India’s Quantum Vision 2035: Roadmap warns of costs of inaction

Hyderabad: India’s Quantum Vision 2035 report emphatically states that the nation is at a crucial point in its technological evolution, possessing a genuine opportunity to construct a robust quantum ecosystem capable of delivering both national impact and global leadership.

The newly released roadmap outlines the Vision for 2035, urging immediate, decisive action to overcome existing barriers to the accelerated development and adoption of quantum technologies.

The report issues a stern warning: a failure to invest strategically in quantum technologies could have profound consequences for India’s ambition to become a developed nation by 2047 (Viksit Bharat). Quantum technology is set to be one of the most disruptive forces of the century, and neglecting it would significantly amplify India’s strategic vulnerabilities. Continued reliance on foreign technologies in critical sectors like defence, cybersecurity, surveillance, and advanced communications could leave India exposed, particularly as competitors, such as China, rapidly advance in the quantum domain.

Economically, the risks are equally severe. The global quantum sector is projected to be worth hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Missing this crucial opportunity would stifle domestic growth, limit job creation, and potentially transform India’s significant demographic dividend into a liability, resulting in millions of working-age individuals being underemployed or jobless.

A technological lag would widen the trade deficit, diminish India’s share in high-value global industries, and undermine competitiveness across manufacturing, semiconductors, and software services. Dependence on imported quantum solutions would drastically increase costs, hindering Indian industry and making the transition to a high-income economy more difficult. The report cautions that per capita income could lag behind global leaders such as China and the United States.

Ultimately, "the absence of robust quantum capabilities would endanger national security, critical infrastructure, and erode India’s strategic autonomy, as dependence on external technologies could be leveraged by adversaries and even allies to constrain India’s options on the world stage," the report warned.

Against this critical backdrop, the roadmap provides a detailed outlook for what a quantum-powered economy could look like in 2035 and clearly identifies what India must do now to secure global leadership. It deconstructs this goal into five visions, thoroughly analyses critical gaps, and offers seven actionable recommendations to bridge them. These recommendations are specifically designed to complement and strengthen the objectives of the National Quantum Mission (NQM). Ensuring that NQM milestones, especially those relating to hardware technologies, are achieved as planned will be critical for success.

If adopted, the roadmap charts a clear path from 2035 to 2047, enabling India to build on the foundation laid in the next decade to accelerate towards Viksit Bharat. By 2047, India could stand among the world's developed nations, leveraging its quantum leadership to positively impact other areas of national development.

The report emphasises that achieving this vision demands collective action from policymakers, industry, academia, private capital, and the public sector. With coordinated effort, India can ensure that by 2035, its economy and policy landscape have ready access to the transformative applications of quantum technologies, thereby securing both national progress and global leadership.