hard-earned money also want to dictate how it should be spent and how it should be done. It was quite incredible that even though he was one of the largest donors and will remain for some time, he had this enlightened view of philanthropy which was very refreshing. To him, Ashoka was about nation building and he always felt that there was a need to build a great institution. I remember that Ashoka gets into the news for the wrong reasons as some of you may have seen over the years. He went for a meeting with the prime minister and he basically told him that this is an institution for the future and they are building something that will be the Harvard of India. We are very proud that we've named the economics school in his name. It is the largest school at Ashoka. It has over 30 faculty members. It has the largest population of our undergraduate enrollment. About 40% of Ashoka students do a major or an economics-related major at Ashoka. Shamak mentioned the PhD program. Actually our first ever PhD graduate was from economics and from the Rakesh Jhunjhunwala School, and I was very proud that she went to teach at my alma mater, which is IIT Kharagpur. Not only are we creating economics graduates, we are actually changing liberal arts education in very technology STEM-heavy institutions as well.
Again we are very grateful to the family for the continuing support, and particularly want to welcome Mrs. Jhunjhunwala and the entire family who are here today to be with us. Thank you. Last year the inaugural lecture was delivered by Uday Kotak, and we all remember his 10 takeaways for India. Today it is equally befitting that the second lecture will be delivered by a man who needs no introduction. Mr. N. Chandrasekaran, or Chandra as some of us get to fondly call him, the chairman of the Tata group. It is really impossible to introduce someone so widely known for his reputation that has transcended the corporate world and into many other spheres. So I will not make the foolish attempt to do so, especially with such a knowledgeable audience. However, on behalf of the board of trustees, our founders, faculty, administrators, parents, alumni, students of Ashoka University, we'd like to say that it's a tremendous honor to welcome such a visionary leader whose life and work embodies the very values that we strive to nurture at Ashoka to deliver this memorial lecture. Chandra, your broader reputation and the more intimate knowledge that some of us have of you speaks to us about your incredible intellectual expanse, your ethical leadership, and your marathon-like pursuit of a better Tata group as well as a modern India. You have proven to not just be a business leader but a thought leader and a nation builder whose impact transcends boardrooms and balance sheets. Born into a farming family in Tamil Nadu, Chandra's journey has been one of curiosity, tenacity, humility, and excellence. Over three decades at TCS, he steadily rose through the ranks. It was under his leadership as CEO and MD that TCS grew exponentially in scale and became a global benchmark for what an Indian company can achieve in the knowledge economy. Often iconic institutions go through a period of turmoil, and the Tata Group faced a period of reckoning in 2017. The board turned to Chandra to stabilize the ship, and he turned what was a very difficult hand into a winning one. Over the last seven years, he has re-energized iconic businesses to launch the Tata Group's bold pivot towards sustainability, digital transformation, and electric mobility. His leadership reflects a long view thinking that places nation building at the core of the enterprise. His vision is rooted in creating long-term value through innovation, yes, but also through investing in human capital, philanthropic endeavor, and India's intellectual renaissance. In an era marked by disruption and uncertainty, Chandra stands out as someone who is not merely reacting to change but truly shaping it with clarity and conviction. His recent authorship of 'Digital Nation' — and that's a book I would highly recommend for people to read — is a powerful example of how he blends policy thinking, technological insight, and social responsibility to offer a blueprint for inclusive growth in India. Before I wrap up, I would like to acknowledge the special bond that Rakesh had with the Tata group and the respect he had for Chandra. It is no secret that he was very long on the group. He used to share both publicly and privately that much of that was his deep, deep respect for Chandra and some of its other leaders. It is rare to find a leader like Chandra who is as comfortable speaking of technology as he is of values, and rarer still to find someone who sees the future not just as a destination but as a journey to travel with responsibility. Please join me in welcoming Chandra to deliver the second Rakesh Jhunjhunwala memorial lecture.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello ladies and gentlemen. Good evening to all of you. It is a tremendous pleasure and privilege to address all of you on this important occasion. I would like to start by thanking Raika and Ashoka University for inviting me to speak to you today. Rakesh is well known to all of us, and his impact on the economy and Indian stock market is legendary. But he was also, as he often would say, deeply inspired by the Tata group, and in a manner of speaking, he was a fierce champion of the Tata group. And to me personally, he was a great well-wisher and took the time to understand some of the strategic bets I was making. He would come and meet with me, ask questions, and fully supported me in some of his decisions, often publicly. More than anything, he was a very, very compassionate leader who believed in India's promise, India's potential, and finally India's people. When I think about Rakesh, a very famous couplet by Thiruvalluvar, a very eminent sage and poet, comes to my mind. He has a chapter — those of you who don't know about Thirukkural, it is about 133 chapters, each chapter has 10 couplets, and each of the 133 chapters talks about a particular aspect of life. There is a chapter on compassion, and there are many aspects of Rakesh I can relate to, but there's one I want to quote today. I'm going to read it in Tamil, but it's only seven words. I often say it is the earliest form of Twitter because Twitter has 140 characters or so; this is much lesser. The one who is very compassionate and cares for his fellow human beings and for living beings, he never worried about himself or his life, and he didn't have to. Rakesh, as we all know, lived his life on his terms. For all these reasons and many more, I am deeply honored to deliver this lecture today.
