The following article originally appeared in the Hindustan Times on March 15, 2025.
When I set out to write a book about India’s international relations, I did not necessarily appreciate the centrality of the role of technology. But in setting out the basis of India’s international relations — past, present, and future — in Vishwa Shastra: India and the World, I could not escape considering the critical role that technology has played, and continues to play, in the country’s international engagement.
Throughout history, technological developments have shaped competition and cooperation between countries. In India’s case, it can be traced back to the spread of writing, agricultural, and metallurgical techniques in pre-historic and ancient times. At various points, India was a regional leader in certain technologies, including mathematics, stone masonry, and seafaring technologies. The spread of technology around what we might now call the Indo-Pacific accelerated around the 10th century, with India’s export of medicinal, astronomical, and agricultural knowledge, and its import of gunpowder and paper-making techniques. The circulation of technology also took some unexpected turns, such as the diffusion of certain gunsmithing techniques from West Asia to India and from there to Europe.
But, as a newly independent nation after 1947, mastering critical technologies assumed a new urgency. It explains India’s efforts at reaching out to several partners in the advanced industrial world in its early years. With the US, India sought assistance in dam building and water management, notably through the Damodar Valley Corporation. With the UK and the Commonwealth, India participated in the Colombo Plan, which contributed significantly to agricultural, medical, and urban development. With West Germany, India sought defence and aerospace design, resulting in — among other things — its first indigenous fighter jet, the HF-24 Marut. After 1953, India also received financial and technical assistance from the Soviet Union, resulting in the Bhilai Steel Plant in present-day Chhattisgarh, and later the licensed defence production of transport and fighter aircraft.
India’s ability to work with a variety of partners contributed to some notable technological successes during the early years of the Cold War. The establishment of the first five Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), benefited considerably from assistance from the US, USSR, United Nations, the UK, and West Germany, including the provision of initial lab equipment. Just as dramatically, the Green Revolution benefited from public and private US and multilateral initiatives to introduce high-yield varieties of wheat, helping make India agriculturally self-sufficient. Another area of initial success was in nuclear sciences, which involved the private sector (specifically, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and international partnerships for civilian technologies and raw materials. In fact, India boasted an undisputed leadership position in the developing world when it came to civilian nuclear technologies.
There were also some meaningful technological successes after economic liberalization and the end of the Cold War in 1991. Many domestic initiatives benefited from international assistance to advance public health objectives, including drastic reductions in communicable diseases and the development of a pharmaceutical industry. The Indian telecommunications revolution, while mired in scandals and poor infrastructure in the initial years, took off after foreign vendors agreed to adapt their business models for the Indian market. The software and outsourcing boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s was the product of investments in human talent; policy changes that slashed duties, subsidized broadband, and created single-window clearances; and heightened global demand. Another clear manifestation was the Delhi Metro which, after 1995, benefited from financing, imports, systems, technical assistance, and training from Japan, South Korea, Germany, Canada, the US, the UK, and Hong Kong.
Yet India’s quest for technology was not always sustained or consistent. The country continued to lag in many important areas, including electronic and automotive manufacturing, defence production, and nuclear energy. It is worth considering what factors held India back. Perhaps the most important was adverse politics, ideological hang-ups, and strong vested interests from public and private sector parties eager to preserve their power and monopoly. Second, in an era of sharper resource constraints, including foreign exchange reserves, India grew accustomed to cheap licence production — which included attractive financing and technical assistance but without the necessary technological transfers. One consequence was that India could rarely take advantage of its immense scale. Third, paradoxically, India lacked sufficient State control of production and labour that characterised economies such as the Soviet Union and allowed them to make decisive progress in critical sectors. Finally, India often had to reconcile foreign dependencies with strategic autonomy, particularly when it came to nuclear weapons, which contributed to an adverse export control regime and technological denials.
These limitations have slowly been overcome. Over the past two decades, successive governments have endeavoured to diversify India’s partnerships with advanced economies, reduce export controls, offer more attractive terms for technological indigenisation, improve procurement processes, and increase financial outlays. Efforts are also underway to clarify specifications, alignments, and processes when it comes to procurements. In civilian sectors such as semiconductors, telecommunications, electronics, space, biotechnology, and other nascent technologies, India has begun to offer sizeable subsidies, workforce training programmes, and regulatory and customs changes to encourage indigenisation efforts. In addition, foreign partnerships that enable investment, market access, coordinated standards, and policy alignment remain important.
Today’s technological priorities are apparent. They include computational hardware, digital technologies, infrastructure, cleaner and more efficient energy systems, transportation, health and biotechnology, and defence and aerospace. All have important strategic and economic implications, as well as the potential to generate growth, jobs, and exports. Defence efforts today focus on aircraft components and engines, missile systems, drones and counter-unmanned aerial systems (CUAS), armoured vehicles, surveillance and radars, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities. Extra efforts will have to be made in shipbuilding, particularly large hulls, for both defence and commercial platforms. To these ends, India has outlined new regulations in defence, artificial intelligence, space, drones, and geospatial data; created nodal agencies for semiconductors, quantum technologies, and green hydrogen; and entered into a variety of agreements and mechanisms with foreign partners for investment, standards, technology transfers, market access, training, and supply chain security.
While considerable progress has been made, it is worth reflecting on past experiences. Why did India succeed — sometimes overcoming great adversity — in areas such as space, agriculture, public transportation, public health, and telecommunications, but struggle in areas of defence, electronics assembly, semiconductors, and nuclear industries despite apparent head-starts? How can the mistakes of the past not be repeated when it comes to artificial intelligence or quantum technologies? These are worth considering as India makes another set of big bets on emerging technology in an increasingly competitive and contested world.
Dhruva Jaishankar is Executive Director at ORF America.