The global economy is entering a period in which disruption can no longer be treated as a rare interruption between otherwise predictable years. Wars, energy shocks, trade restrictions, technology competition, supply-chain concentration and changing financial conditions can arrive together or in quick succession.
That was the central idea behind Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s message at the 5th Kautilya Economic Conclave 2026 in New Delhi. The fifth edition of the conclave, held from October 3 to 5 under the theme “Resilience in an Age of Flux,” was designed around the problem of how countries can preserve growth and openness while dealing with recurring global shocks.
Sitharaman’s argument was unusually important for a food-security publication because economic resilience and food resilience are closely connected. A country can grow strongly and still become vulnerable if it relies too heavily on a single supplier for an essential input, cannot absorb an energy-price shock, loses access to important markets or lacks the domestic technological capacity to replace a disrupted system.
Her message was not that India should retreat from globalization. It was almost the opposite.
The policy challenge is to build enough domestic depth and diversification to absorb shocks without giving up the benefits of global trade, investment, competition and specialization.
This article explains what that approach means, why the balance between autonomy and openness matters, how private investment and research fit into the strategy, and what these themes mean for India’s long-term food and economic security.
What Sitharaman meant by saying uncertainty is the new normal
The phrase is easy to misunderstand.
Saying uncertainty is now a standing condition of the global economy does not mean that every year will be a crisis year, or that India is destined for recession. It means policymakers should stop designing systems as though major disruptions are always temporary exceptions that can simply be repaired after they occur.
That distinction changes the policy question.
The old mindset is:
How quickly can we recover after a shock?
The newer resilience mindset is:
How much damage can the system absorb while the shock is still happening, and how quickly can it adapt to a changed environment?
That difference matters because some disruptions are no longer isolated. A conflict can affect shipping. A shipping disruption can affect energy and commodity markets. Higher energy costs can raise production and transportation expenses. Trade restrictions can then make alternative supplies more expensive or slower to obtain.
For food systems, this interaction can show up through fuel, fertilizer, machinery, packaging, irrigation, cold-chain logistics, imported feed ingredients and international commodity prices.
The result is an economy that needs buffers.
Those buffers do not have to mean permanent stockpiles of every product. They can mean diversified suppliers, reliable infrastructure, domestic capabilities, strategic reserves, stronger institutions, adaptable companies and the financial capacity to respond when market conditions suddenly change.
Kautilya Economic Conclave 2026: resilience without isolation
The official programme for KEC 2026 explicitly linked resilience with growth, openness and institutional credibility. Its sessions covered energy shocks, trade fragmentation, strategic autonomy, financial stability, technology, agriculture, food systems and the future of work.
That agenda is revealing.
Resilience is no longer being treated as a narrow disaster-management concept. It is becoming a central economic-policy question.
A country needs to ask whether its economic architecture can function when:
- energy prices jump;
- a major shipping route is disrupted;
- a critical raw material becomes difficult to obtain;
- tariffs or export restrictions change;
- capital becomes more expensive;
- technology access is restricted;
- or a domestic production bottleneck appears at the wrong time.
The answer is rarely one policy.
Resilience is a system property. It emerges from the combination of supply diversification, productive capacity, financial strength, infrastructure, technology, skills and institutional coordination.
That is why Sitharaman’s remarks connected strategic resources, trade, private investment and innovation rather than treating them as unrelated subjects.
Strategic autonomy starts with resource security
One of the most important themes in the minister’s address was strategic resource security.
National security increasingly depends on whether a country can reliably access inputs that are essential to its economy. These can include energy resources, critical minerals, industrial materials, components and technologies.
The hidden risk is single-source dependence.
A supply chain can be extremely efficient in normal times while being highly fragile during a disruption. If one country, one port, one company or one trade route dominates a critical input, a failure at that point can travel through the rest of the economy.
This is particularly relevant when businesses optimize only for the lowest possible cost.
Lowest cost is not always lowest risk.
A resilient supply chain may deliberately accept a little more cost in exchange for multiple suppliers, regional diversification, domestic capacity or backup logistics.
That does not mean India should manufacture everything domestically.
Complete self-sufficiency would itself be costly and, in many sectors, unrealistic.
The more practical objective is strategic depth: enough domestic capability and enough alternative international relationships that a disruption does not automatically become a national bottleneck.
Why supply-chain resilience matters to food security
Food supply is an unusually useful example of this principle.
A food system depends on much more than farmland.
Farmers need seed, fertilizer, electricity, diesel, machinery, irrigation, pesticides and credit. Processors need energy, packaging and transportation. Wholesalers and retailers depend on roads, rail, warehouses, ports and digital systems. Urban consumers depend on stable distribution.
A disruption in one upstream input can therefore affect the final price or availability of food without any sudden collapse in agricultural production.