I speak to you in a world which is brimming with uncertainty. We are moving from a unipolar to a bipolar to a multipolar world, with all the complexities as well as opportunities this tectonic shift represents. Trade barriers are on the rise. Military conflicts are flaring up, and the global supply chains face massive upheaval. Outcomes are becoming increasingly unclear. And our job as leaders is to navigate disruption while simultaneously spotting short as well as long-term opportunities and make each one of them count. But don't worry, I'm really not going to talk about tariff barriers today. My topic today is about AI and digital. That's what Raika had asked me to talk about. For years I've talked about major global shifts, normally big bets, big redefining trends: talked about digital acceleration a few years ago, the green transition, and then during the pandemic, the rebalancing of the global supply chains to create resiliency over efficiency. Today when I talk about AI, words struggle to convey how completely our world will soon change thanks to this technology, because its time has come. It is time for all of us to accept AI stands apart. It is in its own category. AI is not the next big trend; I would say it is the big trend. With AI, a new story begins. To fully grasp its significance, one must look beyond modern technology and then think of it as a civilization-defining, civilization-altering invention like fire was, electricity was, and wheel was. It is going to be so profound. Unlike previous technological revolutions which arrived in a sequential manner from one geography to another, AI is emerging simultaneously everywhere. Not only that, it is being supercharged by parallel progress in a number of other technologies including semiconductors, cloud computing, quantum technologies, robotics, humanoids, energy innovations, and innovations in energy storage. What this does is it is creating connectivity between these technologies. You are not looking at the technology in isolation.
All of us are used to the software world for a long time, some of us practitioners. Many of you have seen the impact of software where traditional software used to be always fixated on algorithms. It's always about algorithms. Whereas generative AI learns all the time. Like the human brain, it assimilates all that it encounters. Whatever it comes across, whatever it can hear, whatever it can see, whatever it can read, it assimilates everything that it encounters. But unlike the brain, it remembers everything to perfection, with clarity, with unlimited capacity. Imagine having a person who is in the top 0.1% of PhD in every subject at the same time: physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, philosophy, economics, management. That's what today you have when you have an AI companion. Already today's advanced gen AI platforms are in the top 0.1% of PhDs of every subject because everything has been fed to it.
The other very interesting thing that you can notice — I don't know how many of you noticed — other inventions have helped eliminate the world, but AI changes the very nature of elimination. It reverses it. What I mean by that is in the past, scientific discoveries led to technological advancement. For example, it's the breakthroughs in quantum mechanics that led to computing and the whole digital age. But now, technology is driving scientific discovery. For the first time ever, in my limited knowledge, last year the Nobel Prize for chemistry did not go to a researcher in chemistry. It went to developers of an AI model that predicts protein structures. A glimpse of how AI tools will revolutionize drug discovery. Previously, determining a 3D structure of a single protein typically used to take a year or more. Now, AI tools can do this in a matter of minutes. This could happen in every field, whether it is biochemistry, engineering, other sciences, or even economics. The main point here is the emergence of AI is not the latest stage of incremental change. This is actually the starting point.
