TCS Layoffs to Microsoft’s Betrayal: Why India Must Stop Building Empires for Others

“You are either building your own dream or building someone else’s.”This quote, often tossed around in entrepreneurial circles, has never felt more urgent, or more suitable to the national perspective, than it does today.

Two recent developments have been a sobering wake-up call for India’s digital and intellectual sovereignty. First, Microsoft abruptly blocked access to critical cloud services for Nayara Energy, reportedly without warning or recourse. Second, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) laid off 12,000 mid- and senior-level professionals, many of them part of the very backbone that helped build India’s global IT brand.

These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a system where India’s best minds, infrastructure, and ambition are still largely in service of foreign business models and geopolitical priorities. And it is time the status quo was changed for good.

When the Builders Become Expendable

For decades, India’s IT talent has powered Silicon Valley, maintained core systems for Fortune 500s, and scaled global innovation at cut-rate margins. We took pride in this as it put India on the global map. But now the map has changed and it is time to change our mindset too.

When TCS trims its workforce at the top, it’s not just a business move; it's a sign that even our own IT giants are not immune to global cost pressures and strategic shifts. The silent message: loyalty to a system built on offshore dependency offers no protection.

And Microsoft's action? It was a stark reminder of what every sovereign nation should already know—foreign cloud is not your cloud. Your critical operations can be switched off at a keystroke, halfway across the world, by people who owe you nothing.

We Export Brilliance, But Import Dependence

India has the highest number of active developers in the world, according to the 20th edition of the State of the Developer Nation. There are 27 million active developers in the world and, by percentile, India had 5.2 million active developers employed in India as of 2022, which means we have the highest active developers in the world, followed by the US at 4.8 million. Our startups are vibrant. Our digital public infrastructure, from UPI to Aadhaar, is the envy of many developed nations. Yet, our foundational platforms like cloud, chips, productivity tools, cybersecurity infrastructure, etc., are almost entirely foreign-made and foreign-owned.

This is digital colonisation by permission, another form of slavery in the 21st century. And every brain we export, every server we rent, every license we renew, reinforces it.

What Will It Take to Build India’s IT-verse?

We don’t lack talent. What we lack is vision and unified will. Here’s what it will take:

1. Strategic Sovereignty in Tech

We must treat cloud, chips, and code the way we treat oil and weapons: as national assets. India needs its own hyperscaler-grade cloud infrastructure, backed by the government and made interoperable for the Indian industry.

2. A Shift from Services to Ownership

We’ve excelled at IT services, but we must now shift toward product ownership. That means investing in Indian SaaS, Indian OS, Indian enterprise tools, and yes, even Indian alternatives to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. We need to believe we can do it on our own.

3. Retention of Senior Talent

The mass layoff of experienced professionals must be seen for what it is—a leak in the ship of national capacity. We need policies and platforms that retain, repurpose, and reward midlife tech professionals, not discard them as overhead.

4. An IP-First Mindset

Building for others is rent. Building your own IP is capital. India must incentivize the creation of patents, protocols, and core tech layers that belong to Indian companies and are licensed to the world, not just from it.

5. Digital Neutrality as Policy

India must not let its infrastructure be subject to arbitrary shutdowns by foreign actors. Just as we aim for energy security, we must also enshrine data and digital sovereignty in policy and law.

The Time to Build Ourselves Is Now

We’ve helped build the digital skyscrapers of the West. It’s time we invested the same grit, genius, and scale into building our own. Because make no mistake, global firms will always put their home countries first, as they should. The question is, why don’t we?

It’s time we stopped exporting brilliance and importing control.

It’s time we stopped waiting for permission.

It’s time India built India.

(The writer is a versatile content professional with 20+ years of experience, specializing in customized, high-impact writing across education, PR, corporate, and government sectors.)