India added over 80 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity between 2022 and 2024, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The smart cities mission, dedicated freight corridors, 5G network rollout, and national data centre expansion represent a combined infrastructure investment of a scale and velocity that few economies have matched in the post-industrial era. Every megawatt of that infrastructure requires surge protection. The majority of that protection is currently imported.
The dependence carries consequences that extend well beyond procurement cost. Lead times of 12 to 20 weeks for imported SPDs create programme delays in time-critical infrastructure deployments. Import dependency concentrates supply chain risk during periods of geopolitical and logistical volatility — a risk that recent years have made viscerally tangible for procurement teams globally. And devices designed and certified for European or North American grid conditions are not always optimally specified for India's power quality profile — characterised by higher harmonic distortion, frequent switching events, and significant regional supply voltage variation.
The Bureau of Indian Standards has developed IS 16688, aligned with IEC 61643-11, establishing a domestic certification framework for surge protective devices. This is the technical foundation upon which genuine indigenous manufacturing capability must be constructed.
Atmanirbhar Bharat, applied to critical infrastructure protection, carries a specific meaning: designing for Indian conditions, achieving international certifications — IEC, CE, TÜV — from Indian facilities, and building the testing and validation infrastructure to sustain that capability across decades.
India is not building infrastructure for the next five years. The protection layer deserves the same ambition.