How exposed is India to foreign tech?

Why in news?

Reports of Elon Musk throttling Starshield services to Ukraine have revived concerns over India’s dependence on foreign-controlled critical technologies.

UPSC Relevance 

Prelims – NavIC, GNSS systems, satellite internet licences, MeghRaj, UPI, SWIFT and its alternatives, positive indigenisation lists, SIPRI arms data.

Mains GS3 – Science and Technology – indigenisation of technology. 

Strategic concerns with Technology today

• Technological sovereignty – The ability of a country to develop, control or reliably access the technologies it needs, without being exposed to pressure from another state or company.
• Strategic autonomy – India’s long-standing foreign policy idea of keeping freedom of choice. Today this autonomy also depends on who controls our satellites, servers, payment rails and weapon systems.
• Weaponised interdependence – A term used by scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2019) – countries that control global networks (finance, internet, supply chains) can use them as pressure points against others .

Read more on Weaponisation of Tech : Weaponisation of Technology 

Three ways India can be hit

• A foreign operator directly cuts or restricts a running service – the worst case.
  • GPS Denial: During the 1999 Kargil War, the United States denied India’s request for vital GPS data.
• A foreign-controlled platform disrupts access to an otherwise Indian system.
  • India’s massive digital ecosystem like UPI relies heavily on foreign operating platforms like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
• A foreign supplier slowly degrades India’s ability to sustain key capabilities, e.g. by delaying parts or engines.
  • Supply chain delays from US-based General Electric (GE) in delivering the F404 jet engines, which directly pushed back the production timeline for India’s indigenous Tejas Mark-1A fighter jets.

The debate – self-reliance vs global integration

• For indigenisation – Critical sectors cannot be left to the goodwill of foreign governments or companies; dependence becomes leverage in a crisis.
• Against full autarky – Building everything at home is costly and may give inferior products. Even the US and EU rely on global supply chains.
• Middle path – Domestic control over the ‘core’ (rails, data, key weapons), diversified trusted partners for the rest, and strong legal safeguards in contracts.

Sector-wise exposure

1. Satellite communications

• Licensed players – Three firms are licensed for satellite broadband – Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb’s Indian arm and Jio-SES. As of October 16, none had received the security clearance needed to start commercial services.
• Who controls them – Starlink is controlled by SpaceX. In Eutelsat, the French government holds 29.65%, the British government 10.89% and Bharti Space 17.88%. In Jio-SES, Jio holds 51% but the satellites remain with Luxembourg-based SES – majority Indian ownership does not mean control of the network.
• Limited risk for now – Most telephone and internet traffic runs on terrestrial networks. ISRO has launched about 40 communication satellites since 1981, and India has dedicated military satellites.

2. Satellite navigation (NavIC)

• What is NavIC – Navigation with Indian Constellation (earlier IRNSS) – India’s regional system of seven satellites giving Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) over India and about 1,500 km around it.
• The problem – In July 2026, the government told Parliament that only three NavIC satellites can provide PNT signals. At least four are needed for standalone positioning, so NavIC cannot work on its own.
• Reasons – Atomic clock failures on earlier satellites, the failed orbit raising of NVS-02 (2025), and ISRO’s low launch rate.
• Why GPS dependence is risky – The US ended ‘Selective Availability’ (deliberate degradation of civilian GPS) in 2000, but it can still deny GPS in specific areas for military reasons. India’s Kargil experience (1999) is often cited as the trigger for NavIC.

3. Cloud computing and IT

• Market – AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud dominate cloud services in India. Gartner expects Indian spending on public cloud to reach $17.5 billion in 2026.
• MeghRaj – Government’s own cloud (GI Cloud) run by the National Informatics Centre. In December 2025, 2,170 ministries and departments were hosting applications on it, but it also uses empanelled private providers, some based abroad.
• MeghRaj 2.0 and AWS Outposts – Announced with Yotta in February 2026 – data stays physically in NIC data centres, but the setup needs a link to an AWS regional control system for monitoring and software updates. Physical localisation is not the same as control.
• Legal reach – Laws like the US CLOUD Act (2018) allow US authorities to seek data held by US companies, even if stored abroad.
• Non-malicious risk – The faulty CrowdStrike update (July 2024) crashed Windows systems worldwide, hitting Indian airlines, airports and securities firms. Disruption need not be deliberate.
• Open source as a hedge – The 2015 Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software made it the preferred option for e-governance. C-DAC’s BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) is a Linux-based Indian OS.

