Maharashtra Development Partnership Roundtable
Summary
The Wadhwani Chair in U.S.–India Policy Studies and the India Initiative at Georgetown University hosted the Maharashtra Development Partnership Roundtable, featuring the Honorable Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Maharashtra is India’s economic powerhouse. This coastal state is home to India’s economic capital of Mumbai and the source of 40% of the central government’s tax revenues. But the state also embodies many of India’s contradictions; its eastern reaches are remote, prone to drought and deeply poor.
The “States Initiative” under the Wadhwani Chair has been tracking the many reforms, policies and initiatives coming out of India’s states—including Maharashtra. Together with the Energy & National Security Program at CSIS they serve as the secretariat of the U.S.–India State & Urban Initiative. The visit of the Chief Minister was a culmination of the over a year and a half long engagement CSIS has had with government officials from Maharashtra with the aim of finding the most suitable U.S. partners for their energy priorities. This event brought together a select group of U.S. stakeholders, including those from the energy, water, transportation, health, finance, and information technology sectors, who could serve as valuable partners to the government of Maharashtra as they undertake an ambitious development and reform agenda for the state.
Three new partnerships were announced with the government of Maharashtra:
- The government of Maharashtra and the Network for Global Innovation (NGIN) will sign an agreement to develop a clean tech incubator ecosystem in the state of Maharashtra to accelerate adoption of sustainable technologies and encourage growth of trade and investment of these technologies.
- CSIS is also collaborating with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) on research led by two professors—Dr. Usha Nair-Reichert from the School of Economics and Dr. Anjali Thomas Bohlken from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. They will be beginning a pilot study to understand the consumer dynamics of and consumers’ responsiveness to adoption of new technologies in the electricity sector in Maharashtra, India.
- Pune, Maharashtra, was announced as India’s first Lighthouse City as a result of a Grand Challenge competition launched in 2017 by NITI Aayog and Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute.
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