How “Make in India” Will Break in India

Narendra Modi’s only aim is to hoodwink the gullible Indians – rather Indian voters – who rally around him hysterically with the hope to see good days in India after decades of misery in the country.

By Rakesh Raman

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In the present context, this saying goes well with India’s hype-driven Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He wants to live in a fool’s paradise by just saying everything but doing nothing.

Of late, he has released another bubble in the air which is about to bust. “Make in India” is a blind attempt to make India a manufacturing hub for the world while India’s own manufacturing is in doldrums. Modi knows that it’s already a stillborn idea. And he also knows that he is not serious about it.

His only aim is to hoodwink the gullible Indians – rather Indian voters – who rally around him hysterically with the hope to see good days in India after decades of misery in the country.

And those who think that this “Make in India” thing will move beyond the rhetoric are in fact intellectually challenged, dumb Modi fans – only. As the wise have eyes in their heads, they have already ignored it as another Modi joke.

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The “Make in India” campaign is supposed to reinvigorate the local industry and invite investments in the country asking foreign companies to begin their manufacturing operations here.

Alas, it doesn’t work like Modi thinks. The dwindling local manufacturing is a manifestation of the fact that India is not the right place for any kind of industry. According to the World Bank’s “ease of doing business index” which measured the business atmosphere in 189 countries, India comes at a poor rank of 134.

Rampant corruption, torturing red-tapism, unskilled workers, and naïve politicians make India a hell for investors. And without stating his strategy to tackle all these irritants, Modi launched “Make in India” project, which can befool a few Indians but not the prudent foreign investors.

Most know that India’s manufacturing climate is polluted beyond repair. If Modi wants to invite foreigners in India’s manufacturing sector, he must first cleanse the suffocating local climate which has wiped out India from the global industrial map.

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Also, Modi wants to emulate China’s manufacturing model without knowing that China could attract foreign investments because its local manufacturing has constantly shown excellent performance. For example, China contributes over 22% to global manufacturing while India’s share stands at a dismal 2%.

While India and China have almost the same population, India’s manufacturing sector is struggling while Chinese economy is largely driven by manufacturing. This is evident from the contribution of manufacturing in the two countries’ GDP – in India it’s just 15% as compared to 34% in China.

Lack of skills is among the many factors for India’s poor performance in manufacturing. Today, there are nearly 500 million workers in India. Of these, more than 90% work in unorganized sector, working as pushcart vendors, street hawkers, home-based gem polishing workers, domestic servants, and so on.

As India’s human development index (HDI) – which indicates the level of skills in a country – staggers at a dismal rank of 135 in the world – there is hardly any workforce in the country that is employable in the modern manufacturing sector. As a result, the productivity levels in the industry are pathetically low.

The factory workers in India are not educated and they are being used as mere pairs of hands while the education system in the country is going from bad to worse. According to a UNESCO report, India has by far the largest population of illiterate adults — 287 million or 37% of the global total.

[ Also Read: Meet the Uneducated Education Minister of India ]

If Modi’s “Make in India” invites foreigners to set up their factories here, does Modi expect them to bring their own qualified workforce? Then how will this project help generate employment opportunities in the country?

Plus, today’s modern industry is supposed to be run by technology-driven systems. But the technology adoption level in the country is also as bad as its record in other fields. According to The Global Information Technology Report 2014 released by the World Economic Forum, India’s rank is a poor 83. Worse, it has fallen to this level from its 2013 rank of 68 in the world.

Modi and his men are clueless about these contemporary factors that are required to be streamlined before going abroad with a begging bowl to beg for investments. He and his blind admirers look like fools when they talk about this misadventure called “Make in India.”

In fact, Modi wants to take undue credit from “Make in India” project by creating a hype around it. The truth is that he is not doing anything new. He has only stolen the previous government’s National Manufacturing Policy of 2011, which aimed to uplift the manufacturing sector by setting the targets of increasing the contribution of manufacturing in GDP to 25% and creating 100 million new jobs by 2020.

As Modi lacks skills and vision, he has simply given a new name – “Make in India” – to the old National Manufacturing Policy document created by his predecessors in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The “Make in India” targets about foreign investment and local employment are so unreal that Modi can use them only as empty slogans for his hyped tweets to impress his dumb followers. They are not good enough to attract foreign investors in the country. That’s why Modi’s “Make in India” will simply break in India. QED.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company

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Photo courtesy: Make in India website