Ashwini Vaishnaw discusses infrastructure growth strategy linking railways and digital networks in New Delhi; India aims to become developed by 2047

Ashwini Vaishnaw discusses infrastructure growth strategy linking railways and digital networks in New Delhi; India aims to become developed by 2047

India Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw: Exceptional Leaders Interview | Morgan Stanley

August 19, 2026 The success of India’s transformation isn’t just about building rail lines, data centers or chip fabs – it means connecting them into a cohesive strategy that is widely beneficial. “Technology should not be left in the hands of a few,” says Ashwini Vaishnaw, who is India’s Minister for Railways, Electronics and Information Technology and a key figure in India’s development. In this episode of Exceptional Leaders, Morgan Stanley’s Head of India Research and Chief India Equity Strategist, Ridham Desai, sits down with Minister Vaishnaw in New Delhi to discuss the role of physical and digital infrastructure as a growth engine for India and its goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047. MINISTER VAISHNAW When we say democratized technology, we mean that technology should not be left in the hands of a few. It should be accessible to a wide section of the society, and people should be able to use them, create solutions, and make a difference in their own lives. RIDHAM DESAI India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, and it’s building at a pace and scale that few countries have attempted simultaneously: new rail corridors, a nationwide 5G rollout, a fast-growing electronics export sector, and an ambitious push into AI and semi-conductors, all at once. One of the architects of this transformation is Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s Minister for Railways, Electronics, and Information Technology. An engineer and former entrepreneur, Minister Vaishnaw oversees two of the country’s most consequential platforms: the rail network that moves billions of passengers and millions of tons of cargo every year and the digital infrastructure that underpins data, payments, and compute for a country of nearly of nearly 1.5 billion people. As Head of India Research and Chief India Equity Strategist, I was curious to learn more about what it takes to lead ambitious change in a country as large and diverse as India. So I sat down with Minister Vaishnaw in his offices in New Delhi to talk about what it takes to modernize a country’s physical and digital backbone and what this means for India’s continued development. DESAI It’s great to have you here, Minister Vaishnaw, on Exceptional Leaders. MINISTER VAISHNAW Thank you, Ridham, for having me here. DESAI You have been at the helm of what I would consider as the world’s largest scale transformation: Indian Railways. How did you do this? And that too, in such a short span of time? MINISTER VAISHNAW It is a very complex organization and a very large organization: 1.2 million employees, 135,000 km of railway track, 7.4 billion people traveling on the network. Very complex network. The biggest challenge that we faced was to understand how this organization operates and then find out where the constraints are, then making sure that the solution is accepted by the people, and then go forward. Everywhere we looked at, “What is the constraint? What are the problems?” Go down to the root of the problem. Solve for the root. Whether you have to make a change in the process, whether you have to make a change in technology, whether you have to make a change in the machines which are used, whether you have to make a change in the training: it’s like going deep dive practically in every part of this huge, big organization. DESAI How critical is this transformation to India’s manufacturing aspirations? And also on tech diffusion? MINISTER VAISHNAW Manufacturing competitiveness has logistics cost and logistics efficiency as a major element. And when we are improving the railway operations, this is directly impacting the cost of logistics and the efficiency of logistics. A decade ago, we used to carry just about 1,000 million tonnes of cargo. Today, we are carrying 1,670 million tonnes of cargo. This directly impacts the way industries operate. If the industries are located close to a railway terminal, then it becomes very easy for them to manufacture straight away, put it on the wagons, and ship it to the place they would like it to go. DESAI India now operates one of the largest rail freight networks and one of the largest 5G ecosystems in the world and has done both on an impressive timeline. The Minister makes the case that these aren’t separate initiatives but a single coordinated growth engine. The question now is whether India can extend that momentum into the next frontier: artificial intelligence. DESAI On the two foundational networks you run: rail and digital. At first sight, they seem very different from each other, but they do intersect. MINISTER VAISHNAW They look very different, but basically, they are part of that same growth strategy that India is following for the last decade. These two networks are basically increasing India’s productivity, improving the efficiency in our economy, and third, they are making a big difference in people’s lives. Railway: today, we are the second-largest goods career in the entire world. If we invest in this network, then it makes a huge difference in the growth. Second, it is bringing the logistics efficiency. Third, we can have affordable travel for our people. If you look at this Vande Bharat Express: designed in India, made in India, semi-high-speed 180 km

