CHIP BY CHIP

After several failed attempts, the government is looking to give a boost to the semiconductor industry in India. But reaching a global scale is still a long way 

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In the early 1980s when Texas Instruments passed over Morris Chang for CEO, it turned out to be a big mistake for the US semiconductor giant.

Chang returned to Taiwan at the invitation of the government there, where he established semiconductor giant TSMC and turned his country into the mothership of silicon chips globally.

Interestingly in the sixties, decades before Chang set up TSMC, Fairchild Semiconductor, a firm set up by Intel founders Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, had considered building a fab in India, but alleged bureaucratic lethargy drove them away to Malaysia.

Since then, several attempts were made to set up a fab industry in India, including by PSUs such as Bharat Electronics and BHEL but they came to a nought, thanks to red tape, lack of infrastructure, corruption and a lack of visionary leadership.

In mid-2005, a major MNC semiconductor company started operations in South India but faced roadblocks and shifted the project to China. Seeing its fate, another multinational in the process of setting up fab here withdrew. In 2007, Intel moved a project to Vietnam citing policy delay.

In 2012-13, the UPA government allocated `39,000 crore to build two fabs. JP Group, along with IBM and HSMC bid for it but HSMC could not assure investors about an encouraging market in India, and the bidders withdrew.

In 2021, Tower Semiconductor threatened to walk out of an India project.

The end result of this is India, which was just two years behind the latest chip manufacturing technology in 1987, today lags 12 generations.

Amid this, the Modi government has launched a fresh gambit for setting up fab manufacturing in line with its goal to become a $5 trillion economy.

WHY THE RUSH?