Now coming to the importance of GenAI in India. No one can deny that GenAI will change the shape of human progress. But here in India, it has the potential to be immediately relevant and fundamentally transformative. When I wrote 'Digital Nation' six years ago, I explored basically three fundamental truths about India that I had observed firsthand. First one: we face an access paradox in India. What do I mean by that? Despite having significant human resources, we struggle to deliver essential services to all citizens. We have lots of doctors but not enough rural healthcare. We have lots of teachers but uneven educational quality. We have lots of financial institutions but insufficient financial inclusion. So we always have this paradox: we have the resources but we can't provide access; we have the talent but we cannot give jobs. That is, we simultaneously face shortage of specialized skills in certain sectors while having millions of educated but underemployed youth. So we have this conflict. Finally, our diversity requires unique solutions. One-size-fits-all approaches fail to address the incredibly diverse nature of our nation linguistically, culturally, and also economically. My book recognized such challenges could not be solved through traditional infrastructure expansion alone. We cannot go on building infrastructure and expect that the problem will be solved, primarily because the gaps are too large. We neither have the capital nor the time, but the needs are too immediate. This led to a simple but powerful insight: we must leverage digital technologies to bridge these gaps. That's how the 'digital' concept was born — a uniquely Indian approach to technological advancement that basically bridges the gap between technology and traditional systems rather than trying to replace the traditional systems with technology. Second, augment the human capabilities with technology rather than just automating the jobs away. So digital always believes in using the power of technology to give higher levels of capability to human beings. Third, connect the unconnected by extending access to essential services where physical infrastructure is insufficient. So use digital methods to provide access to nooks and corners of the country. It creates inclusive growth by designing solutions specifically for those at the margin. But we have come a long way since then, that is since 2019, because GenAI democratizes knowledge in many ways.
Firstly, latest AI systems have been trained on vast repositories of knowledge from medical research to agricultural best practices to educational textbooks from every subject in the world. This puts specialized knowledge in the hands of everyone with a mobile connection. Expertise that was previously concentrated in urban centers and elite institutions is now at the fingertips of our farmers, educators, and rural folks, if only we can train them and skill them to use it. Second, it bridges the language barriers. With over 780 dialects spoken across India, language barriers have always limited access to services and opportunities. GenAI powers real-time translation and localization at a scale previously unimaginable. Suddenly a Tamil-speaking doctor can treat a Marathi-speaking patient instantly and totally seamlessly. Finally, it simplifies technological tools. For millions of Indians with limited literacy or digital skills, complex interfaces made many tech tools inaccessible. GenAI is creating natural conversation-based interfaces that adapt to the user. A farmer can speak to an AI system in his or her local dialect rather than navigating bewildering menus or forms. Importantly, India's freedom from legacy systems means we can use these GenAI tools in many sectors from health to agriculture, finance, education, law, manufacturing, and anything else in between.
These incremental changes are a promising peek into the future. But for India to achieve its goal of being Viksit Bharat, of achieving per capita income of $15,000 or $20,000 whatever the target is, these aren't enough because AI must be culturally relevant. This is a very important point. AI must be culturally relevant with a sovereign approach to national infrastructure, models, platforms, and governance. We simply cannot risk having our activities, our languages, and our cultures processed through AI systems that do not understand the Indian context. So if a Western-trained model without understanding our context is going to interpret all our stuff, we are not going to end in the right place. So many fear AI as a job destroyer. However, the digital approach represents our greatest opportunity to create millions of new jobs. Millions of new jobs. The 'new' is a very critical word here. Not a white collar, not a blue collar, but a new color. The new roles which infuse human skills with AI augmentation. What do I mean by that? In health, a community worker equipped with AI diagnostic tools can become an enhanced paramedic, workers capable of providing primary care at a level that once required years of advanced training. So these people have very basic skills or very low-level skills, but what they can achieve is a much higher level of competency because AI is helping them. So they are no longer a blue collar but they don't become a doctor, so they become a new collar, and a huge opportunity. My estimate is if you get this right, yes, between now and 2030 we will lose some jobs because the jobs you lose and the jobs you gain are going to be very different. But I believe we will create a net addition of at least 30 million new collar jobs across industries.
While automation may displace some jobs, it could simultaneously create 30 to 40 million new jobs as we are able to close access gaps that currently exist. This will not simply be handed to us. Industry and government must work together on a massive, unprecedented scale to help people learn new skills. Workers will need a lot of support as they move from at-risk roles to focused ones. This means offering flexible training programs that people can do while they are still working. It requires a level of compassion, a bit of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, towards all these people who will need to transform their roles. And it means working with schools, colleges, universities, and companies to give both learning and real-world experience. It is an approach that resonates deeply with the needs of the global majority, the billions in developing nations who share challenges similar to India's. And we are uniquely positioned to lead this alternative vision with our technological prowess, our domestic diversity, our democratic values, and our developmental challenges. By pioneering the digital approach domestically and sharing it globally, I truly believe India can create a very powerful alternative. This represents not just a technological opportunity but a geopolitical one, with India as the natural partner for not only developing nations but also developed nations that seek a human-centered path to digital transformation, not a fully mechanized one.
