Make in India and PLI: Manufacturing Revival
Building the World's Next Factory
In 2014, India had 2 mobile phone factories. By 2024, it had 200+. From importing 78% of its electronics to becoming the world's second-largest mobile manufacturer, the story of how strategic industrial policy is transforming India from a service economy to a manufacturing powerhouse.
The Factory That Didn't Exist
In 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Make in India, critics asked a pointed question: "Make what in India?"
The numbers were damning. India manufactured almost nothing in electronics. Of the 220 million mobile phones sold in India that year, 78% were imported, mostly from China. India had 2 mobile phone factories. China had thousands.
India had become a paradox: the world's largest young workforce, but no factories to employ them. The world's fastest-growing consumer market, but almost nothing made domestically. A nation that could send satellites to Mars but couldn't make the phones that tracked them.
Ten years later, the transformation is visible:
- 200+ mobile phone factories operating in India
- India is the world's second-largest mobile manufacturer (after China)
- Apple iPhones assembled in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
- $14 billion in mobile phone exports (2023-24), from near zero
- 1.2 million jobs created in electronics manufacturing alone
How did this happen? Through a deliberate industrial policy that India's planners had abandoned in 1991, but learned to deploy differently.
The Ancient Wisdom: State and Industry Together
The Arthashastra devotes entire sections to state-industry relations. Kautilya recognized that manufacturing creates wealth, employment, and state power:
"कर्मान्तानां प्रवर्तनम्" Karmantanam pravartanam "The promotion of productive enterprises."
Kautilya's state wasn't socialist, it didn't run all industries. But it wasn't laissez-faire either. The state created conditions for industry to flourish: infrastructure, security, skilled labor, and when necessary, direct support for strategic sectors.
The Mauryan Empire had state-owned armories and textile workshops, but private merchants dominated trade. Kautilya's principle: the state enables and guides; the market delivers. This is precisely what PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) schemes attempt.
The colonial destruction of Indian manufacturing is well-documented. India, which produced 25% of world manufacturing in 1750, produced 2% by 1900. The British systematically de-industrialized India, breaking looms, taxing exports, dumping machine-made goods.