NITI Aayog CEO: India needs 2,500 universities to accommodate 50% students

Delivering a keynote address at the Indian School of Business (ISB) on Friday (November 15, 2024) in Hyderabad, he said though one university and two colleges were opened every week in the past ten years, only 29% of the age cohort enroll in the varsities.

The CEO said India has created a huge architecture called digital public infrastructure by going the public route rather than the private.

The official further said Estonia was the first country with a population of two million which went for digital identity. However, India did at the scale of 140 crore people and everybody has a digital identity and 120 crore people have bank accounts.

India has become a place which is digitally and financially connected with an identity, which has led to innovations one after another, he said, adding that UPI is an innovation and 48 to 50 per cent of all global financial transactions happen in India.

As many as 10 billion transactions a month are happening, which may be lower in terms of value and very high in terms of volume, the NITI CEO said.

With the vast base that has been created in the last 10 years, India has probably become a huge hub for fintech innovation, Mr. Subrahmanyam added.

Talking about the transformation in the country during the last decade, he said there will be a drinking water supply in every village by the end of next year.

In the last 10 years, 25 crore people have escaped "acute poverty", he said, also highlighting the transformation in highways, railways (including Vande Bharat trains) and others in the country.

He also said India can be a leader in climate change as the technologies to address the issue have not yet been invented fully.

Observing that most countries in the west have developed stable economies which have to be "rewired and re-engineered" for a green future.

He said such re-engineering is not required in a large part of India and climate-friendly mobility and power systems can be developed.

The government's missions, such as those related to AI and semiconductor are aimed at keeping the country ahead in the concerned areas, he said.

India is going to be a powerful nation in terms of its innovative capabilities, he said.

He also said NITI Aayog is preparing visions for the country, preparing economic plans for cities and trying to transform agriculture into new areas like horticulture and aquaculture.