There is something quietly significant happening across India’s industrial landscape right now. Chip factories are rising in Gujarat. Semiconductor packaging units are being commissioned in Uttar Pradesh. And at the center of it all stands Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has made “economic self-reliance” not just a political slogan but what appears to be a serious national mission.
On Monday, during public outreach events tied to India’s technology and manufacturing growth, PM Modi once again underlined the urgency of the moment. His message, stripped to its essence: India cannot afford to wait, and the time to build is now.
It is a message the country has heard before. But the difference today is that the scaffolding is actually going up.
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## ‘India Has No Time to Stop or Pause’
Earlier this year, while virtually participating in the groundbreaking of the HCL-Foxconn Semiconductor Unit in Uttar Pradesh, Modi had put it bluntly: “India has no time to stop or pause. Since the beginning of 2026, we have further increased our pace.”
That pace is hard to dispute. The Union Cabinet recently approved two more new semiconductor projects in Gujarat worth about ₹3,900 crore, further cementing the state’s emerging status as a hub for chip manufacturing. Ten semiconductor fabrication and packaging projects have been approved under the India Semiconductor Mission, with four units expected to begin production soon. The cumulative investment committed under this mission alone has crossed ₹1.6 lakh crore.
What is driving this urgency? At one level, it is pure strategy. At another, it is a lesson drawn from pain.
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## The Pandemic Wake-Up Call
Cast your mind back to 2020 and 2021. Factories across the world ground to a halt — not because of labour shortages or broken machinery, but because of a shortage of tiny silicon chips smaller than a fingernail. The global semiconductor crisis exposed a vulnerability that no government had fully anticipated: the world had quietly allowed its chip supply to concentrate in a handful of countries, and when that chain snapped, entire industries — automobiles, electronics, healthcare devices — buckled.
India was not immune. Modi himself acknowledged the episode as a turning point. “India decided to turn that crisis into an opportunity,” he said at the launch of the HCL-Foxconn unit. “We resolved to build a robust semiconductor ecosystem and become self-reliant in chip manufacturing.”
One could argue that every country said something similar after the pandemic. But not every country followed through with ₹76,000 crore in semiconductor incentives, an India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, and a flurry of foreign partnerships with companies like Foxconn. India, at least in this domain, appears to be walking the talk.
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## The Atma Nirbhar Bharat Blueprint in Action
The phrase “Atma Nirbhar Bharat” — loosely translated as Self-Reliant India — was introduced by Modi during the COVID-19 pandemic as both an economic strategy and a rallying cry. Critics initially dismissed it as nationalist rhetoric. Supporters called it a necessary course correction for an economy too reliant on imports.
Nearly six years on, the blueprint has taken concrete shape — particularly in electronics and semiconductor manufacturing.
The driving force behind this has been the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme which provides financial incentives of 3-6% on incremental sales of goods manufactured in India. From mobile phones to solar PV modules, the scheme has attracted significant private investment. The total production of electronics has crossed Rs 5.14 lakh crore and the number of mobile manufacturing units has increased from 2 in 2014 to more than 300 today.
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## Semiconductors: The New Oil
Modi has compared the importance of semiconductors in the 21st century to the role oil played in the 20th. It sounds like the kind of thing a politician says, until you look at what these chips actually power — smartphones, electric vehicles, AI systems, defence equipment, satellites, medical devices. The list is almost endless.
India’s domestic semiconductor market was valued at roughly $15 billion in 2021. The government’s stated aim is to grow it to over $100 billion by 2030. Whether that target is fully achieved remains to be seen, but the ambition is real and, crucially, the investments are real too.
A few milestones are worth noting. ISRO’s Vikram microprocessor — India’s first fully home-grown 32-bit chip — represents a genuine leap in indigenous capability for space applications. CG Semi, operating from its facility in Sanand, Gujarat, is set to produce what could be the first fully “Made in India” semiconductor chip, with commercial output expected in 2026–27. The Kaynes Semiconductor OSAT facility in the same industrial cluster is already operational, described by Modi at its launch as a “landmark step” in creating a domestic chip ecosystem.
