Tariffs,
software dependency, professional value and the case for sovereign digital
capability
India’s current trade exposure to the
United States is not only a question of goods crossing a border. It is a useful
stress test for a deeper dependency: the digital systems through which India
designs, documents and manages its built environment.
The issue is not whether India should
reject foreign technology or foreign professional expertise. It should not. The
issue is whether India can remain open to the world without allowing essential
software, data, standards and intellectual property to become strategic
chokepoints.
A Dependency Built Over Years
A tariff can change overnight. A dependency
built over twenty years cannot.
That distinction has become considerably
more important for India.
On 18 September 2026, the United States
enacted the Lindsay O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. The law
authorises expanded sanctions and tariffs connected with Russian energy.
Reporting on the enacted measure describes tariff powers of up to 100% on goods
from major purchasers of Russian oil and gas. India is among the economies
potentially exposed.
The original Graham proposal had
contemplated tariffs as high as 500%. The enacted legislation is different. But
the underlying question remains.
What happens when access to another
country’s market can become leverage over your sovereign choices?
For India’s built environment, there is a
second question: what happens when similar exposure exists in the software,
data and professional systems through which India designs what it builds?
India’s Knowledge Economy Is Not Immune
For three decades, India has built an
extraordinary knowledge-services economy. Architecture and engineering are part
of it.
Indian architects, engineers and BIM
professionals now model buildings overseas, coordinate infrastructure across
continents and produce engineering information for international clients.
A tariff on Indian goods does not
automatically apply to digitally delivered BIM or engineering services. That
distinction matters.
But another proposal in Washington shows
why the services economy should not assume permanent immunity. The proposed
HIRE Act, S.2976, would impose a 25% excise tax on certain payments by U.S.
taxpayers to foreign persons for services provided to U.S. consumers. It
remains proposed legislation, not law.
For India’s BIM and knowledge-processing
industries, the strategic lesson is larger than any one bill.
Cost
arbitrage is not sovereignty.
If competitive advantage depends mainly on
being the lower-cost production office for somebody else’s intellectual
property, software ecosystem and clients, legislation written elsewhere can
alter that advantage.
India should continue exporting
professional services. But it should move from exporting hours towards
exporting knowledge, platforms, standards, intellectual property and
decision-making capability.
I Asked This Question a Year Ago
In September 2025, I asked a simple
question: “Do we need an
Indian BIM Stack?”
The question came from an observation.
India’s first IT revolution succeeded not merely because Indians became
excellent users of foreign software. India built companies, delivery models,
capabilities and intellectual property that could compete internationally.
Yet in BIM, we remained overwhelmingly
consumers of global platforms.
I argued that an India-first BIM ecosystem
could move us from users to creators: platforms, standards and IP reflecting
Indian construction methods, codes and urban realities. That line of thinking
later developed through SP 73 and the Rise of India’s Uniform Digital Building
Code and the Atri architecture-and-construction cloud.
That argument was not about rejecting
foreign technology. It was about avoiding structural dependency.
The distinction matters much more today.
Now Reverse the Tariff
Consider the opposite scenario.
Suppose a future trade dispute leads India
to impose reciprocal measures on American digital products and services.
What happens to an Indian architecture or
engineering practice whose production environment depends on imported BIM
authoring software, cloud collaboration, GIS, rendering, simulation,
project-management systems, AI services and digital-twin platforms?
Software does not behave like steel or
automobiles at the border. The international framework is itself changing. The
WTO’s longstanding moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions was
not renewed at its March 2026 ministerial conference, and members are
discussing what follows.
An Indian project can occupy Indian land,
use Indian capital, employ Indian architects and engineers, obtain Indian
approvals and be constructed by Indian workers, while its digital production
chain remains significantly dependent on technology governed elsewhere.
That is not automatically wrong. But it is
a strategic exposure.
Sovereignty Does Not Mean Isolation
Digital sovereignty does not mean replacing
every foreign product with an Indian one.
It does not mean closing India to
international expertise. Nor does it mean building inferior alternatives simply
because they carry an Indian label.
Sovereignty
means retaining choice.
India should be able to use the world’s
best technology while ensuring that strategically important information remains
portable, interoperable and governable.
An Indian architect should be able to move
project information between systems. A public authority should not lose access
to infrastructure records because a commercial licence changes. National
infrastructure information should not become permanently captive to one
proprietary format.
And the continuity of an airport, railway,
hospital, city or power network should not depend on the foreign-policy
relationship between New Delhi and another capital.
When I subsequently developed the
Saptarishi Framework, this became an explicit principle: “Interoperability
between Indian and global systems is good—but sovereignty is essential.” The
argument later entered independent publication through Why India Needs a Digital Public Infrastructure for the
Built Environment.
That is not technological nationalism. It
is resilience engineering.
Data Changes the Argument Again
There is another layer.
Recent international disputes over
digital-services taxation reveal something fundamental about the modern
economy: governments increasingly contest where digital value is created, taxed
and governed.
In June 2026, President Donald Trump
threatened 100% tariffs against countries imposing digital-services taxes
targeting American technology companies. India itself previously operated an
equalisation levy on certain non-resident digital businesses; the broader 2%
e-commerce levy ceased applying from August 2024.
