Modi 3.0: How defense self-reliance is central to the vision of a developed India. india news

Last updated:June 05, 2026, 15:47 IST

The question for 2047 is not whether India can become a serious defense manufacturing power. It’s already one. Now the construction work has to continue.

There is a question that is not often asked in discussions about India’s 2047 ambitions: Can a country become a developed nation while remaining dependent on foreign suppliers to arm its soldiers?

The honest answer is, probably not. And this, more than any policy document, is the real logic behind defense self-reliance that has become one of the defining economic and security projects of the Modi government.

starting point was uncomfortable

Ten years ago, India was the world’s largest arms importer. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute had ranked India at the top position in the global import charts for consecutive years. Roughly 60 to 70 percent of military equipment was sourced from abroad, primarily Russia, France, Israel, and increasingly the United States. Defense exports were negligible, below Rs 1,000 crore annually.

The Arjun tank was in development for decades. The Tejas fighter aircraft had been flying in prototype form since 2001 but was nowhere near squadron service. Private companies were largely excluded from the government’s effective monopoly on defense production.

This was not a minor disability. This was a structural weakness. Each platform operated by India came with a foreign supply chain for spares, ammunition and upgrades. Diplomatic friction with the supplier country, or simply a change in that country’s foreign policy, may ground an aircraft or decommission a fleet.

Why is self-reliance a strategic rationale in the first place?

The case for defense indigenization is sometimes framed in terms of industrial policy, and sometimes in terms of employment creation. Both are true, but neither is the primary motivation. The more fundamental argument is what happens during conflict.

Operation Sindoor was the first real test of how far India’s defense modernization had actually come. Without crossing the Line of Control or the international border, Indian forces attacked terrorist infrastructure and eliminated multiple threats. What stood out beyond the tactical execution was the seamless integration of indigenous systems into the operation.

Companies like IdeaForge had been quietly building work for years; Their drones were in service even before the operation began. What Sindoor revealed was how preparations had been made: surveillance UAVs, stray weapons and counter-drone systems. The unmanned layer was not added hastily. It was placed there deliberately. This only works if you own the supply chain.

Globally, this same lesson is becoming more clearly evident. Russia’s war in Ukraine exposed how quickly wars consume munitions and how few countries actually have the industrial depth to sustain a long-term conflict. Ukraine itself has been heavily dependent on the speed of Western deliveries. Sanctions regimes on Russia, Iran and others have repeatedly demonstrated that technology reliance can be weaponized. India, with unresolved border disputes on two fronts and a neighborhood that is rarely quiet, cannot afford such a showdown.

What the policy framework actually looks like

The government has placed its indigenization thrust on several interlocking mechanisms, most of which were either created or significantly intensified after 2014. Positive indigenization lists are perhaps the most direct instrument: items that must now be sourced domestically. More than 500 items have been notified across multiple lists, ranging from simple components to artillery guns, helicopters and naval ships. The intention is to create a guaranteed domestic market and, by extension, force domestic production to increase to meet it.

Defense acquisition process reforms now favor Indian vendors. Companies that design and manufacture in India get purchasing preference over companies that assemble parts overseas. Two defense industrial corridors were established: one through Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra and Aligarh, and the other through Chennai, Coimbatore and Hosur, bringing manufacturers, suppliers and test facilities into a single geography.

FDI limit in defense sector increased to 74 per cent under the automatic route and to 100 per cent with government approval. The sector was closed to outside capital for most of India’s history. he changed. iDEX, launched in 2018, took a different approach to early-stage companies: Startups pitch against a defined defense problem, receive funding to develop the solution, and if the product works, armies buy it.

The hardware that changed the picture

The Tejas LCA is in squadron service with the Indian Air Force. The two Mark 1A squadrons, comprising 83 aircraft, are on the order of about Rs 48,000 crore. It is an Indian-designed, Indian-made combat aircraft, and its indigenous content is increasing. The Mark 2 and advanced medium combat aircraft are in development. The Akash surface-to-air missile system has been deployed by both the Army and Air Force and is now being exported. Pinaka is in service and being sold abroad. The 155 mm artillery gun Bow continues to be produced. Prachanda light combat helicopter to enter service in 2022. ATAGS set a world record in range tests by crossing 48 kilometers.

