Swadeshi on steroids

 Indian manufacturing is on the rise, but beating China will be a long march

- K. SUNIL THOMAS

SAME SCRIPT, different cast. Before ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make in India’ tried to sex up manufacturing, a half-naked fakir did it with one of the simplest, yet unforgettable, slogans in Indian history—swadeshi.

The times are changing, so is the cast; but the script remains the same. Seventy-five years since independence and under a new world order, India’s manufacturing sector still needs a leg-up, after all the Five Year Plans, National Manufacturing Policy (during UPA 2) and ‘Be Indian, buy Indian’ clarion calls. Can Atmanirbhar Bharat and its production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, which offers incentives for companies setting up manufacturing in specified sectors in the country on an incremental basis, cut away from those that went before? And can it breathe life, and roar, into the nutsand-bolts lion of ‘Make in India’?

Many believe it is possible. “Even as the world is grappling with a host of economic and geopolitical issues, India is at the cusp of opportunities which must be leveraged,” said Deepak Sood, secretary general of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India. “We are seeing quite a bit of success [of the PLI scheme] in sectors like electronics and automobiles. We need to ramp up the campaign.”