news details |
|
|
| 2025: The Turning Point in India’s Technological Self-Determination | | | The year 2025 marked a defining inflection point in India’s scientific and technological journey, as the nation emerged with renewed confidence and global stature across frontier domains. It signals a fundamental reorientation in India’s relationship with technology itself. From artificial intelligence and semiconductors to space exploration, nuclear energy and critical minerals, India demonstrated that it is no longer merely adopting global technologies but shaping them. For the first time in India’s independent history, technological self-determination is not a dream but an unfolding reality, firmly aligned with the vision of Viksit Bharat@2047
AI Revolution: Powering the Digital Backbone
Under the India AI Mission, the Government of India has committed substantial investments, over ₹10,000 crore, to establish India as a pioneer in ethical, human-centric artificial intelligence. The ambition is to ensure that artificial intelligence becomes a tool for social democratization, especially across India’s vast rural-urban divide. In Q1 of FY26, India announced a significant expansion of India’s national AI infrastructure, adding 15,916 new GPUs. India’s national compute capacity has now crossed 38,000 GPUs. These GPUs are available at subsidised rates of ₹67 per hour, substantially below the average market rate of ₹115 per GPU hour. This pricing architecture is itself policy, designed to democratize access to cutting-edge compute infrastructure.
Recently India has made a remarkable leap to third place in Stanford University’s 2025 Global AI Vibrancy Tool. India ranked 3rd in AI competitiveness after the US and China. This puts India ahead of several advanced economies, including South Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, Canada, Germany and France. This highlights that how India’s fast-growing tech ecosystem and strong talent base are helping the country play a key role in the global AI race.
India’s New Era of Self-Reliance in Semiconductors
For the first time in India’s history, a government has made semiconductor manufacturing the centerpiece of India’s technology mission. In May 2025, India took a major step forward with the launch of two advanced facilities in Noida and Bengaluru, dedicated to 3-nanometer chip design. These facilities represent far more than manufacturing capacity; they symbolize the beginning of India’s journey from importing 90% of its semiconductor requirements to architecting its own future in this strategically critical domain.
3nm chips are the core of the world’s most advanced technologies, from smartphones and laptops to high-performance computers. The 7 nm processor is also being developed by the IIT Madras, a key institution in India’s processor design ecosystem through its SHAKTI initiative. Also in September 2025 India’s first indigenously developed Vikram-32-bit chip was presented to PM Modi at the inauguration of the Semicon India 2025 conference. This “vocal for local” ethos, championing swadeshi chip ecosystems and indigenous IP marks a strategic pivot.
Behind this statistic lies a geopolitical calculus: as global supply chains fragment along ideological lines, India’s domestic semiconductor capacity represents both economic resilience and strategic insulation. In 2025 alone, India approved 5 more semiconductor units, bringing the total to 10 semiconductor units across six states, with cumulative investments of around ₹1.60 lakh crore. The deeper ambition is to capture 10% of the global semiconductor consumption by 2030 positioning India as a global hub for design, manufacturing, and innovation.
Strategic Rare Earth and Critical Minerals Mission
Just as steel is essential for building skyscrapers, critical minerals are the bedrock for building semiconductors. Without them, there can be no advanced electronics, no AI, and no digital future. And therefore the Modi government launched the National Critical Mineral Mission in January 2025 with expenditure of Rs. 16,300 crore to secure India’s demand for rare earths and strengthen our self-reliance in semiconductors, electronics, and electric mobility.
By developing a robust domestic supply of these minerals, India will be able to reduce its reliance on imports from countries, which currently dominate the supply chain for many critical minerals. GSI, in the FY 2024-25, has taken up 195 mineral exploration projects for critical and strategic minerals across the country. In the FY 2025-26, a total 227 projects are under execution. During the 2025-26 Budget, the Modi government exempted cobalt powder and waste, the scrap of lithium-ion battery, Lead, Zinc and 12 more critical minerals. and took fiscal measures designed to incentivize domestic processing and recycling.
