This paper deals with the oils and oilseeds industry in India, and with a governmental mission set up during the 1980s in order to achieve self-reliance in edible oils. The first part of this chapter starts with the internationalization of the American soya bean complex to explain how the later managed to reconfigure the world of oils and oilseeds, including in India. Indeed, thanks to an outstanding capacity of continual organization, a network and its agents (from peasants to multinationals including governmental institutions) were able, after a protection granted to the fledgling industry, to adapt themselves to the various circumstances of time and place, achieving fruition well beyond the narrow limits of their borders. Meanwhile, in India, the protection granted to the oils and oilseeds industry, as well as the adoption of a planned and centralized economy, led on the contrary to an ossified system that finally went against the interests of both producers and consumers, as well as the balance of payments (huge imports of edible oils). It was then that Sam Pitroda arrived on the scene, with the ambition to change, through five missions including one on oilseeds, 'the work ethos of the government and the bureaucracy'. The goals and means of this mission for self-reliance are developed in a second part, while a tentative assessment of this local policy for global autonomy is done in a third and final section.