h speed potential. We are able to provide this kind of service at 2.3 cents a kilometer. Go to China: it is about seven times. Go to Japan: it is about ten times this price. Go to Europe: it is about twenty times. So we are able to provide very good service at a very affordable price at the income level at which we are in our country today. Same is the case of the digital network. We focused on making sure that 5G reaches every part of the country. Practically 90% of the country has 5G today: second-largest 5G ecosystem in the world. And look at the digital public infra, the payment system, the DigiLocker, the document management system: all these things have ensured that our people get the benefits of digital economy, which normally would have accrued only to the developed countries. So both sectors in that sense are very important for India’s growth and very important for making a difference in people’s lives. So that way they are interconnected. DESAI What is it that India is doing on AI? The world seems to have the view that India is falling behind. Would you agree, disagree, and how would you inform that view? MINISTER VAISHNAW Our biggest strength is in the applications layer. The biggest strength of our IT industry is to go into any enterprise, understand the enterprise, understand the operating system of the enterprise, and provide a solution based on that operating system. Almost 80% of the startups which are coming up now are basically providing AI-based solutions. The second layer in which we are playing well is the data center. We are one of those few countries which have more than half the power generation capacities from clean power: about 250 gigawatts is from renewable energy sources. DESAI A decade ago, mobile phones ranked168th on India’s export list. Today, they’re number one. That trajectory is now being applied to semiconductors, where India already accounts for 20% of the global chip design workforce. For investors watching supply chain diversification away from China, this is one of the most significant manufacturing stories in the emerging world. DESAI The success that we have had in electronics is unbelievable. Ten years ago, phones was 168th on our list of export items. It is now number one. What has driven this success, and is this the template for semiconductors for chips? MINISTER VAISHNAW We started electronics manufacturing in a very, very methodical way. We started with getting the finished products assembly in our ecosystem. Then we went to the module level, then we went to the submodule level, and now we are at the component level. So step-by-step, building this entire ecosystem. Because of this strategy, in a period of [the] last decade, we have been able to establish ourselves as an important electronics manufacturing destination. The second big advantage that we have is the trust that the world has on India. We have a very strong copyright and IP right protection system. The third point is our capabilities in design. We are a country which is where our engineers are designing products for practically the entire world. That has given us the template which we are using in multiple sectors, for example, in the case of semiconductors. In the case of chip manufacturing, we focused a lot on the design capabilities, which where we are very strong already. Already 20% of the global design workforce is in India, so we decided to take it to a totally, totally next level. So we gave the best of the design tools to 318 universities now. The students are using Synopsys, Cadence, and so many other tools. These are the chips designed by students. Look at the names of the places: Kolkata, Surat, Jalandhar, Gwalior, Indore. Throughout the country, these chips are manufactured in a semiconductor laboratory. In that laboratory, the chips are manufactured, fabricated, and then they are assembled, and the final chip is tested so the students get to see the result of what they have designed. DESAI You have often said that we need to democratize technology. What does that exactly mean, and how is it informing India’s progress in technology? MINISTER VAISHNAW When we looked at the 5G rollout, we decided that we will not limit 5G to the big cities, but we will make sure that 5G goes out to the villages. So practically 90% of the country is today covered under 5G. When we created this DPI structure, the entire structure is built in a way that, let’s say, the payment system: it should not be monopoly of one or two companies. It should be any startup which wants to come up with a new solution. They must get the opportunity to prove their solution. DESAI The ground level input that the Minister’s office is capturing on these reforms is in service of a broader goal. 2047 marks the 100th anniversary of India’s independence, and the Indian government has made it the target date for what it calls Viksit Bharat, or Developed India, a national vision to transform the country into a fully developed economy. DESAI How do you see India’s transformation? How will it look like in 2047? MINISTER VAISHNAW We have taken a target of making our country as a developed nation, then converting that target into sector-specific goals, then looking at a short-term, medium-term, long-term strategy, then building those, that basic growth engine, which is built on the four pillars: investment in physical, digital and social infra, inclusive growth, focus on innovation, and manufacturing. That kind of thinking and that kind of execution is helping us move consistently in our journey towards a developed nation. More than 250 million people have come out of extreme poverty in the last decade. That’s a huge achievement for the country. We will become leaders in some of the technologies that we have selected for us. We will have equal opportunities for a large section of this society. In 2047, we’ll be 37 years median age. We will still be a young country at 2047, when we will be about anywhere between $25 to $30 trillion economy, and we will have another 50 years of growth ahead of us because of our demography. So all these factors together, and the foundation that is being built today, will give us that growth path for the many decades going forward. DESAI It’s fantastic. Okay, my final question. Are there any projects, either personal or professional, that you are going to tackle next? MINISTER VAISHNAW Developing the 350 km

h bullet train is on top of my agenda. So it is very important to have this entire technological base in our country. And second, going to the seven nanometers from 28 nanometers. That’s again going to be a very big challenge for the