Stronger Push Towards a Circular Economy Angle
A particularly forward-thinking element emerged in 2025: India approved a ₹1,500 crore recycling scheme (2025-26 to 2030-31) to build domestic capacity for recycling critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare-earth elements. This transforms the narrative from pure extraction (with its attendant environmental costs) to closed-loop resource management. As the world’s clean energy transition accelerates and e-waste mountains grow, India positions itself not merely as a source of virgin materials, but as a hub for resource recovery and circular manufacturing.
Space Science & Technology: Gaganyaan & Beyond
Space technology continued to be a hallmark of national pride. ISRO executed some of its most complex and globally significant missions. A major highlight was the successful launch of NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) on July 30, 2025, aboard the GSLV-F16. This historic Indo-US collaborative mission is the world’s most advanced Earth-observation radar satellite.
India’s human spaceflight ambitions also reached a historic milestone in July 2025, when Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS). Flying as part of the Axiom-4 mission, he spent 18 days aboard the ISS, conducting scientific experiments and international collaborative research. This positions Indian scientists within the global research commons and signals that India can participate as an equal in humanity’s most ambitious endeavours.
Later in the year, ISRO achieved another milestone with the launch of CMS-03 on November 2, 2025, using the LVM3-M5 rocket. Weighing about 4,400 kilograms, CMS-03 is the heaviest satellite ever launched by India, showcasing the enhanced heavy-lift capability of the LVM3 launch vehicle, it was placed in GTO.
Recently in December 2025, PM Modi inaugurated Skyroot Aerospace’s new Infinity Campus in Hyderabad and unveiled the company’s first orbital rocket, Vikram-I, designed to launch satellites into orbit. Allowing private participation in the space sector since 2020 is going to give amazing results for India in just a decade. The establishment of IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre) has catalysed a thriving ecosystem of private innovators. Approximately 330 industries, startups, and MSMEs are now associated with IN-SPACe for authorization of space activities. In 2025, IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) and ISRO achieved major milestones, including India becoming the fourth nation with in-space docking via the SpaDeX mission . India’s space industry is projected to grow from around $8.4 billion to $44 billion Indian by 2033 .
Nuclear Energy Expansion & Energy Transition
2025 also marked critical progress in India’s nuclear sector. In December 2025, union cabinet approved the Atomic Energy Bill, 2025, branded as SHANTI – (Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India). This legislation marks the most significant reform in India’s atomic energy sector since its inception, opening the doors for private participation in a domain. It replaces the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 with a unified, modern legal framework aligned with contemporary international best practices.
India’s nuclear generation hits all-time high as NPCIL crosses 56,681 MUs in FY 2024-25. PM Modi has laid the foundation stone for the 4-unit Mahi Banswara NPP in Rajasthan in September, 2025. The project will have four units of PHWR - 700 MW. First two units of the indigenous 700 MWe PHWR at Kakrapar, Gujarat (KAPS – 3 & 4) have received AERB license for regular operation. Rawatbhata Atomic Power Project (RAPP) Unit 7, the 3rd indigenous 700 MWe PHWR in a series of 16 sanctioned reactors, started commercial operation in April.
Indigenously developed Certified Reference Material (CRM) named ‘Ferrocarbonatite (FC) – (BARC B1401) formally released in November 2025. This is the first such CRM in India and the fourth in the world. It is considered crucial for rare earth element ore mining.
Rapid Transformation in Research and Innovation Ecosystem
The Modi Government has also placed R&D at the heart of its journey towards Viksit Bharat@2047. Launched on November 3, 2025, the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme Fund of ₹1 lakh crore marks a landmark step in strengthening India’s research and development ecosystem.
In a key step to strengthen India’s science and technology ecosystem, PM Modi approved the unification of three major umbrella schemes under a single central sector initiative, ‘Vigyan Dhara’, with a total outlay of ₹10,579.84 crore. It focuses on training more scientists, upgrading laboratory infrastructure, and ensuring that scientific discoveries move quickly from the “lab to the land” to solve real-world problems. By streamlining funding and reducing duplication, the scheme aims to make India’s scientific ecosystem more efficient and globally competitive.
Under the decisive and future-oriented leadership of PM Modi, the country accelerated innovation, expanded indigenous capabilities, and reinforced technological sovereignty. This transformative momentum positioned India not just as a participant, but as a front-rank leader in the global science and technology revolution. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