4. Digital payments

• UPI and RuPay – NPCI’s UPI gives India strong independence from Visa and Mastercard. If Google Pay shuts down, users can shift to another app, since the core rails are Indian.
• Concentration – The consumer-facing layer is dominated by PhonePe (majority owned by US-based Walmart) and Google Pay.
• Cross-border exposure – Banks use correspondent banking and SWIFT. In 2022, the EU cut select Russian banks off SWIFT, crippling their foreign payments. Sanctions on Indian institutions could cause similar disruption even if they broke no Indian law.
• Alternatives – India’s SFMS (domestic messaging), Russia’s SPFS and China’s CIPS; RBI’s 2022 framework for trade settlement in rupees (Special Rupee Vostro Accounts).

5. Military equipment

• Past lesson – After the 1998 nuclear tests, US sanctions blocked delivery of LHTEC T800 engines ordered by HAL for helicopters; HAL had to switch to a French supplier (noted by the CAG).
• Import dependence – SIPRI (March 2026) ranked India the world’s second-largest arms importer in 2021-25. Russia supplied about 40%, with rising buys from France, Israel and the US.
• Even indigenous platforms depend – The Tejas fighter uses US-made GE engines; delivery delays have hit production schedules. The Kaveri engine has not yet met requirements.
• Other risks – Spare parts for Russian equipment affected by the Ukraine war; possible US sanctions under CAATSA for Russian purchases.

Why does the dependence continue?

• Low R&D spending – India spends around 0.65% of GDP on R&D, far below China (about 2.4%) and the US (above 3%).
• Long gestation and high costs – Engines, chips and satellite constellations take decades and huge investment, while imports are quicker and often cheaper.
• Capacity limits – ISRO’s limited launch rate, slow defence procurement and weak component manufacturing base.
• Network effects – Global platforms are already widely used, which makes Indian alternatives harder to scale.
• Talent and private sector – Brain drain and limited private investment in deep-tech research.

Steps taken by India

• Space – Indian Space Policy 2023 and IN-SPACe open space activities to private firms; replacement NVS series satellites for NavIC; push for NavIC chips in phones.
• Telecom and cyber security – Telecommunications Act 2023; ‘trusted source’ rules for telecom equipment (2021); NCIIPC protects Critical Information Infrastructure under Section 70 of the IT Act.
• Data – Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and its Rules (2025); RBI’s 2018 rule that payment data must be stored in India.
• Defence – Positive indigenisation lists of items that cannot be imported; ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’ as top priority under DAP 2020; iDEX for start-ups; defence production crossed Rs 1.5 lakh crore in 2024-25.
• Electronics – India Semiconductor Mission (2021), PLI schemes for electronics and IT hardware.

Way forward

• Fix NavIC fast – Raise launch frequency, involve private launchers and make NavIC support mandatory in strategic and critical devices.
• Security clauses for satcom – Licences should require Indian gateways, lawful-interception and no-disruption clauses, with local control over network management.
• Sovereign cloud – Control planes and key management for government cloud should be within India; more support to Indian cloud providers.
• Map critical dependencies – Regular audits of single points of failure in power, finance, telecom and defence supply chains.
• Payments resilience – Expand UPI and RuPay links abroad, rupee trade settlement and bilateral messaging links.
• Defence co-development – Insist on technology transfer and co-production (e.g. GE F414 engines with HAL) instead of off-the-shelf buys; support the Kaveri and AMCA engine programmes.
• Raise R&D – Increase public and private R&D spending; use the Anusandhan National Research Foundation to fund deep-tech research.

Complete self-sufficiency is neither possible nor needed. But in sectors where a switch-off can paralyse the country, India needs either its own capability or a reliable fallback.

Practice MCQ

Q1. With reference to satellite navigation, consider the following statements:

1. NavIC provides positioning services over India and the region extending up to about 1,500 km beyond its boundary.

2. A minimum of four working satellites is required for NavIC to provide standalone positioning.

3. The United States presently uses ‘Selective Availability’ to degrade the accuracy of civilian GPS worldwide.

How many of the above statements are correct?

(a) Only one        (b) Only two        (c) All three        (d) None

Answer: (b). Statement 3 is incorrect – the US discontinued Selective Availability in 2000, though it retains the ability to deny GPS in specific areas for military purposes.

Q2. Consider the following pairs:

How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

(a) Only one        (b) Only two        (c) Only three        (d) All four  

Answer: (c). Pair 4 is incorrect – Galileo belongs to the European Union. Japan’s regional system is QZSS.

Mains Practice Question

 “Dependence on foreign-controlled technology has become a new national security vulnerability.” In light of India’s reliance on foreign systems in satellite services, cloud computing, payments and defence, examine the risks involved and suggest measures to build strategic technological autonomy. (15 marks, 250 words)

PDF