Prof. Manindra Agrawal warns that reliance on foreign supply chains poses critical risks to national security and calls for indigenous innovation to safeguard India’s digital future
At the Startup Demo Day 2025 ‘Connect 1.0’, organised by C3iHub, the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Kanpur, BW Education interacted with Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Director of IIT Kanpur. A renowned computer scientist, Prof. Agrawal is celebrated for his pioneering contributions in complexity theory and cryptography, most notably the development of the AKS primality test.
With an illustrious career spanning research, innovation and academic leadership, and decorated with honours such as the Padma Shri, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, and the Gödel Prize, Prof. Agrawal shared his perspectives on the state of higher education in India, the urgency of building indigenous cyber-defence capabilities, the importance of self-reliance in technology, and the role of fundamental research in shaping real-world applications such as encryption and cybersecurity. Edited excerpts from the interview below:
Do you believe India’s higher education system is doing enough to prepare students for global leadership in science and technology?
Over the last few years, the Indian higher education landscape has been witnessing a transformation with a lot of excellent digital content being made available. However, I believe there are two important aspects that still need to be addressed. First, the way students are selected needs serious revisiting, especially from the perspective of the IITs and undergraduate entrance examinations. The examinations are falling short of identifying students with raw talent there is a significant dependence on coaching. Second, training of students in our colleges lacks a significant hands-on learning component. We need to address these issues to prepare our students for global leadership in science and technology.
With growing threats in cyberspace, what role can academic institutions like IIT Kanpur play in building indigenous cyber-defence infrastructure?
Indigenous cyber-defence is a critical need. Currently, most solutions being used are either open-source or proprietary. Open-source solutions pose serious security risks, whereas proprietary solutions are not customised for India’s cyber-defence and they are also expensive, thus mostly unaffordable for MSMEs/SMEs, who are the backbone of our country. To ensure our infrastructure is resilient and agile against cyber-attacks, we must have control over the solutions we implement, which means the solutions must be developed, managed and maintained by our own people. Many skilled human resources are required for this, which is possible to generate only by academic institutions with domain expertise, like IIT Kanpur.
At IIT Kanpur, many departments are actively engaged in cybersecurity research and teaching. We have India’s first industry-level critical infrastructure testbeds at the Wadhwani C3i Centre. A dedicated Cybersecurity Technology Innovation Hub, C3iHub, was established by the Department of Science and Technology under the National Mission on Cyber-physical Systems, which works on end-to-end indigenous cybersecurity, from research to innovation to commercialisation. C3iHub-developed solutions are deployed at critical organisations such as NHAI and IPA. Officers from the Army, Ministry of Power, NIC and others are taking hands-on training from this Hub. The Hub has also supported 50 start-ups and 50 R&D projects in cybersecurity across India and is conducting large-scale training programmes and hackathons at national level, involving more than one lakh students.
From teaching, research, innovation and entrepreneurship across all aspects, IIT Kanpur is working actively towards building indigenous cyber-defence infrastructure. Participation of more institutions can further strengthen the defence.
How critical is self-reliance in cybersecurity and defence-tech at a time when global supply chains are fragmented and geopolitical tensions are high?
The recent geopolitical tensions have highlighted the need to be self-reliant in cybersecurity and defence technology. I will especially emphasise the supply chain aspect. Supply chain security is now critical for maintaining national security. The Hezbollah pager explosions in 2024 show how cyber-physical systems can be used as lethal weapons, compromising supply chains and using social engineering. India has reached digitalisation at record speed and embraced smart homes, smart grids and smart manufacturing while relying on foreign supply chains, mostly originating in other countries, including some well-known adversaries.
Hardware Trojans embedded within imported chips can leak sensitive information about India’s critical infrastructure and defence to adversaries, acting as self-sabotage. Currently, we do not have tools available to detect this sophisticated malware at scale. We need to build this capability as well as develop our own supply chains to close all backdoors. Concerted efforts should be put into nurturing innovation, fostering collaborations and creating globally competitive technologies to deliver indigenous cybersecurity and defence solutions that safeguard our country’s future.
You are globally celebrated for the AKS primality test, a breakthrough in computational mathematics, and have been honoured with awards like the Padma Shri. How do you see such fundamental research influencing real-world applications today, particularly in areas like cybersecurity and encryption?
Fundamental research is the foundation of most impactful innovations. The AKS primality test was originally a curiosity-driven project, but it made a significant impact in cryptography, where secure digital communication depends on prime numbers. With quantum computers becoming a reality, existing encryption and secure communication protocols are at risk and require new strategies that can stem from breakthrough fundamental research. In cybersecurity, the threat patterns and vectors are fast evolving, and we need strong foundations in fundamentals in order to build and continuously improve indigenous cybersecurity solutions.
