Context

• On August 15, 2025, India celebrated its 79th Independence Day, commemorating the nation’s hard-won political freedom.
• Yet, in today’s interconnected and digitised world, true independence extends beyond political autonomy.
• It now encompasses technological sovereignty, the ability to control and trust the digital systems that shape nearly every aspect of national life and without it, India risks replacing one form of dependence with another.

The New Battleground of Geopolitics

• The nature of global conflict has transformed and Modern wars are no longer fought primarily with bullets and bombs, but with software, drones, and cyberweapons.
• The most insidious battleground today is cyberspace, where banks, transportation networks, and power grids rely heavily on information and communication technology.
• A troubling reality emerges from this reliance: most of these critical systems are designed and controlled by a handful of foreign corporations, often concentrated in a single country.
• This dependence constitutes a grave national vulnerability and If these companies were ever compelled by their governments, or motivated by malice, to cut off access to cloud services or artificial intelligence tools, the consequences for India could be catastrophic.
• Such scenarios are not mere hypotheticals; recent disruptions of cloud services to a company illustrate the tangible risks of overreliance on external providers.

The Road to Technological Sovereignty for India

• Building the Foundations of Autonomy
  • The solution lies in pursuing technological autonomy. Currently, India does not possess indigenous operating systems, databases, or foundational software infrastructure it can fully trust.
  • This dependence on external sources places the nation at risk. However, the path forward is neither impossible nor uncharted.
  • Open-source software offers a powerful framework for building secure, transparent, and reliable alternatives.
  • By developing customised versions of Linux and Android, India could create systems free of hidden vulnerabilities.
  • The challenge, however, is not just initial development but long-term maintenance and support.
  • For such software to thrive, it requires a robust user base and a community of dedicated professionals committed to constant updates and innovation.
  • This is not a task for a single institution. Rather, it is a collective mission for India’s vast pool of IT professionals.
  • If the country’s technology community can unite behind this cause, they can overcome dependency and shape a sovereign digital future.
• The Harder Road: Hardware Sovereignty
  • While software sovereignty is challenging, achieving hardware independence poses an even greater test.
  • Semiconductor fabrication demands enormous investment, technical expertise, and enduring commitment.
  • Few nations possess fully self-reliant capabilities in this sector. India, therefore, must approach this journey strategically, by focusing on chip design, partnerships in manufacturing, and gradually building expertise in assembly and supply chain management.
  • Outsourcing fabrication in the short term is pragmatic, but it must be coupled with long-term investments to reduce reliance.
  • India’s political independence was won through non-violence; its technological independence can be pursued through collaboration and open-source innovation.
  • This quest is not about opposing others, but about ensuring self-reliance in critical systems.
• A Social and Economic Movement
  • The open-source movement, once a vibrant socio-political force, has lost some of its momentum in recent years.
  • Although much of today’s software, including Android, Linux, and Hadoop, is open-source, the real control often rests with centralised cloud services and data centres abroad.
  • What India needs is a renewed social movement, one that rallies both professionals and ordinary citizens behind the goal of technological autonomy.
  • Private companies and individuals now share the concerns once confined to strategic sectors: the risk of dependency on external powers.
  • People already contribute financially to free and open-source software, whether directly or indirectly.
  • Redirecting these resources toward trusted, homegrown software is a small but crucial step.

The Way Forward

• To turn this vision into reality, India must establish a mission-oriented program focused on implementation rather than research.
• This mission would assemble strong engineering and project management teams to develop and maintain essential digital infrastructure.
• Priority areas include both client-side software (databases, email clients, calendars) and server-side components (web servers, email servers, cloud systems).
• Crucially, this mission must be designed as self-sustaining, supported by viable business models rather than perpetual reliance on government funding.
• The government’s role should be that of an enabler, helping establish the initial framework while ensuring long-term independence from state or corporate control.

Conclusion

• India stands at a pivotal moment and the risks of dependence on external technologies are clear, and the resources to chart a sovereign path are within reach.
• What is required is collective will, a recognition that technological independence is not a luxury, but a necessity for national security, economic resilience, and genuine freedom.
• The long march toward technological sovereignty will be neither quick nor easy, yet, as India’s history has shown, the pursuit of independence, political or technological, is always worth the struggle.