I would like to conclude now. First, when I developed the digital vision, I believed it represented a uniquely Indian approach to development. Today, with the remarkable rise of generative AI accelerating this vision, little did I know that when the book was launched in 2019 — it was launched in November, I couldn't go on the book tour because the pandemic came — but the pandemic completely validated the book, and then GenAI is taking it to a different level. Now I am even more convinced that this path can transform India's development trajectory. We can deliver quality services to citizens, create meaningful employment, and in large numbers, and establish India as a global leader in human-centered AI. As I look towards India's future, I envision a nation where the digital AI approach has transformed our greatest challenges into our greatest strengths. Where our diversity becomes a source of innovation rather than a division. Where technology bridges gaps rather than creates new divides. Where AI augments human capital rather than renders it obsolete. Where our demographic dividend becomes our greatest asset. The future belongs to those who can bridge the digital and the physical, who can connect technology with humanity. The future is India's to create. Thank you all for listening.
Thank you, Chandra. As always, it's such a fascinating experience just hearing you. I'm pretty sure people are going away with some incredible insights. I've had the privilege of getting a lot of boardroom conversations with you, but this has truly been an extraordinary privilege. Thank you again for doing this. Maybe we can start with the Tata group. Promeat touched about this in his introduction and then you touched about this in your speech as well. The value creation in the Tata group under your leadership has truly been stunning. Many people have talked about it. Rakesh was of course a huge believer in you, and I remember he went against the grain and went long very early on as soon as you took over the leadership of the group. I think it'll be great to maybe start off with some comments from you on how do you really manage this incredibly mind-numbing complexity which is called the Tata group and yet look like this calm, unflappable Chandra that you are.
I think there's no easy answer. First, I enjoy my job. I just love learning different industries. I love to learn different value chains to some extent. I used to do that when I was selling TCS services to global clients. So pretty much I need to understand the value chain so that I can always speak in that context. But sometimes when it is complex, you want to simplify things. So my first job when I came to Tata Sons is I had the opportunity to look at everything with a fresh pair of eyes because except TCS, I did not have visibility of any other companies. So I started by telling everyone that we got to simplify this group. And actually the simplification exactly meant what all we will do — even I didn't know, but I knew that we are going to do a lot of things. So that's what we started looking at. And then I kind of continued with the S series. I started with S, then I said we got to simplify. Then we are in so many adjacent businesses, we got to synergize, so we started synergizing. It created value. Then I said we got to scale. So if it doesn't scale, then this whole energy thing came in. Pandemic time in 2020, we decided that we will go fully new energy: electric vehicles, green power, and so on. So we added sustainability. Then the whole supply chain disruption happened. Then we said we'll put supply chain. Then we were getting into semiconductors, we're getting into batteries, we're getting into so many things. So we said we are creating so many new factories currently. We are building at least in the new areas alone, between semiconductors, batteries, and electric vehicles, we're building seven new factories. All will open between now and early 2027. So these factories will employ 500,000 jobs — five lakh people — in the next 5 years, manufacturing jobs. So we said safety is important. So we put safety. Then we said speed. So now what I started with a single S has become seven S's now. We've been adding and I know teams are responding. Everyone is enjoying what they do and we see a lot of opportunities. So it has been a very...
Enjoyable journey. So I don't worry about I always focus on what I can do. I don't worry too much about the outcome. That's why I am mostly calm, because if you're always worried about the outcome then you can never sleep.
So let me maybe push on that because Chandra, you know, I hear this from I've been on boards of many companies. And I hear this from leaders all the time that they're losing sleep over things that are happening, falling stock prices, lenders getting jittery, bad headlines. You had a combination of all of that when you came over and took reign over the group. I can tell you board members were losing sleep. Did you ever lose sleep? No, I think the um
I think you were in the board when we took the call to shut down telecom. Yeah. You I still remember we had a 50,000 crore hole. Then I went to the board and Amit was very much part of the board and Nithan was there and others were there. So I remember that meeting. So where we said either we put 50,000 and get out or we put 100,000 and stay. So I think we took some bold calls.
Even used to ask me many many times those days what is your debt and in informal conversation. So the first decision we took was to get fit first, fitness first, performance next. So look at only the balance sheet. Don't look at P&L if you don't have the right balance sheet. So fix the balance sheet in all companies. I think that helped and we had done all of that before the pandemic. God forbid if you had not really focused on the balance sheet before the pandemic and pandemic would have eaten us. So I think I would say we were sensible. We were very principled but there is a lot of blessing and luck. I think blessing really favors the brave and probably I would say those who are very the timing worked out. Yeah.
