Make in India. Even the term sounds slightly defective. For better or worse, that is the slogan with which Narendra Modi, India’s made-in-Gujarat prime minister, has branded his effort to transform the country into a manufacturing powerhouse. The goal is overdue.
It may also be unrealistic. The country does not have a good reputation for making things. Even Indians shun their own products. Jugaad, the so-called Indian way of innovation, was born of scarcity. Mihir Sharma, a commentator, says his countrymen make things “held together with cello-tape [EDS: SIC]and paan stains and prayer” — although high-tech goods, for example in aerospace, are actually of high quality.
If the Indians make some things shoddily, they also do not make enough. Manufacturing accounts for only 15 per cent of national output, against 32 per cent in China and 34 per cent in Thailand. (The figures were revised up slightly for last year because of new calculation methods.)