Behind the taxation dispute lies a deeper
question: where is digital value actually created?
When millions of users generate searches,
transactions, preferences, locations, professional information and behavioural
data, that activity creates commercial value.
The same question applies to buildings and
infrastructure.
Models contain design intelligence. Common
data environments contain project decisions. Digital twins contain operational
behaviour. GIS platforms reveal spatial relationships. Asset databases
accumulate institutional memory. AI systems become more capable through access
to data.
The question is no longer simply: where is
the server?
It is: who controls the data, who learns
from it, who monetises the knowledge derived from it, and who retains access
when commercial or geopolitical relationships change? I had explored this
earlier in Who Actually
Owns Our Data?
Then There Is the Professional Question
India should also be prepared to ask an
uncomfortable question about its architecture and engineering industry.
Some of the world’s largest multinational
architecture, engineering and programme-management consultancies now operate
extensively in India.
International participation can be
valuable. Global firms bring specialist expertise, international experience,
research, systems and competition. They employ Indian professionals, establish
Indian entities and can help transfer knowledge.
The issue is not whether they should be
here.
The more useful question is: what remains
in India after the project is completed?
Consider a major Indian airport, metro
system, data centre, hotel precinct or urban development. The land is Indian.
The investment may be Indian. The approvals are Indian. Much of the
professional workforce can be Indian. The construction workforce is overwhelmingly
Indian. The eventual economic value is generated by India’s growth.
Yet the premium attached to corporate
brand, proprietary methodologies, intellectual property and some corporate
returns can accrue through multinational structures.
That is normal in an international economy.
But India should still ask whether its largest projects are simultaneously
building Indian professional capability and ownership.
From Production Office to Intellectual Owner
The
danger is not foreign participation.
The danger is remaining permanently at the
production end of somebody else’s value chain.
India possesses an enormous pool of
architects, engineers, software developers, BIM specialists and data
scientists. If that talent can deliver some of the world’s most complex
projects through international organisations, it can also build Indian organisations
capable of competing globally.
That means moving from drafting to
decision-making; from modelling to platform-building; from software consumption
to software creation; from project data to nationally governed digital
infrastructure; and from outsourced production to owned intellectual property.
This is where BIM becomes something larger
than BIM. It becomes part of India’s digital industrial capacity.
Standing Up Does Not Mean Shutting Out
There is an understandable temptation
during a trade confrontation to answer one tariff with another. Sometimes
reciprocity may form part of trade policy. Sometimes negotiation may produce a
better outcome. Those decisions belong to governments.
But India’s longer-term response should be
harder to reverse than a tariff.
Remove the dependency that makes external
pressure effective in the first place.
If another country can threaten market
access and thereby constrain Indian choices, diversify markets. If
offshore-service taxation threatens labour arbitrage, move towards higher-value
intellectual property. If imported software becomes a strategic exposure, build
alternatives and insist on interoperability. If critical information sits in
proprietary systems, establish national standards for portability.
If Indian data generates value, ensure
India retains meaningful governance over it. If multinational firms use
exceptional Indian talent, create conditions in which Indian firms can retain
that talent, own the resulting knowledge and compete internationally.
None of this requires hostility towards the
United States—or any other country. It requires confidence in India’s own
capacity.
Sovereignty Is the Ability to Choose
This is why digital sovereignty cannot be
reduced to patriotism.
Patriotism may provide motivation.
Resilience provides the business case. Fairness provides another.
A relationship between nations is strongest
when participation is voluntary and mutual benefit is visible. Economic size
should not give one country an unquestioned right to determine another
country’s energy policy, technology choices or development priorities.
India will sometimes disagree with the
United States. It will sometimes disagree with Russia, China, Europe and
others. That is precisely why strategic autonomy matters.
A sovereign country needs enough economic,
technological and institutional capacity to make those choices—and accept their
consequences—without discovering that the systems on which it depends can be
switched off, priced beyond reach or turned into bargaining instruments.
India does not need to disconnect from the
world. It needs to become harder to coerce within it.
Digital
sovereignty is not the ability to exclude the world.
It
is the ability to engage with the world without becoming structurally dependent
upon it.
For India’s built environment, that means
ensuring that the software, standards, data, professional knowledge and
intellectual property through which we build the country increasingly become
capabilities that India can govern, retain—and ultimately export.
Further Reading from the Archive
▪ Do
we need an Indian BIM Stack? — LinkedIn, 3 September 2025
▪ SP 73 and the Rise of India’s Uniform Digital Building
Code — Blogger, 11 November 2025
▪ Layer 1 — Atri: Architecture & Construction Cloud
Explained — Blogger, December 2025
Sources for Current Policy Context
▪ White House — H.R. 5334 signed into law, 18 September
2026
▪ Reuters — Russia sanctions bill and tariff powers, 18
September 2026
▪ U.S. Congress — HIRE Act, S.2976 introduced text
▪ WTO — Electronic commerce and status of customs-duty
moratorium
▪ Reuters — U.S. threat over digital-services taxes, 26
June 2026
About the author: Apurva Pathak is an architect and design-governance professional based in New Zealand. He writes on digital public infrastructure for the built environment, design governance, infrastructure resilience and data sovereignty. LinkedIn profile
