Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day address this year felt different. His 103-minute oration, the longest of his tenure, was anchored in the language of national sovereignty. At a time when the United States has imposed tariffs on Indian exports, unsettling trade talks, the PM sought to turn the national conversation from negotiation to assertion, and to the deeper emotion of sovereignty.
In this vision, citizens are not just beneficiaries but also guardians of that autonomy. Here, sovereignty takes shape in the capacity to build our own fertilisers, batteries, jet engines and defence systems. It finds expression in the symbolic unveiling of the Sudarshan Chakra defence kit, in the pledge of sweeping GST reform, and in the assurance that farmers and households alike will not be left exposed as the push for self-reliance accelerates.
Technological sovereignty was also mentioned in his message. As the Prime Minister declared, “From operating systems to cyber security, from deep tech to artificial intelligence, everything should be our own, on which the strength of our own people is concentrated, we should introduce the power of their capabilities to the world.”
For perspective, one must only count the number of senior officials in Delhi who still use foreign-owned “gmail”, despite possessing official “.nic.in” addresses. There is a temptation to reduce all this to political choreography. Modi’s earlier Red Fort addresses highlighted schemes of inclusion, like Jan Dhan, Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala. But this one is cast in the harder register of industrial resurrection and techno-sovereignty. It is meant to rally households as much as boardrooms. But history is unkind to speeches not backed by delivery.
The hardest of India’s ambition is to stake a meaningful claim in the global race for emerging technologies. The country missed the first wave (Web1 era), not through want of talent but through want of an ecosystem. In the past decades, its best brains, including mathematicians and engineers, left India, while domestic research budgets stayed meagre, patents were scarce, and private investments low.
India became the world’s back office, designing chips for others, writing code for global companies, and running IT services, but it rarely created its own products or owned valuable patents. In a fast-moving field like technology, where early movers gain lasting advantages, India fell behind on big breakthroughs in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and the hardware-software frontier. Our universities do not yet produce research at scale, and most industries spend too little on R&D. Our brightest youngsters, especially in areas like AI, quantum and Web3, have also been moving abroad for better opportunities and access to global markets, and this slow drain of talent weakens the very idea of technological sovereignty that India now seeks to champion.
Catching up will take more than money. It needs a cultural reset, including in the policy world. India has never invested enough in long-term research or built lasting partnerships between universities and industry. Recent government missions remain far too small for the scale of the challenge. The IndiaAI Mission has a budget of Rs 10,371.92 crore and the National Quantum Mission Rs ₹6003.65 crore over eight years. Compared to what is needed to lead in frontier science, these amounts are tiny.
Unless the state commits deeper investment and private capital amplifies it, these missions will remain a scaffolding rather than become engines of change. Frontier technologies do not emerge from frugal innovation or Jugaad.
The United States created its lead by binding venture capital with defence research and universities. China, for its part, mobilised the state with massive investments across sectors and then drew in private capital to accelerate research and commercialisation. India has yet to frame AI as core infrastructure rather than a promising sector. To re-enter the race, it will need patient public capital to underwrite risk, regulation that rewards open experimentation, and a cultural shift that prizes invention over execution alone.
The next few months will matter less for headline numbers like GDP or inflation, and more for how quickly promises turn into action. If we see ground being broken for chip plants and wider AI ecosystem investments, people will believe the momentum is real. If farmers, small businesses and everyday consumers begin to feel the benefit of GST reform, the idea of shared self-reliance will carry weight.
Emotional sovereignty can be a deep moat, but no political or policy fortress stands without delivery. In an era where technology shapes both economic power and national security, India’s independence will be measured by the labs and factories built, research funded and commercialised, and AI platforms and ecosystems that are not only homegrown but also globally relevant.
The writer is a corporate advisor and author of Family and Dhanda
