Manish Chakravarty retweetledi
6 YEARS: FROM COVID TO IRAN
TIME FOR SOME PAINFUL TRUTHS 🚨
Six turbulent years from Covid to the Ladakh standoff to Ukraine war to Trump’s tariff offensive to the current Iran war have exposed a hard truth. India remains dangerously dependent on the world for things a serious power should control at home.
Energy first, since that’s on everyone’s mind right now. India imports about 85% of its crude oil and roughly 50% of its natural gas. We depend heavily on overseas supply chains for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel that will power the next generation of batteries and energy systems. Any disruption anywhere from the Strait of Hormuz to sanctions on major producers immediately ripples through LPG prices, electricity costs and inflation. The current LPG anxiety during the Iran war is just the latest reminder of how exposed we are.
Defence is worse. Despite decades of rhetoric about indigenisation, India still imports roughly 45 to 50% of its major weapons systems, making it one of the world’s largest arms importers, if not the largest. During the Ladakh standoff with China (which is still on) the country had to rush through emergency purchases of munitions, drones, artillery shells and winter gear because either we don’t make those items or domestic capacity could not surge quickly enough. A country facing two nuclear adversaries should never have to scramble for weapons in the middle of a military standoff.
Pharmaceuticals reveal another uncomfortable truth. India is known as the pharmacy of the world, yet around 70% of our active pharmaceutical ingredients come from outside, including China. During Covid this vulnerability became obvious as India scrambled for oxygen, PPE kits, ventilators and key medical inputs.
Technology dependence is the most alarming of all. More than 90% of advanced semiconductors are imported, most high end AI chips and servers are foreign made, and critical digital hardware depends almost entirely on global supply chains. In an era where AI will define both economic power and military capability, this is a profound strategic vulnerability.
Add fertiliser precursors, rare earths, electronics components, solar modules and specialised machine tools and the list becomes even longer. Each time the world experiences a shock (Ukraine, Iran, Azerbaijan, Covid) whether it is a pandemic, sanctions on Russia, a war in West Asia or rising great power tensions India is forced into code red emergency management mode.
The uncomfortable reality is that true strategic autonomy requires historically painful decisions. Building domestic capacity in energy, weapons, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and AI will demand huge investment, long term industrial policy, and years of political risk. It may mean accepting higher costs and slower returns in the short term in order to build resilience for the long term.
But India’s election to election political cycle rewards short term thinking. No government wants to take decisions that may, beyond a point, take a decade to pay off. The decisions these crises compel from a country like India will mean a total dismantlement of our politics as we know it today. It will mean a generation of turning the country on its head.
Yet the alternative is worse. As things stand India remains structurally vulnerable. A country that has to scramble every time the world shakes cannot claim true strategic autonomy.
From COVID to Iran, the last six years have made that painfully clear.
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