Consider fertilizer.
India can have adequate cropland and strong farmer demand while still facing pressure if international fertilizer markets become volatile or if key inputs are disrupted. The same logic applies to energy.
A rise in oil and gas prices can increase the cost of farm operations, transportation, cold storage and processing. That does not guarantee a food crisis, but it can increase the probability of higher food costs or tighter margins elsewhere in the chain.
This is why strategic resource policy belongs inside a broader food-security conversation.
For a deeper look at India’s food-security position, see India Food Security 2026.
The lesson from fragile “just in time” systems
Modern supply chains created enormous efficiency by reducing unnecessary inventory and coordinating production across borders.
But efficiency can become fragility when there is no credible fallback.
A company that carries minimal inventory and has one low-cost supplier may outperform competitors in stable conditions. During a disruption, however, the same structure can become a liability.
For governments and major industries, the question is therefore not:
Should we abandon efficiency?
It is:
Where is redundancy worth paying for?
The answer will differ by product.
There may be little reason to duplicate every ordinary consumer good domestically. But for strategically important inputs, a second source, a domestic capability, or a strategic stock can have value far above its apparent short-term cost.
The correct response is targeted resilience rather than blanket protectionism.
Keeping global trade open is part of the resilience strategy
This is the second half of Sitharaman’s argument, and it is just as important as strategic autonomy.
A country cannot build resilience by simply closing itself off.
India benefits from access to international markets for goods, services, capital, technology, components and consumers. Export opportunities can support jobs and investment, while imports can lower costs and provide inputs that are not economical to produce domestically.
That is why the minister emphasized open, predictable and rules-based economic relationships.
The goal is to reduce vulnerability without destroying the diversification benefits that global trade provides.
A resilient country can have:
Domestic capability + multiple international partners + predictable trade rules.
That combination is stronger than either extreme of total dependence or total self-sufficiency.
Why trade predictability matters to businesses
Businesses invest when they have some ability to estimate future costs and market access.
If tariffs, export controls or other trade restrictions can change abruptly, companies may delay factories, supplier contracts and expansion plans.
That uncertainty has an economic cost even when no formal trade barrier lasts forever.
Predictability therefore becomes an asset.
Sitharaman argued that international trade policy should give businesses greater certainty, respect national development priorities and avoid unnecessary restrictions that fragment markets.
For India, this approach is particularly relevant as the country tries to attract investment into manufacturing, services, logistics and technology.
A business deciding where to put a new plant is not asking only about today’s wage or tax rate. It is also asking whether it will be able to import inputs, export products, move money, obtain technology and serve customers five or ten years from now.
Policy stability affects those decisions.
Strategic autonomy does not mean economic isolation
This distinction deserves to be stated plainly.
Strategic autonomy means retaining the ability to make national decisions without becoming dangerously dependent on a single external actor.
It does not require India to reject foreign trade or foreign investment.
In fact, diversification often requires more international relationships, not fewer.
Suppose India relies on one external supplier for a critical input. Reducing that vulnerability could involve developing a domestic alternative, but it could also involve adding suppliers from several other countries.
That is diversification.
The result is greater freedom of action.
The most resilient economy may therefore be one that is both more self-reliant in strategic capabilities and more globally connected in ordinary commerce.
Why private investment is central to the next phase
Sitharaman also placed a major responsibility on private capital.
Her argument was that the next stage of growth cannot depend on government investment alone. Private investment needs to lead a larger part of the expansion, including in research and innovation.
This matters because resilience ultimately depends on productive capacity.
Governments can build roads, provide public infrastructure, fund programmes and create incentives. But businesses still make many of the decisions that determine whether new factories, technologies, products and services are developed at scale.
Private investment can also reveal where actual commercial demand exists.
When firms invest their own capital in a technology or production system, they are making a judgment about whether customers will pay for it, whether it can scale and whether it can compete.
That makes private capital an important link between innovation and economic output.
India’s R&D gap is still significant
Sitharaman highlighted a number that deserves attention.
India’s gross expenditure on research and development is around 0.83 per cent of GDP, compared with about 2.7 per cent in OECD economies, according to the figures cited in her address.
Official Department of Science & Technology data show that India’s GERD reached 0.84 per cent of GDP in 2023–24, after being around 0.83 per cent in 2021–22. The same official data show that the private sector accounted for roughly 36 per cent of total R&D expenditure in 2023–24.
The message is not that India does no research.
India has substantial scientific, engineering and technological capacity.
The problem is the scale and composition of total spending relative to the needs of a large economy that wants to compete in advanced technologies.
If strategic resilience increasingly depends on domestic capability in energy, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, space, defence and other high-value areas, low R&D intensity can become a constraint.
Why the private share of R&D matters
Public research can build knowledge and infrastructure that companies later commercialize.
