The India Center concluded its annual India Lecture Series for the academic year, hosting Hemang Jani, Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the World Bank for India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. As the final speaker in the series, Jani shared his perspectives on what India’s growth strategy leading up to 2047 should look like.

Moderated by Shaurya Agarwal, Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering, the lecture brought together students, faculty, and community members, expanding the reach of timely and meaningful conversations around the future of India’s growth.

This lecture approached India’s growth through the lens of revitalizing its public sector by incorporating technology into areas that were previously fully analog. Jani proposed the integration of fully digitized government services — such as the national train system and its ticketing infrastructure — as a key driver of modernization.

Improvements to public services, he argued, would also bolster global perceptions of India. Developing infrastructure to benefit citizens is likely to increase immigration into India, along with investment from venture capital.

“Technologies are going to be the new humanities, and the more we work at the nexus of technology and public policy, the better we will be at solving public sector challenges.”
— Hemang Jani, Senior Advisor, World Bank

In addition to discussing the revitalization of the public sector, Jani highlighted the growing importance of investing in AI-driven startups. He pointed to the emergence of what he described as “eight unicorns” that have since become publicly traded companies, noting that innovation in this space is poised to drive breakthrough discoveries, significant investment, and strong public interest.

As the final lecture of the 2025–2026 Annual India Lecture Series, Yogesh Joshi, Ph.D., Director of The India Center, reflected on the program’s rapid growth over the past year.

“We started this lecture series last year and it has grown leaps and bounds in a very short time. As more and more new students, faculty, postdocs, and Ph.D. students turn up for our events, I see new faces every single time we do this. That is the metric of success for The India Center.”
— Yogesh Joshi, Ph.D., Director, The India Center