India's MSME moment is a test of systems leadership

Across advanced and emerging economies alike, MSMEs are being asked to do more than survive.

- ANIL TRIGUNAYAT & SUMIT KAUSHIK

They are expected to absorb supply chain shocks, drive employment, anchor domestic manufacturing, and increasingly, meet the sustainability and compliance standards of global trade. In this context, MSME policy is no longer a domestic development concern. It is a competitiveness strategy.

India has over 68 million MSMEs, contributing nearly 28 to 30 percent of the country's GDP, making the sector central to economic growth, employment generation, and domestic value chains across regions. Its performance will decisively shape India's growth momentum and manufacturing competitiveness. Improving productivity, simplifying compliance, and ensuring convergence across schemes and institutions are therefore not administrative choices but economic imperatives to unlock scale, efficiency, and sustained value creation across the MSME ecosystem. India has responded to this challenge with scale and intent. Few economies deploy as many targeted interventions as possible for small enterprises. Yet the defining constraint today is not policy attention but policy architecture. As global capital becomes more selective and trade regimes more exacting, fragmentation within MSME support systems has begun to carry macroeconomic consequences.

The renewed emphasis on convergence must therefore be read as a strategic inflection point. Not a bureaucratic consolidation, but a systems reform with implications for productivity, exports, and economic resilience.