India Inc backs PM Modi’s call to curb fuel, gold use amid shock from West Asia
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India's top business leaders, including billionaires Gautam Adani and Sunil Bharti Mittal, on Monday endorsed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to reduce consumption of import-dependent commodities like fuel and gold to conserve precious foreign exchange as a protracted West Asia war fuels price rise.They also called for strengthening domestic investments, accelerating energy transition, and ensuring self-sufficiency in compute for artificial intelligence (AI) to help insulate the economy from future global shocks.The industry leaders were speaking at the Annual Business Summit 2026 of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).“We need to get away from this obsession of gold. We need to lower our energy cost.
We need to move faster towards renewable energy in our industry,” said Mittal, the founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, the promoter group of telecom company Bharti Airtel Ltd.Mittal pushed for more investments in India, citing the example of his company Bharti Airtel Ltd. The company invested ₹31,000 crore in India in FY25, even more in FY26, and intends to top it in FY27, he said.“This is not the moment to shy away.
This is the moment to double down in our own country. Because the underlying growth is there,” he said.Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani made similar remarks.
For any country to be truly self-reliant, it cannot depend on foreign sources for its energy and intelligence, he said. To illustrate his point, he cited the example of the world’s two largest economies, the US and China.
He emphasized that despite their completely different systems, they converge on two principles - securing energy and data.“Energy and intelligence are now inseparable. They must be
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