India’s growth targets of $7-8 trillion GDP in 6 years and $30 trillion by 2047 are achievable but will be far harder than past growth stories due to a hostile global environment, according to V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor. 

Nageswaran was speaking at the 67th Institute Day celebrations of Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) held here on Thursday. 

Tech-led growth

Nageswaran added that India’s growth must be technology-led as the world is not going to give it as easily as it did to other nations when they were growing up in the last 30- 40 years.

“We have to generate frontier research in science and engineering. India’s universities and labs must be at the cutting edge of the global knowledge ecosystem. Moreover, we have to do this at scale. Given our huge population, everything that we do cannot be simply a sandbox experiment or a pilot phase, but it has to be capable of deploying at scale,” he said. 

He also pointed out some structural challenges in India such as a low R&D spending of below 1 per cent of GDP, significantly below China’s 2.4 per cent and the US’ 3.5 per cent.

“Industry academia linkages are still weak, restricting the translation of research into commercial outcomes. Capital allocation is skewed towards asset-light services over manufacturing, chasing short term returns rather than long term technology building,” he said.

Education system

As for how the education system has to evolve to the AI age, Nageswartan said that the emphasis must move away from credential accumulation toward technical depth. “A critical skill will be the ability to ask the right questions for effectively leveraging AI systems which will in turn require wide reading, interdisciplinary exposure, and the ability to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs,” he said. 

The ceremony also saw students, faculty, non-academic employees and alumni of IIT Madras felicitated with awards including Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder, Perplexity.ai, Srinivas Narayanan Chief Technology Officer, B2B Applications, Open AI, and Jayant Paleti Co-Founder & CEO, Darwinbox, among key awardees.

Published on April 30, 2026