6 hours ago
India should strive for sovereign autonomy in its domestic electronics and semiconductor ecosystems and make their manufacturing so valuable that the country is important enough in the value chain to be taken seriously, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary S Krishnan said.
Speaking at the 13th Annual Forum 2026 of the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI), Krishnan said that remaining entirely dependent on global electronics and semiconductor supply chains was no longer feasible for an economy the size of India.
Companies in these sectors should be open to adopting and making products using the latest versions of whatever technology solutions prevail in the world, so Indian citizens can continue to access them.
At the same time, India will also need to build enough domestic capacity so that if other countries involved in the global supply chain deny the export of any particular technology from their respective geographies, there is protection against possible disruptions.
“Disruptions happen all the time; denial happens all the time. And we have had very recent instances of denial as well. To that extent, we need to make sure that we build domestic capacity,” Krishnan said during the inaugural session of the two-day PAFI Annual Forum that began on Thursday.
Once India achieves a role significant enough that it could “cause the disruption” in a global supply chain if the situation so warranted, the country’s ecosystems and companies would be protected from any technology denial due to a “mutually assured disruption”, he said.
“We are building autonomous capacity in the country to make sure that we can protect against any denial and there is enough capacity in the country,” Krishnan said.
Such disruptions do not necessarily come only from countries that have adversarial relations with India but also from geographies that have friendly terms due to uncertainties in their own supply chains, he said.
“You have to absorb technology or absorb what you can get from other countries. You have to make enough of your own things. You have to be part of the global value chain. You have to continue to remain open. So that’s the direction in which India really needs to go,” Krishnan said.