So the bush and steel bought at the right time. We bought it, we integrated and then we enjoyed one home run but if you had done it two years later then would have been interrupted. So the many things that we did the timing it just worked out. Yeah.
No, but I would say to me Chandra as a close observer of you, you do bring a sense of urgency to situations and I think that there's a big lesson in that for corporate leaders that you know what needs to get fixed yesterday should be fixed yesterday, at worst should be fixed today, and that ability to not let a problem really balloon and get fixed as it grows on you is something that you really bring to situations. Kudos for that. Maybe that's a good segue to how you view the country itself and again you spoke a little bit about that in your speech. The prime minister has laid out a bold vision for a Viksit Bharat. We've put out some targets, 7 trillion dollar economy. You talked about the role of digital in making that happen. It would be great for you to maybe expand on that a little bit, particularly given as you opened up your speech with we live in uncertain times. What are some of the key levers we need to push as a nation to realize that vision? What are some of the structural changes India needs to make to achieve that goal?
See, we are in a great situation. I don't think there is any country in the world today so well placed for riding a huge trajectory of economic growth and human capital development like India, not even close. I say this with a lot of thought, not generally making a flippant statement. We have a young population. We have an aspiring population. We have a huge demographic advantage. We need more of everything. Tell me one country which needs more of everything. We need more healthcare. We need more education institutions. If there are 100 Ashokas today, still there'll be people left without admission. Which country in which people can score 98.5% and not make it to not only a college of your choice, a course of their choice. So we need more hotels, we need more tourism, we need more shops, we need more roads, more bridges, we need more power. You take anything that you need, there is a shortage and there is a demand. So I just don't understand when even I don't mean to hurt anyone even some educated people say are we really going to grow or are we going to collapse? Why will we collapse? So we have to work hard to collapse. If you want to collapse we can, but for us we have to work very hard to collapse. Second point is we have to give it to the prime minister Narendra Modi who has created a sense of belief in this country. Forget everything else but he has created a sense of belief in every person, an entrepreneur, a student, sports person, so that everyone can envision to be the best version of themselves. You have to give it to him and he does it over and over again. I don't know how he finds time but he reaches to people and then he does it. So the general mood of the public in this country is this: I want to be good. I want to be better. So there is a lot of demand and this will continue for a very long time. So what we need to do is to execute. The mistake we do in my humble opinion, we think execution is speed. So we kind of try to run faster. Actually we got to see execution not as speed but as removing stumbling blocks. So when you want to run, you want to run where there are no blocks. If you have blocks, you without removing the blocks, you run. What happens is that you fall and that is why this speed we don't get. Why are we only always talking about 6.5? Very few people will say you can grow to 8.5 or 9, but actually we should be growing at 8.5 or 9. So I believe that many years ago India always used to be traveling in the A roads and B roads as an analogy. Suddenly we'll go to the highway and then we will say we have arrived without removing all the road blocks. Then before we realize we'll take the exit and come to the A roads and B roads. But I think today we are in the highway. We are always in the highway but we are not able to continuously travel on the fast lane. Sometimes we switch to the slow lane. So that's why sometimes we expect seven we go to 6.5. Sometimes we think we can go to eight but we are not able to go. So I think the opportunity is clear, demand is there. There is talent, there is skill sets, there is aspiration but we need to make sure there is enough capital. We need to make sure that the small and medium companies have always liquidity. We need to make sure there are sufficient infrastructure, support system, everything is there. So we need to work on the enablers. I am absolutely bullish that for a long period of time this country can grow.
So talking about enablers Chandra, on human capital often I hear business leaders talk about the fact that the people exist but they aren't really trained, that we need to do something to really make sure that they're industry worthy. And so there's this real gap that exists which is really employable talent as opposed to just talent. So what's your perspective on that and what do we really need to do to make sure? I mean you presented a very fascinating vision today where you talked about this new collar right. What do we do to really leapfrog and enable this new collar of talent not just in pockets but in a wave? I think it's a fascinating question and it needs to be addressed according to me in multiple dimensions in parallel.