But many technologies require long cycles of product development, testing, engineering, manufacturing and market expansion.
That process often requires private firms to spend repeatedly before revenues appear.
A higher private-sector share of R&D can therefore improve the connection between:
research → prototypes → products → manufacturing → exports.
That is also why the government has promoted the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme, which was approved in 2025 with a total outlay of ₹1 lakh crore over six years and is intended to catalyze private-sector participation in strategic and high-impact research.
The broader policy goal is not simply more academic research.
It is greater domestic capability to turn research into commercially useful technologies.
From “Made in India” to technology created in India
A country can have a large manufacturing base without necessarily controlling the most valuable intellectual property.
The higher-value goal is to move further upstream.
Instead of only asking:
Can this product be manufactured in India?
the economic question becomes:
Can the underlying technology, design, engineering and intellectual property also be developed in India?
That is the logic behind the “Imagined and Made in India” ambition referenced in coverage of Sitharaman’s remarks.
For resilience, this matters because control of technology can be almost as important as control of physical inputs.
A country that can design, adapt and improve critical systems has more options when imported technology becomes expensive or inaccessible.
What this means for food technology
The innovation agenda also reaches the food system.
Food resilience in the future will depend on technologies that can improve productivity while reducing vulnerability to climate, energy and supply disruptions.
Examples include:
- precision agriculture;
- improved seeds and crop genetics;
- efficient irrigation;
- cold-chain monitoring;
- warehouse automation;
- food-loss reduction;
- better weather and demand forecasting;
- alternative proteins and ingredients;
- farm machinery suited to Indian conditions;
- and digital systems that improve traceability and logistics.
Not every innovation will succeed.
That is normal.
Resilience comes partly from maintaining a broad enough innovation pipeline that some technologies can scale when conditions change.
Building economic resilience is also about fiscal and financial buffers
The phrase “economic resilience” can sound abstract until it is translated into balance-sheet terms.
A government with fiscal space can respond to a shock more easily than one that has very limited room to act.
A banking system with stronger capital and better risk management can absorb more stress than one with weak balance sheets.
Companies with healthy cash flow can survive demand shocks longer than highly leveraged firms.
Households with savings can handle income interruptions more easily than those living month to month.
The same principle operates at every level:
Buffers create options.
When uncertainty increases, options are valuable because the correct response often cannot be known in advance.
How resilience differs from protectionism
This is one of the most important distinctions for interpreting the minister’s approach.
Protectionism can try to reduce foreign competition by restricting imports.
Resilience asks a different question:
How can the country remain economically open while ensuring that a disruption in one place does not shut down a critical system?
A resilient policy may therefore support:
- multiple suppliers instead of one;
- domestic capability in strategically important inputs;
- trade agreements with several partners;
- transparent stock policies;
- better logistics;
- stronger infrastructure;
- and innovation that reduces dependence over time.
The target is not isolation.
The target is choice.
What citizens may notice first
Macroeconomic resilience is built at the national level, but citizens eventually experience it through everyday conditions.
The most visible channels can include:
Prices.
More resilient supply chains can reduce the severity or duration of some price spikes, although they cannot prevent global commodity inflation altogether.
Jobs.
A diversified economy with multiple sources of investment may be better positioned to create new employment when one sector or export market weakens.
Availability.
Alternative suppliers and stronger domestic capacity can reduce the chance that a localized disruption becomes a widespread shortage.
Technology.
Higher domestic innovation capacity can create new products and industries while lowering dependence on imported systems in some areas.
Infrastructure.
Better transport, storage, power and digital systems can make the economy less vulnerable to physical disruptions.
These benefits are gradual. Resilience is usually measured by what fails to happen during a crisis, not by a dramatic announcement on a single day.
What businesses should take from the resilience agenda
For businesses, the policy message has a practical counterpart.
The first step is to identify critical dependencies.
A manufacturer may depend on one imported component. A food processor may depend on one packaging supplier. A retailer may depend on one logistics corridor. A technology company may depend on one cloud provider or one hardware platform.
The next step is to ask what happens if that dependency disappears for thirty days.
That exercise can reveal risks that normal cost accounting misses.
Businesses can then decide where resilience spending is justified.
Possible responses include dual sourcing, supplier diversification, modest safety stock, alternative logistics routes, technology substitution, local partnerships and stronger cash buffers.
The right level will differ by industry.
Resilience is not the same as keeping excessive inventory everywhere.
What policymakers should monitor next
Sitharaman’s remarks point toward several indicators that are more useful than a single headline GDP number.
Strategic inputs
Watch whether India is diversifying sources of critical minerals, energy inputs, industrial components and other essential materials.
Trade concentration
Track whether exports and imports are becoming dependent on a narrow group of destinations or suppliers.
Private capital expenditure
Higher private investment is a practical test of whether business confidence is translating into productive capacity.
