At Mumbai Climate Week, Niti Ayog VC Suman Bery Highlights Growth, Gender Inclusion and India's Clean Energy Push

Why It Matters

The remarks underscore how gender‑inclusive growth and clean‑energy strategies can boost India’s global competitiveness in technology and manufacturing sectors.

Key Takeaways

• Growth drives women’s labor participation, creating a virtuous cycle
• Renewables offer comparative advantage; grid integration remains challenge
• India’s data centre costs undercut US, boosting competitiveness
• Reliable power essential for chip manufacturing ambitions
• Global capability centres expanding rapidly, fueling digital infrastructure

Pulse Analysis

India’s climate agenda is increasingly being framed as a catalyst for inclusive economic expansion. By invoking the research of Nobel laureates Claudia Goldin and Arthur Lewis, Suman Bery suggested that accelerated GDP growth naturally expands labor demand, especially for women, creating a feedback loop that strengthens both productivity and social equity. This narrative aligns with Prime Minister Modi’s vision of energy self‑sufficiency, positioning renewable resources as a driver of broader development rather than a standalone environmental goal.

The practical challenge, however, lies in integrating India’s vast solar and wind capacity into an aging grid. Bery emphasized that while the country enjoys a comparative advantage in renewable potential, the real test is modernizing transmission infrastructure and deploying smart‑grid technologies to ensure stability. Simultaneously, India’s lower operational costs for data centres present a compelling case for attracting global digital workloads, reinforcing the nation’s position as a cost‑effective hub for cloud services and emerging technologies.

These dynamics have direct implications for high‑value manufacturing, particularly semiconductor fabrication, which demands uninterrupted, high‑quality power. As global capability centres (GCCs) mushroom across the country, the convergence of affordable clean energy, robust digital infrastructure, and skilled labor—especially women—could accelerate India’s transition from a manufacturing destination to an innovation powerhouse. Policymakers will need to coordinate energy, digital, and workforce strategies to sustain this momentum and fully realize the economic upside of the climate transition.

At Mumbai Climate Week, Niti Ayog VC Suman Bery highlights growth, gender inclusion and India's clean energy push

Source: ANI · Feb 18, 2026 at 04:06 PM IST

NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery outlined a vision that connects economic growth, women's workforce participation, and India's push for energy self‑sufficiency, arguing that clean technology and competitive infrastructure can reinforce the country's development trajectory.

Drawing on insights from Nobel laureates, Bery reflected on the relationship between growth and labour‑force participation, particularly of women.

“One of the Nobel Prize laureates a couple of years ago, Claudia Goldin, has documented even in the United States that there is a gender gap, a wage gap,” he said, talking to reporters on the sidelines of Mumbai Climate Week. “But I think the most important insight I could offer comes from another Nobel Prize laureate who I happened to hear when I was at graduate school, was at Princeton, which is where I was, Sir Arthur Lewis.”

Bery elaborated on Lewis’s thesis linking growth and labour mobilisation. “So what Sir Arthur Lewis basically said, and he had enormous experience, is that, if economies grow, they will look for sort of labour resources,” he noted.

“What we’ve seen in the US is women came into the labour force and after that migrants came into the labour force. So, you know, in some ways this is sort of interactive. You grow faster and more women will be sucked in,” he said. “You prime the pump so that you induce women, grow faster. So that’s the magic circle, that’s the spiral we have to aim for.”

Turning to the broader theme of Mumbai Climate Week, Bery aligned his remarks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of energy self‑reliance.

“The underlying theme of Bombay Climate Week and of my remarks was that, consistent with PM’s speech from Red Fort of India’s self‑sufficiency in energy, we should exult in the fact that technology is now giving us competitiveness in a fuel source which is abundant, which is the sun and wind. So that plays to us.”

He emphasized that while India’s renewable resource base offers a comparative advantage, integration remains the key challenge. “Now the question of integrating these new resources with which we are abundantly endowed into the existing grid is the challenge,” he said.

Bery also highlighted India’s cost competitiveness in emerging infrastructure sectors.

“What I read in the newspapers, this is not Niti research, is that a data centre in India for all kinds of reasons is much cheaper than a data centre in the US, for all kinds of reasons,” he said. “So if we can be competitive in both the grid, and in mobilising, it plays to our comparative advantage.”

He underscored the importance of reliable power supply for India’s ambitions in advanced manufacturing. “The next point is, of course, quality of power supply, which turns out to be incredibly important for our ambitions in chip manufacturing,” Bery said. “So there is the issue of a coordinated development of the infrastructure, but also the issue of uninterrupted high‑quality power, which probably would be taken care of by the data‑centre operators themselves.”

Pointing to the rapid expansion of global capability centres (GCCs) and data infrastructure, he added, “Who would have thought the GCCs would be growing like mushrooms, or data centres might grow like mushrooms.”