'Make In India' - How Far Is India's Indigenous Capital Ready To Open Up?

'Make In India' - How Far Is India's Indigenous Capital Ready To Open Up?

- Kishore Kumar Biswas

The recent advance in GDP estimate of Central Statistical Office (CSO) for 2017-18 has been 6.5% on y-o-y basis. This has been the lowest in 4 years. But the government is hopeful about the turnaround of the economy. Some of the well known business papers are also very proactive to explain the reasons behind the turnaround. On the other hand a section of economists think that even the estimate of CSO may be an overestimation. They are comfortable at 6.2 or at 6.3. Just against the backdrop of this, it is very difficult to explain the status quo of ‘Make in India’.

The general feature of the history of economic development is that there are three consecutive steps that an economy, generally, has to traverse. At the early stage agricultural growth is the most important. Then comes industrial development. The economic power in the second stage is characterized by industrial development. The last stage is the period of service sector. That is, in the third stage, service sector is the biggest contributor of national products. The peculiarity of the Indian economy is that it has by-passed the industrial development phase. At present, service sector contributes almost 55% of the total GDP of India and industrial sector, including manufacturing, contributes about 26%. On the other hand, close to 60% of the population are in the rural economy and are mostly dependent on agricultural sector. The main purpose of the Modi government is to increase the share of manufacturing to 25% of GDP by 2025 from close to 15% at present. In view of that the Modi government declared the policy of ‘Make in India’ in September 2014.