Make in India campaign misses its targets

THE "Make in India" campaign aims to sharply boost the share of manufacturing in India's gross domestic product (GDP), and to simultaneously generate mass scale employment for a booming young population. The goals, however, appear to be over-ambitious.

The campaign is nowhere near target because implementation confronts massive challenges in entrenched bureaucratic behaviour, the remnants of an old economic system, a financial system buckling under the weight of bad loans, and the imminent arrival of robots in factories.

One of the goals of Make in India, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in September 2014, was to increase the share of manufacturing to 25 per cent of GDP by 2020, up from 15 per cent under the previous Congress-led government. However, the …