New Delhi, Sept. 7 -- A few days ago, Pratap Bhanu Mehta offered a searing indictment of Indian capitalism in the Indian Express. At a time when tectonic shifts in world politics require Indian capital to step up, he finds that it "shows little appetite for risk, no courage, little ambition for leadership, and little confidence in its own ability to build."

He echoes what Naushad Forbes has argued for a long time: that India's top companies underinvest in R&D. At a mere 0.3% of GDP, private spending on R&D is a fifth of the world average. India's ten most profitable firms invest a mere 2% of their profit in research, compared to 29-55% invested by their counterparts in the US, China, Japan and Germany. Alphabet, BMW and Huawei individual...