On the Navy side, INS Vikrant, the first aircraft carrier built entirely in India, was commissioned in 2022. The destroyers, frigates and submarines are coming from Indian shipyards. The hardware is present and in service. A decade ago, most of it didn’t.

Defense exports: A number that did not exist before

India’s defense exports in 2013–14 were less than Rs 1,000 crore. By 2025-26, they were to cross Rs 38,000 crore. This is a nearly forty-fold increase in just over a decade. The government has set a target of Rs 50,000 crore by 2028-29.

Export destinations now include Armenia, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and many others. BrahMos, a supersonic cruise missile jointly developed with Russia, has been sold to the Philippines. Akash is being actively marketed. Dornier aircraft, ammunition and radar systems have found buyers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

This matters beyond revenue. A country that exports defense technology is partly exporting strategic relations. This creates dependency in the other direction: buyers need spares, training, and upgrades from the seller. India is beginning to accumulate those relationships in its neighborhood and beyond, a form of soft power that pure import dependence could never generate.

Startups are now in the picture

Five years ago, a defense startup in India was a curiosity. Today, they number more than 600, and the armed forces are purchasing from them. This change began with Innovation for Defense Excellence (iDEX), which the government launched in 2018. The model was simple: Startups offer solutions to military problems, get funded to develop them, and if the product works, the armies buy it. By the beginning of 2025, the armed forces had procured 43 items worth more than Rs 2,400 crore from iDEX participants.

Drones are no longer a support system. Indian startups have moved into surveillance UAVs, munitions, counter-drone systems and autonomous underwater vehicles, areas once dominated by foreign suppliers.

The government added ADITI on top of iDEX, a focused scheme for deep technology with grants of up to Rs 25 crore per project, covering semiconductors, quantum systems and cyber capabilities. QuBeats, a quantum technology startup, received funding under ADITI to create a GPS-free navigation system for the Navy, designed for situations where an adversary jams satellite signals. Before 2018, this kind of problem would never have reached any small company. Now, it is being solved by one.

Where India is still stuck

Some of these gaps have been building for decades. The jet engine is the most obvious. The Kaveri program has been under development since the 1980s, it was formally separated from Tejas in 2008, and never entered operational service. Tejas flies on GE engines. The airframe comes from Bengaluru, the missile from Hyderabad, but the engine still comes from abroad. This is not a recent problem. This is a structural weakness that has grown over time.

Research expenditure has followed the same pattern. India spends very little of its defense budget in research and development. Drones, radar and missiles all require advanced semiconductors. India doesn’t make them. That supply chain passes through Taiwan, South Korea and the United States, and military-grade chips are not yet coming from Indian fabs.

Accountability is where the difference is most visible. It took 17 years for HAL to deliver 40 Tejas aircraft. The Mark 1A order for 83 aircraft was signed in 2021, and deliveries have already moved ahead of the original 2024 timeline. Despite repeated delays, there is little evidence that schedule overruns have resulted in meaningful contractual accountability. Deadlines loom, orders await, and the Air Force makes do with what it has.

The AMCA program has now been opened to private consortia. Tata Advanced Systems, the L&T-led group and Bharat Forge consortium are in dispute. The AMCA program is expected to give private industry a much larger role than any previous Indian fighter project. It remains to be seen whether private companies are held to stricter deadlines. That is the real test.

What 2047 looks like from here

The vision of a developed India is, fundamentally, a combination of three things: economic scale, technological capability and strategic autonomy. Defense self-reliance connects all three.

A large defense manufacturing base creates high-skilled industrial employment. A defense export industry generates foreign exchange and strategic relations. An army that can sustain itself through domestic production does not need to calibrate its decisions by the preferences of foreign suppliers.

The Modi government has changed the underlying logic from a buyer’s mentality to a builder’s mentality. It is not reflected in any one contract or on any one platform. It shows who is getting the work, what they are making and how fast the ecosystem around them is growing.

Ten years ago, none of this existed in any meaningful form. Today, it happens. The question for 2047 is not whether India can become a serious defense manufacturing power. It’s already one. Now the construction work has to continue.

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