Technology
India is a poor country. At $2,000 annual per capita, we are a long way to being wealthy. India should be looking to adopt the newest technologies. This can only happen if entrepreneurs are given the freedom to innovate. Unfortunately, the history of Indian policy-making has been one of interventions. Every intervention creates obstacles for entrepreneurs driven by the profit motive – and profits can only come if they offer something that consumers are willing to pay for. Web3 is one of those technologies where India’s policymakers have got it wrong. With a definition so wide as to almost put a stop to all Web3 activity (tokens are at the heart of Web3’s ownership model), Indian policymakers will make it impossible for a Web3 company to do business in the country.
Atanu Dey explains technology thus: “Our lives are immersed in technology. More accurately, we are immersed in the products of technology. But what is technology? The simplest broad definition is that technology is “know how.” More precisely, technology is about knowing how to do something…We use technology. By that we mean, we use the products of technology. Since technology is “know how”, and “know how” is essentially ideas, the products of technology are “embodied ideas.” Technology products are ideas given a physical form, or made incarnate…Technology gets transmitted from person to person through the transmission of ideas. Ideas are what in economics are known as “non-rival goods”, as opposed to “private goods.” Non-rival goods can be shared without reducing the quantity available. We both can’t eat the same apple: which makes apples a private good. But if I have an idea and I share it with you, we both will have the idea. If there are 10 people each of whom has one idea, and they share the ideas among themselves, then each person will have 10 ideas.”
Entrepreneurs have transformed the world around us. In an as-yet-unpublished essay, Atanu writes:
People invent technology. And the number of people who have ever lived grows with time. Therefore, our flow of technological inventions per unit of time grows. And with the increasing flow of technology, the rate of growth of the stock of technology grows with time.
There’s a positive feedback loop in this process. The greater stock of technology enables more people to spend more time developing technology, which in turn increases the flow (and stock) of technology, which goes full circle and allows more people to devote to developing technology.
Economic growth — the growth in the amount of useful stuff produced by people — is both a cause and a consequence of technology. It is because of our present state of our technology that the earth can support a population of nearly 8 billion people at the level of material prosperity we have today. That would have been impossible any time in the past because they just did not have the knowledge we have.
It is this world of technology that Indians need to be part of. When policymakers introduce legislation, taxation or regulation to curb its use, they hurt and impoverish their people. This is where India’s policymakers have made a wrong turn with Web3.