And then there is the India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, which shifts the focus from setting up the ecosystem to consolidating and integrating it globally. For the financial year 2026–27, the modified programme carries a total outlay of ₹8,000 crore, with a specific emphasis on producing semiconductor equipment and materials domestically and supporting full-stack Indian semiconductor intellectual property.
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## The Global Context: Why Timing Matters
Is India moving fast enough? That is probably the more uncomfortable question.
The global chip race has become intensely competitive. Taiwan’s TSMC remains years ahead in advanced fabrication. South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix dominate memory chips. The United States is pouring hundreds of billions through its CHIPS Act to bring advanced semiconductor manufacturing back home. Europe has its own chip legislation. China, despite export restrictions on certain technologies, continues to expand domestic production aggressively.
India is entering this race without decades of established manufacturing infrastructure, without the institutional memory of large-scale chip fabrication, and with a skills gap that the government has acknowledged will take years to close. Design Linked Incentives have enabled 24 semiconductor startups. University programs are now churning out chip designers using advanced Electronic Design Automation tools — 122 academic chip designs have been taped out, with 56 chips fabricated at 180nm at the Semiconductor Laboratory in Mohali. About 67,000 students are actively working with these design tools. That pipeline matters for the long run.
The HCL-Foxconn partnership is particularly significant from a geopolitical standpoint. Modi noted that Foxconn’s participation sends a message that democratic India is a trusted partner in global value chains — a not-so-subtle signal to the world that India is positioning itself as an alternative to China-dependent manufacturing networks.
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## ‘Make in India for the World’
The broader manufacturing push extends well beyond chips. At a post-budget webinar on “Make in India for the World” organised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Modi articulated the vision clearly: “Our aim is to make India the marketplace for not only ourselves but also for the world based on self-reliance.”
That framing — self-reliance not as protectionism but as a platform for global relevance — is central to how the government presents its industrial strategy. The PLI scheme has attracted investments across 14 sectors ranging from advanced chemistry cell batteries to telecom equipment, white goods, and pharmaceuticals. Total government commitment across these areas stands at approximately ₹2.30 lakh crore.
The 2025 Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme offers another layer, with a target for more domestic manufacturing of printed circuit boards, camera modules and electrical components that have so far been imported. This is where the “value addition” argument gets serious. Assembling phones in India using foreign components is useful. Designing and manufacturing the components themselves is transformative.
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## What This Means for India’s Economic Future
The IMF projected India to become the world’s fourth-largest economy in 2025, with the third spot expected by 2027–28. India’s stated goal — to become a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of Independence — is ambitious by any measure. But the technology and manufacturing push being driven today is not incidental to that goal. It is arguably central to it.
A self-reliant India in semiconductors would mean significantly reduced import bills, stronger supply chain resilience, higher-value employment, and genuine strategic autonomy in an era when chip access has become a geopolitical lever. When semiconductor units eventually hit full production — whether in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, or Andhra Pradesh — each one is not just a factory. It is a data point in a larger argument that India can compete in the world’s most sophisticated industries.
There are real challenges ahead: infrastructure gaps, talent shortages in niche specialisations, long gestation periods for semiconductor investments, and the sheer pace of technological change that can render investments obsolete. None of those should be dismissed.
But here is the thing — India’s manufacturing story is being written in real time. The chips are being designed. The factories are being built. The partnerships are being signed. For the first time in decades, the conversation about economic self-reliance is backed by concrete action rather than just aspiration.
Modi’s “Techade” — his framing of the current decade as India’s defining technology era — is not just rhetoric anymore. It is a construction site. And the world is watching to see what gets built.
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Modi’s ‘Techade’ Push: How India Is Betting Big on Economic Self-Reliance Through Technology and Manufacturing
