Developing the Product –based Industries
India’s growth story in the last decade is puffed with the success of service sector and increasing outsourcing industries. Indians were recognized for being the global champions of IT-enabled services. It includes the airlines, healthcare, mobile phone, IT services etc. though are globally comparable but unable to compete the world-beaters. The sector raised the share of the service sector in the GDP to 65%, though did not generated the employment in the same proportion. In spite of such neatly decorated picture the country lacks the product based industry e.g. the aircraft manufacturer like Airbus, Boeing, the giant pharmaceutical industry like the Pfizer or a software giant like the Microsoft.
The reasons behind few product based industries include the lack of manufacturing or research and development environment. The country finds it convenient to pay for the readymade products than investing in indigenization. For example the high cost nuclear reactors are imported by India though the foundation of their research is led by Dr. Homi Bhaba in 1950’s in India and significant work was done by him in this field. But in the last decades country did not spent enough to develop the high capacity nuclear reactor. This clean energy product is gaining relevance in today’s energy starved India, leaving country in permanent dependency on the foreign imports.
In the Telecom sector we developed only the Tejas networking system, which is merely 1% of the annual telecom capital expenditure, the rest is imported, though we claim to have C-Dot, C-Dac etc.
Today in India, a race for the start-ups is going on among the entrepreneurs though is a good sign but lacked in many aspects. There is a density of start-ups in some particular sector and hence the poor outcomes. Diverse ranging start-ups in different sectors would help to scale up the products in the global markets. At the same time the entrepreneur-friendly environment is a pre-requisite which includes the government support bringing in some thought out policies in light.
It is time India should wake-up to continue the legacy of being the creator of world-winning products. The make in India would get a further push from the development of product based industries realizing the idea of developing in India, for India.
