National Conclave 2025: Strengthening Atmanirbhar Bharat

29 JUN 2024

Recent News:

October 16th, 2025

October 16th, 2025 National Conclave 2025: Strengthening Atmanirbhar Bharat - Achieving Industrial Sovereignty

National Conclave on Strengthening Atmanirbhar Bharat: Achieving Industrial Sovereignty

The global trade landscape is undergoing a decisive transformation. Governments across the world are reassessing their trade dependencies, reorienting industrial policy, and competing to gain technological supremacy. Countries are increasingly prioritizing nearshoring and reshoring strategies to mitigate supply chain and tariff-related challenges.

Such a shift has accelerated the realignment of global supply chains, with the formation of exclusive supply chain coalitions such as the Chip 4 Alliance and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) along with potential zero-tariff trade zones among select countries. For India, these global shifts present both an imminent challenge and a strategic opportunity. As global trade fragments and access to critical technologies becomes more exclusive, the need to strengthen domestic industrial capabilities has become critical thereby making the pursuit of Atmanirbharta more relevant than ever.

India has a golden opportunity to boost exports, increase manufacturing jobs, and become a robust manufacturing hub as new global value chains emerge.

In this context, the Centre for Domestic Economy Policy Research (C–DEP.org), in collaboration with the Forum for Integrated National Security (FINSIndia.org) and the Centre for WTO Studies (CWS), are hosting a National Conclave on ‘Strengthening Atmanirbhar: Achieving Industrial Sovereignty’.

This year’s Conclave is aimed at facilitating dialogue on specific regulatory, policy, and trade remedial reforms that need to be deliberated upon in order to accelerate India’s journey towards industrial sovereignty and becoming Viksit.

Conclave Objectives

1.To identify relevant regulatory interventions required to safeguard and grow India’s chemical industry in the face of shifting global value chains.
2.To chart a roadmap to achieve pharmaceutical sovereignty by expanding domestic API production, securing critical raw material supply chains, and investing in drug and vaccine research.
3.To explore avenues for industry-government partnership to further strengthen India’s digital infrastructure and telecommunications industry.
4.To explore strategies for advancing India’s electronics and semiconductor ecosystem by enhancing domestic manufacturing capabilities and securing supply chains for critical raw materials.

C-DEP Report Launch

Centre for Domestic Economy Policy Research (C-DEP.in) and the Centre for World Trade Studies (CWS) released two data-driven reports that quantify the economic impact of trade remedies on India's manufacturing sector at the National Conclave on Strengthening Atmanirbharta, held at the Constitution Club of India.

The first report, "Economic Benefits of Anti-Dumping Duty to India," reveals that India benefits by approximately 788,000 crore annually through the timely imposition of anti dumping duties (ADDs). The timely implementation of such trade remedies help neutralize the negative impact of unfair trade practices, safeguard and promote domestic production, as well as boost employment.

In contrast, the second report, "Economic Impact of Dumped Imports on the Indian Economy," highlights how delays in implementing trade remedial measures have cumulatively cost the Indian economy over 71,50,000 crore, owing to idle or underutilised domestic manufacturing capacities affected by dumped imports.

Together, these findings underscore the strategic importance of timely and well-executed trade remedial measures in strengthening India's industrial base, boosting investor confidence, and advancing the broader vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

The full reports are available at https://c-dep.in/reports/

Securing Pharmaceutical Sovereignty

India's pharmaceutical industry has emerged as a global leader, producing over 60% of the world’s vaccines and supplying 20% of global generic drugs. The sector has firmly established itself as a key pillar of the global healthcare system, with its capabilities demonstrated exceptionally well during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it rapidly scaled vaccine production at an unprecedented rate, safeguarding billions of lives worldwide.

Despite these achievements, India’s pharmaceutical sector continues to face significant vulnerabilities. A major concern is India’s heavy reliance on China for bulk drug imports, with over 70% of its API requirements sourced from China. In the event of another crisis similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, India could find itself dependant on unreliable trade partners like China for essential raw materials.

Such dependence exposes India to geopolitical leverage, potentially coercing the government into making decisions that compromise India’s public health and national security. Therefore achieving pharmaceutical sovereignty must be India’s top priority to ensure that our government can exercise its will independently, without having to succumb to external pressures during crises. Sovereignty in the pharmaceutical sector would require building supply chain resilience by scaling up domestic production of APIs and other critical raw materials. It would also require fostering innovation and research in drug discovery along with ensuring regulatory autonomy to uphold the highest standards for drug safety and quality.

Session Objectives

1.turing capacities, especially in APIs, Key Starting Material (KSM), and vaccine raw materials.
2.To explore innovation in drug discovery and research through initiatives such as creating data collectives and leveraging AI-driven models for accelerated and cost-efficient drug development.
3.Identifying reforms needed to strengthen India’s regulatory frameworks for Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) to increase high-quality pharmaceutical manufacturing in the country

Industry- Government Partnership for Connecting Bharat

India’s vision of inclusive digital transformation hinges on bridging the connectivity gap between urban and rural regions. With over 65% of the population residing in rural areas, ensuring robust digital access is not only a matter of equity but also of national development. While various government-led initiatives like BharatNet and PM-WANI aim to build last-mile connectivity, meaningful progress requires deeper and sustained collaboration with industry players—both large and small.
This roundtable seeks to bring together policymakers, telecom service providers, digital infrastructure firms, rural fintech, agri-tech, ed-tech enterprises, and civil society organizations to chart a pragmatic path for scaling rural connectivity and ensuring its productive use. The discussion will focus on two key aspects: (i) accelerating the rollout of high-speed, reliable digital infrastructure across rural India, and (ii) ensuring that such connectivity is actively leveraged to deliver services in education, health, agriculture, commerce, and governance.
Industry can play a vital role in innovating last-mile delivery models, co-investing in infrastructure, building local language content and applications, and fostering digital literacy. Government, on its part, can ensure regulatory flexibility, viability gap funding, and demand aggregation through public services.
The roundtable aims to produce actionable recommendations on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) frameworks, outcome-linked incentive structures, localized content creation, and digital skilling models. It will also deliberate on setting up a innovating mechanisms to pilot scalable solutions in underserved geographies.
By fostering a shared vision and enabling ecosystem, this collaboration can empower rural communities to participate in India’s digital economy, unlock new economic opportunities, and promote inclusive growth. This roundtable is a step toward realizing the full potential of Digital Bharat.

Session Objectives

1.To explore strategies for strengthening last mile utilization to ensure greater and meaningful uptake, economic contribution, and sustained usage and to identify key opportunities for promoting rural telecom-drive investments and collaborations in digital infrastructure that can support India's growing rural connectivity.
To identify regulatory and policy adjustments needed to increase private sector participation in the usage of the broadband being rolled out in rural India.
3.To identify support needed from the industry for ensuring saturated coverage of high bandwidth connectivity in rural areas, and to leverage Smart Village initiative for providing relevant services over the connectivity.
4.To explore innovative solutions to mitigate bottlenecks for growth for telecom services providers, including satellite telephony players.

Atmanirbhar Ecosystem for Electronics and Semiconductor Industry

Session Objectives

1.In the fast changing global geo-economics, what are the tactical steps required to be taken by the industry and by the government, to accelerate the movement of electronics and semiconductor supply-chain from China to India, and to position India as a trusted supply-chain partner.
2.How can industry leverage the new PLI scheme to make India a significant player in electronic components, thereby enlarging the ecosystem for semiconductors.
3.What are the challenges and bottlenecks for the gasses and chemicals ecosystem for semiconductors