For a Manufacturing-Led Viksit Bharat

The British-Hungarian economist Nicholas Kaldor's assertion that "few countries, if any, attained economic growth without industrialization" is as relevant for India as any other country.

- DAMMU RAVI

The British-Hungarian economist Nicholas Kaldor's assertion that "few countries, if any, attained economic growth without industrialization" is as relevant for India as any other country. The trajectory of most developed economies indicates a similar pattern; they evolved from manufacturing to services to technology. Today, a combination of these factors helps them remain competitive. Having missed the industrial revolution and failing to make a timely course correction after Independence, India paid a heavy price in terms of economic growth and jobs. The assumption that services would help to leapfrog the economy was, in hindsight, erroneous. On the path to Viksit Bharat 2047, the need to urgently make systemic and structural corrections has been critically analyzed by the India Industrial Development Report 2024-25, brought out by the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID).

The report makes recommendations for positioning India as the next manufacturing hub, underlining the positive impact of policy initiatives such as Make-in-India, Production Linked Incentives (PLI), infrastructure development, industrial corridors, promotional measures, and so on. This optimistic projection is expected to be a long haul given that the share of manufacturing in India's gross domestic product (GDP) has stagnated at 17 percent, much behind its East Asian peers at about 30 percent, and its share in global manufacturing is meager at 3.1 percent.