R&D intensity
An increase in R&D spending as a share of GDP would indicate that innovation is moving closer to the scale required for a technology-intensive economy.
Private-sector R&D
The private share matters because it shows whether commercial firms are participating more deeply in the national innovation system.
Logistics and storage
For food security, warehousing, cold chains, transport connectivity and loss reduction can matter as much as farm output.
Energy exposure
A major rise in imported energy costs can affect inflation, transport and production across the economy, so energy diversification remains a central resilience issue.
What this means for India’s food-security outlook
The connection between this economic agenda and food security is straightforward.
Food security depends on four broad questions:
Is enough food produced?
Can it move where it is needed?
Can households afford it?
Can the system continue functioning after a shock?
The first three are often discussed separately from macroeconomics, but the fourth brings them together.
A stronger economy does not automatically guarantee food security.
However, stronger fiscal capacity, deeper infrastructure, diversified energy and trade links, better technology and more resilient businesses can all increase the ability of a food system to absorb disruption.
The key is to build these capabilities before a crisis tests them.
That is the practical meaning of resilience.
What the minister’s message does not mean
It does not mean India is preparing for an imminent economic collapse.
It does not mean every supply-chain disruption will create shortages.
It does not mean the government intends to abandon global trade.
It does not mean domestic production is always more efficient than imports.
And it does not mean every household should respond to “uncertainty” by panic-buying goods or making extreme financial decisions.
The more defensible interpretation is much calmer:
India needs stronger buffers because the world is harder to predict.
That is a long-term policy objective, not a forecast of a specific near-term disaster.
A useful resilience framework for India
The ideas from Sitharaman’s address can be organized into a simple five-part framework.
| Resilience pillar | Core question | What stronger resilience looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic resources | Can a critical input be cut off suddenly? | Diversified supply plus domestic depth |
| Trade | Can the economy keep buying and selling during disruption? | Open, predictable, multi-partner relationships |
| Private investment | Are companies expanding productive capacity? | Higher long-term capital formation |
| Innovation | Can India develop or adapt key technologies? | More R&D and stronger private participation |
| Buffers | Can shocks be absorbed without systemic damage? | Fiscal, financial, infrastructure and supply-chain capacity |
This framework also helps explain why resilience cannot be “completed.”
Technology changes. Trade routes change. Geopolitical relationships change. Climate risks change. Consumer demand changes.
A resilient economy must keep adapting.
The bigger lesson: resilience is a process, not a stockpile
The strongest part of Sitharaman’s argument is the idea that resilience is continuous.
A government cannot build one warehouse of grain, one energy reserve or one manufacturing plant and declare the economy protected forever.
The system has to be maintained.
Suppliers must be reassessed. Infrastructure must be upgraded. Skills must evolve. Technologies must improve. Financial buffers must be replenished. Trade relationships must be diversified.
That is why uncertainty being “normal” should not be interpreted as permanent pessimism.
It can also mean permanent adaptation.
For India, the objective is not to become immune to global shocks. No large open economy can achieve that.
The objective is to become harder to destabilize, faster to adapt and better able to keep essential systems operating while the shock is still unfolding.
Bottom line
Nirmala Sitharaman’s message at the Kautilya Economic Conclave 2026 can be read as a blueprint for operating in a less predictable global economy.
The strategy has three closely connected elements.
First, strengthen strategic autonomy.
Reduce dangerous dependence on single sources of essential resources and build domestic depth where it matters most.
Second, keep the global economy open.
Use diversified international relationships, predictable trade rules and negotiated partnerships rather than assuming that resilience requires isolation.
Third, make private investment and innovation bigger drivers of growth.
India’s R&D intensity and private-sector share of R&D still have room to rise, and stronger commercial participation can help turn research into products, technologies and productive capacity.
The implications extend beyond finance ministries and industrial policy.
They reach farms, food prices, logistics networks, manufacturers, retailers and households.
For a country preparing for a world in which major shocks may recur, resilience is ultimately the ability to preserve choice: more than one supplier, more than one market, more than one technology pathway and enough financial and institutional capacity to respond when conditions change.
That is a much more useful goal than trying to predict exactly when the next crisis will arrive.
Sources & Further Reading
The primary institutional reference for the event is the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau notice on the fifth Kautilya Economic Conclave, including its theme of “Resilience in an Age of Flux” and the planned plenary on India’s economic priorities.
The R&D figures cited in this article are consistent with the Department of Science & Technology’s Research & Development Statistics 2025-26 data, which report GERD at 0.84 per cent of GDP in 2023-24 and show the private sector contributing about 36 per cent of total R&D expenditure.
For the broader food-security context, see India Food Security 2026, alongside Global Food Crisis 2026 and How Oil and Energy Prices Affect Food Costs.