COVID-19 has exposed the serious strategic implications of India’s import dependence, especially on China. Politics, Policy and Pandemic are the challenges to Prime Minister Modi’s vision of Atmanirbharta (self-reliance). While the initiative is essential to promote capacity building and competitiveness on a local and global scale, among the issues that still need to be looked into are cost of logistics, bureaucratic hurdles and comparatively higher taxes in some sectors that discourage investments.