First, it's absolutely true that we have educated people but not ready for the jobs and we ourselves have to blame. That needs to be fixed but we can't wait till fixing it. So the educational systems need intervention and that needs to be fixed. The quality of education has to get benchmarked. But having said that, we used to do it in TCS: every engineer we recruit we put them through a six months training and get them job ready, and that's the investment industry has to make until such time that we make that. But now there is another way of doing it is also because skills is getting a major thrust. So how do we create skills institutes and link it with the job requirements and then create a process by which the right skills are imparted again set at the right benchmark level so that the skills initiative gains momentum where we give them 21st century skills. It's just not about technical skills, it's about collaborative skills, it's about how to conduct themselves in a meeting, how to ideate, how to so many aspects of doing a job. All those things we have to do. We have to address primary education seriously and we need more Ashokas. There is no question we need to scale such universities to levels that we need to scale. The other aspect we need to focus on is research. How do we create research programs? So even in other groups I used to think, I'm being very open, many times it comes to my mind all the time: while we have individual companies doing research, originally what JRD probably set up called Tata Research and Design and Development Center, that's TCS now, and only TCS is happening. What does it take for me to create a huge Tata Research Park with I don't know 2,000 PhDs working in next generation energy, next generation material? And we should be thinking like that. And for that, what is the amount? And if five six big research parks come and then you kind of tie up with IITs, tie up with the Ashokas to do sabbaticals, and tie up with the hospitals like Tata Memorial to do medical research, then radical and computer science research. So we need to create modern day research centers where we bring the multidisciplinary research, we bring the materials and chemistry together. We bring chemistry and artificial intelligence together, medical science and tech together. So if we do those kind of research and you create intellectual property, so that is the next thing. So this question about talent, we should look at a 10-year journey. Government can do a lot but government cannot do it alone because it is the industry, academia, and the problem where whoever has the problem, that collaboration will make research thrive.
I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, Pramath talked about this a little bit in his introduction and a big part of the Ashoka vision is to build a research-centric institute and we're trying to build the best school for biosciences in the country, the best school for physics in the country. I think as a nation it's abysmal. It's really sad that we are spending an abysmal less than 1% of GDP on R&D and we need to figure out how we can spend a lot more. See, it's not only spending money. I don't think that we harvest what we spend. Yeah, I agree with that as well. I agree with that as well. I think it is what you talked about which is what we spend needs to be done in a cross-sectional manner with involving the industry, academia and the government.
So Chandra, maybe this is good time. We've talked about the group, we've talked about the country and enablers, we've talked about the nation. So maybe we should move to the globe a little bit. And you said you don't want to talk about tariffs. I'm going to ask you about the tariffs because you know you have the right to ask. I have the right not to answer but you know there's so many people who are going to kick me. One of the audience questions is what is your view on the trade war? Yeah you know I mean Chandra, there are thought leaders here. They are academicians here. They are learners and seekers here. And if Chandra doesn't get asked about tariffs, people are going to throw tomatoes at me by the end of this. So Tatas are truly remarkable amongst Indian enterprise because you're truly the you epitomize global organizations. So you really see this from different perspectives unlike most Indian firms do.
What do you think is the right long-term answer and how do you think this is going to ultimately land?
So I think the problem is not tariffs, the problem is the reversal of a model that we've gotten used to for six seven decades. Okay, so it's a model change. If whole world had operated with tariffs between countries all the time, then the whole supply chain would not have got globally integrated. So what is the problem? The problem is the global supply chain has got integrated. So very aptly, globalization basically you produced where it is cheap or where it is efficient and is sold where there is a demand. So that's a byproduct of the model that the world got used to for so long. Now if you change the model, the underlying supply chain infrastructure has to change. That can't change overnight because there is talent issue, there is raw material issue, there is sourcing issue, there's so many things. So that is going to be the fundamental problem. So I think it will play out. It's not going to get solved. So it's not going back to zero. I personally believe that's not going to go back to zero because once something is announced, some part of it will stay. So where it settles, whether it settles uniformly across countries or it all gets solved bilaterally, only time will tell. And if you want to know more, there are very exciting videos on YouTube which is every minute a new video is coming.
We've got tons of questions so I'm going to maybe try to get to one last one from my side and I may have a couple as well. Chandra, I have a 20-year-old and you have a slightly older son and we are live streaming this. There are thousands of young kids watching in the Ashoka campus and I know that Lax will watch it afterwards. You talked about the new collar world. What advice would you have for kids who are today on campus who are going to graduate? Because I know that the anxiety level has actually gone up with all the talk about AI and the new technology and so people are actually beginning to think that the uncertainty is negative. But you painted a somewhat different picture. What do you tell your son? What should I tell my daughter?
