Founding Director, August 15, 2047 Project | Building institutional capability through Viksit Bharat Operating System (VBOS) | Author, Get Job Ready (Penguin)
Hyderabad & Bay Area
Joined March 2009
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Yesterday, we shared a glimpse. Today, we reveal what it means.
The August 15, 2047 Project is now live — with VBOS (Viksit Bharat Operating System) at its core.
India has the talent. The capital. The ambition. And increasingly, the policy.
The question is: How do we turn all of that into compounding outcomes?
Explore the project:
august152047.in/
And please share it with people who care about India’s future.
चलो August 15, 2047 🇮🇳
Generous salaries and a strong research pipeline can coexist, which suggests that what a student chooses depends heavily on what the institution celebrates.
'India hasn’t decided what it wants from the IITs'
Vasu Eda @VasuEda, author and Founding Director of the August 15, 2047 Project, writes
#ThePrintOpinion
theprint.in/opinion/india-de…
Vasu Eda retweeted
“Without the ecosystem, no manufacturing effort will ever pay off.”
India's Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw talks about methodically building out systems at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in New Delhi. Read more: bloom.bg/4s4PEAr
Vasu Eda retweeted
Alienation and isolation are the twin themes of this decade. Yet, our biology equips us to be social, to live in groups, to cooperate. Rohini's op-ed in @EconomicTimes today (World Mental Health Day) on how compassion, cooperation and caring can help address emerging societal problems:
economictimes.indiatimes.com…
India has made real progress on risk-taking and risk capital. Two constraints remain: corporations reinvesting for the long term, and the first customer willing to pay for unproven solutions.
The first-customer gap isn’t unique to India. China and Europe face it too. The US is unusual: government agencies act as early buyers, and large companies routinely pilot and purchase from startups.
Capital can finance innovation. It cannot, by itself, create the customers and institutions that let it scale. The question for India isn’t only how much we invest. It’s who will be the first customer.
Vasu Eda retweeted
HEARTBROKEN: a phenomenal actor but most importantly a dear friend, Nana Patekar is no more. Passed away in Goa short while ago. Spoke to him only yesterday. His last words to me: Kaalji Ghe Raja (take care Raja). Will miss you Nana sir on and off screen . You were always there for me, through good times and bad. Om Shanti 🙏🙏🙏
Institutions that can sustain attention for decades create the conditions for breakthroughs. The real story is the 22 years of sustained commitment behind it. Karl Deisseroth started his lab at Stanford in 2004.
Vasu Eda retweeted
The most important briefings of the day.
Karl Deisseroth, professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, shares the news of his Nobel Prize with his kids.
Deeply saddened to hear that Dr. Palle Rama Rao, Padma Vibhushan, passed away last night.
Dr. Rama Rao wrote the foreword to my first book, Get Job Ready. For me, it was much more than a foreword. It was a gesture of trust and generosity from someone I deeply admired. His support opened doors for my work in India in ways I am only fully able to appreciate now.
I was also fortunate to spend time with him over several meals and conversations. I will always cherish his warmth, encouragement and generosity with his time.
His contributions to India will be remembered for generations. I feel incredibly fortunate to have known him, and I will miss him deeply.
Rest in peace, Dr. Rama Rao.
I sent the TRUST Fellowship to a PhD researcher at MIT, cold. Her first reaction: "this looks really cool." Then came three questions it couldn't answer.
A good idea can fail from bad design. A weak pilot can get misread as "no demand."
august152047.substack.com/p/…
Vasu Eda retweeted
अपने आपको जीवन में ढूंढना है, तो लोगों की मदद में खो जाओ।-बापू
देश और दुनिया को अहिंसा, शांति, सद्भाव का मार्ग दिखाकर मानवता का कल्याण करने वाले राष्ट्रपिता महात्मा गांधी जी की जयंती पर उनके चरणों में कोटिश: नमन्।
#GandhiJayanti
Vasu Eda retweeted
A terrific piece about which educational interventions are cost-effective: nytimes.com/2026/09/28/upsho… It notes the effectiveness of things like science of reading, small group tutoring and grading schools, while other things people like don't measure up.
Vasu Eda retweeted
It fills me in awe when I see so many inspirational stories in our country- of people who have dedicated themselves selflessly to a cause. And here is an example….
“For India, this should reinforce the government’s resolve to pursue domestic reforms to improve competitiveness. There are no shortcuts to success.”
India now has a few years' data to show the impact of its trade deals w/ UAE & Australia.
+ Neither deal caused "flood" of imports.
