Make in India: Riding The Good Wave

Despite recessionary conditions and weakening of international demand, Make in India 2.0 has been showing good results on the ground.

- Suman K. Jha

Come, Make In India. Come, manufacture in India; sell in any country of the world but manufacture here. We have got the skills, talent, discipline, and determination… From electrical to electronics, from chemicals to pharmaceuticals, from automobiles to agro value additions, from paper or plastic, from satellite or submarine, come, make in India.”

This is the almost poetic exhortation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made from the Red Fort in his maiden Independence Day speech in 2014. He has been delivering the same message to industry captains, both here and abroad.

The Make-in-India campaign, kicked off on 25 September, 2014, was devised to make India a manufacturing hub, push the manufacturing sector’s share to 25 per cent of gross domestic product by 2025 from the current stagnant 17 per cent and to make the manufacturing industry worth $1 trillion, a decade from now.

The object is clear — to create millions of jobs in an under-employed nation, jumpstart consumption, make India an integral part of the global supply chain, and lead the country to the path of double-digit growth in the coming years.

Says Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) president Sumit Mazumder: “It was one of the most powerful ideas ever to have been launched in Independent India.”

What’s Behind The Slogan

To be fair, this is not for the first time the government is pushing a Make in India drive. Immediately after Independence, public-sector units powered the first “Make in India” movement. After the 1991 opening of the economy, private enterprises led the phase two of the “Make in India” movement. The Modi government’s new thrust on the manufacturing sector, in a way, thus, is the third wave of the ‘Make in India’ movement.