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“When buying a new product, what would be your preferred choice?
- Economically priced Made-in-China product.
- Competitively priced Made-in-India product.
- Post-covid has made us realize that we have to be self-reliant.
MAKE IN INDIA 1.0
- Since Make in India’s first version launched in 2014,
- India has primarily become an assembly hub in industries such as mobile phones, lighting and consumer electronics.
- In other words, manufacturers assembled products from imported electronic components to meet domestic demand.
- Assembly created jobs.
MAKE IN INDIA 2.0
- The new version of Make in India seeks to protect domestic manufacturers and push them up the value chain.
- Make in India 2.0 is likely to press the accelerator on vertical integration, where the component supply-chains are coerced to be local because of import substitution.
- Last year China suddenly increased the prices of pharmaceutical intermediates by 30-40%.
- India used to make everything from scratch.
- Then, our pollution norms started getting tougher and we found it easier to buy from China around 1985-90s.
FOR INDIA TO BECOME SELF RELIANT, GOVERNMENT MUST PLAY THE ROLE OF FACILITATOR
- Poor infrastructure and inefficient logistics lead to higher costs.
- Besides logistics, disabilities in India include higher cost of finance, lack of quality power, land & labour reforms
- Does that mean India slipping into some form of economic isolation that resembles the pre-1991 era?
WHAT SHOULD BE THE FOCUS AREAS FOR INDIA?
- The focus obviously is on sectors that can provide plenty of jobs.
- Textiles is one industry where we should be able to make for ourselves and the world.
- The other sectors to focus must be leather and the footwear (because it involves small companies), furniture, agricultural/marine products and electronics (India runs up a huge import bill here).
- India is well-positioned to host new investments in-
- Pharmaceuticals, medical devices, automobiles, capital goods, electrical machinery, chemicals and petrochemicals, plastic products, and telecom equipment among others.
- REMEMBER, IT’S NOT ABOUT CHINESE PEOPLE. IT’S CPC
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