- India's trade with UAE only gained marginally as part of India's basket; trade with Australia shrank.
My latest:
csis.org/analysis/us-india-i…
Ask not what your rank is. Ask whether your country gives its citizens enough ways to learn, contribute and move up without first winning a narrow entrance contest.
India's Sorting Machine 👇
august152047.substack.com/p/…
Vasu Eda retweeted
IIT Bombay tragedy shows how India’s shaming culture makes failure harder to bear
Amana Begam @Amana_Ansari columnist, writes
#ThePrintOpinion
theprint.in/opinion/iit-bomb…
Less than 0.3% of India's higher education students attend our most sought-after institutions. Yet a wildly disproportionate share of our national conversation about talent and capability centers on who gets into them.
At the individual or family level, this makes complete sense, wanting the best possible opportunity for your child is entirely rational, given what these institutions currently confer.
But at the level of national conversation and policy, it makes far less sense. That's not a comment on the institutions themselves. It's a comment on what we've built around them: a sorting machine, optimized to identify a tiny fraction of high scorers, rather than an education and capability system built to develop the other 99.7%.
If we want to talk about national capability, the more consequential questions are elsewhere: how many pathways exist to build real skills, find productive work, or start a business, and how much of India's own corporate capital has gone into sustained R&D and globally competitive companies, not just headline funding rounds.
Development isn't about sorting a small number of people into elite institutions. It's about creating conditions where far more people can develop and use their capabilities.
august152047.substack.com/p/…
Vasu Eda retweeted
My dear students,
As you walk into your examination halls, remember this: an exam measures what you wrote on one day. It does not measure who you are or what you will become.
You earned your place at IIT Kharagpur through years of effort, and that strength has not left you. Trust your preparation. Breathe. Take one question at a time.
And whenever the pressure feels heavy, know that you are not carrying it alone. My hand is on your shoulder, today and always. This Institute stands behind every one of you, on your good days and on your difficult ones.
Give it your honest best. That is all I ask, and it is more than enough.
All the very best.
Prof. Suman Chakraborty
Director, IIT Kharagpur
#IITKharagpur #KGPians #AllTheBest #DirectorsMessage #YouAreNotAlone
@Suman_iitkgp
India has a choice: revise the Viksit Bharat goal, or make the architectural changes that goal requires. There is no in between.
Four foundational tests:
1. A scheme is not a system.
2. Mobile is not broadband.
3. $8–10 billion is not a frontier.
4. Enrolment is not learning.
Productive jobs outside agriculture, at scale and including women, are the scoreboard.
The World Is Not a Kibbutz:
august152047.substack.com/p/…
Vasu Eda retweeted
European VCs doing 300 hours of research before investing 2500 Euro into a compliance startup
If we are serious about strategic autonomy, and ultimately about the Viksit Bharat goal for 2047, the harder question is: what institutional architecture would allow India to systematically build the capabilities that autonomy requires?
The choice is not between ambition and patience. It is between changing that architecture to support long-term capability building, or continuing to ask the existing architecture to deliver a fundamentally different outcome.
This is the question behind my next piece, which I’ll publish on the August 15, 2047 Substack: open.substack.com/pub/august…
The present difference between India and the United States is about more than Russian oil. It suggests a deeper disagreement over the meaning of partnership.
Washington habitually treats strategic convergence as requiring political compliance. New Delhi visualises partnership as cooperation between sovereign powers that will continue to differ over Russia, Iran and the management of China. When such differences are turned into public tests of loyalty, diplomacy gives way to theatre and accommodation or conciliation becomes politically harder.
India need not respond with wounded nationalism. The real measure of strategic autonomy is not the vehemence with which such pressure is denounced, but the extent to which the country can withstand it. That requires diversified defence supplies, greater energy security, technological capability, manufacturing strength and resilience . Autonomy without such foundations will be rhetoric resting upon dependence.
But Washington must also recognise the contradiction in its approach. It needs India to contribute to an Asian balance favourable to the United States while demanding that New Delhi surrender the freedom of judgement that makes it an independent strategic actor. It cannot seek a stronger India and simultaneously insist upon a more obedient one.
The relationship is too important to be reduced to an argument over who purchases how much oil from whom. India needs the United States for technology, investment and the Asian balance. The United States needs an India that is capable, confident and resistant to Chinese predominance.
Neither country requires sentimental reaffirmations of friendship. Both require a steadier understanding of limits: India must convert autonomy into national capability, and America must learn that partnership is not a euphemism for deference. The task is not to eliminate disagreement, but to prevent every disagreement from translating into a referendum on the relationship.
#IndiaUS