Two lazy stories dominate discussion of Indian electronics. The first says Make in India is merely screwdriver assembly, a photo opportunity in which imported kits acquire a local label. The second points to rising production and exports and declares the mission accomplished. I believe both stories are obsolete. India has built a substantial phone-manufacturing base, attracted global supply chains and proved it can execute at scale. It has not yet captured enough of the components, intellectual property, tooling and engineering that determine where value and strategic power reside.
This distinction is not semantic. Assembly creates jobs, logistics capability, quality systems and supplier demand. It is often the first rung of industrialisation. Sneering at it is the luxury of people who have never had to build a factory ecosystem. But the first rung is not a destination. If incentives permanently pay companies for output without forcing deeper local capability, India can export impressive volumes while remaining vulnerable to imported displays, chips, camera modules and production equipment.
The government deserves credit for changing the scale of ambition. My criticism is that success makes the next test harder. Policy must now discriminate between activity that happens in India and capability that belongs in India.
The production numbers are not imaginary
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s information on production-linked incentive schemes explains the policy logic: reward incremental production in targeted electronics categories and draw large manufacturers and suppliers into India. The approach broke with the old habit of announcing manufacturing aspirations without making global firms recalculate their economics.
Phone factories in and around Noida, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere are tangible industrial assets. Export growth matters. Large-scale production teaches process discipline and makes ports, customs, testing laboratories and component vendors respond. Workers and managers accumulate knowledge that cannot be summoned by a policy paper. Critics who dismiss all assembly ignore how East Asian manufacturing ecosystems often deepened over time.
Yet headline production value can overstate domestic value added. A costly imported component incorporated into a phone raises the value of the finished device without representing equivalent Indian capability. Policymakers know this, but public communication frequently slides between “made in India,” “assembled in India” and “value created in India” as though they were interchangeable.
I want annual, product-level reporting of domestic value addition using a consistent method, with ranges where commercial confidentiality requires them. Which categories are localising? Where are imports entrenched? How much incentive was paid per job, per unit of investment and per rupee of verified domestic value? Industrial policy requires patience, but patience without measurement becomes patronage.
Chinese brands remain because they solved India
It has become fashionable to assume that Chinese smartphone brands dominate only because they discount heavily or because Indian consumers are insufficiently patriotic. This is comforting nonsense. Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Realme and others built distribution, service networks, product cadence and feature combinations suited to fiercely price-sensitive buyers. They manufacture much of what they sell locally and have spent years learning the Indian retail channel.
A buyer choosing a phone under a tight budget compares screen, battery, camera, storage, service and financing. National origin may influence the decision, but it rarely compensates for a visibly weaker product. Indian brands lost ground not because consumers betrayed them but because competitors executed better. Revival requires design, software support and after-sales confidence, not a flag printed on the box.
Market tracking from firms is often summarised by specialist publications such as 91mobiles’ India smartphone market coverage, and the recurring picture is a competitive field in which Chinese-origin brands retain enormous weight even as Apple and Samsung expand local production. The policy lesson is subtle: manufacturing location and brand ownership are different goals. India can benefit from foreign factories while also developing domestic firms and suppliers. Conflating the two produces bad incentives.
Security and data rules should be enforced firmly and uniformly. Tax and corporate compliance deserve scrutiny based on law and evidence. But industrial policy should not pretend enforcement alone will create an Indian champion. Consumers cannot be regulated into admiring a bad phone.
The component ladder
The next phase should focus on clusters of components where India can plausibly become competitive: enclosures, batteries and packs, chargers, mechanical parts, printed circuit board assemblies, camera subcomponents, display modules and eventually more sophisticated semiconductor work. Not every component should be local at any cost. Forced localisation can make products expensive and shelter poor suppliers. The objective is globally competitive capacity, not autarky.
Scale is necessary but insufficient. Component firms need predictable tariffs, reliable power, fast customs, land, water, skilled technicians and access to finance. They also need customers beyond one subsidised programme. A supplier that serves phones, appliances, automobiles and industrial electronics is more resilient than one tethered to a single model cycle.
Policy stability is crucial. Frequent changes to import duties can encourage shallow tariff arbitrage rather than long-term investment. Companies need a published glide path showing which inputs will face duties, when, and how domestic capacity will be assessed. Surprise may make for muscular headlines; factories prefer spreadsheets that remain valid.
Design belongs on the ladder too. India has abundant software and engineering talent, but consumer hardware product management remains thin. Supporting prototypes, testing, industrial design and standards certification will not produce instant export numbers, which makes it politically less attractive than inaugurating a line. It may produce firms that own products rather than rent manufacturing capacity.
Semiconductors without mythology
India’s semiconductor push is necessary and expensive. Chips underpin communications, vehicles, defence and industrial systems. The pandemic shortage demonstrated the risks of concentrated supply. But fabs are not magical sovereignty machines. They require huge capital, reliable utilities, specialised chemicals, global customers and relentless yield improvement.
I support public incentives because every major semiconductor region uses them and because late entry carries strategic costs. I oppose pretending that any announced plant makes India self-sufficient. Different chips use different process nodes, packaging and design ecosystems. A mature policy should celebrate milestones precisely—construction, tool installation, qualification, commercial yield—without inflating each into a civilisational finish line.
Packaging, testing and compound semiconductors may offer valuable entry points alongside fabrication. Chip design already employs many Indians, though much intellectual property belongs to multinational firms. The challenge is connecting design talent, fabrication initiatives and electronics manufacturers so learning circulates domestically.
Skills policy must become specific. “Engineer” is not a single input. A surface-mount line, display plant, tool room and fab require different technicians and managers. Institutes should build curricula with employers, but companies must invest in apprenticeships rather than demanding job-ready labour produced at public expense.
Measure what we want to become
Make in India has moved beyond slogan in electronics. Anyone denying that is arguing with factory gates and export consignments. The government’s PLI model proved that targeted incentives can alter investment decisions. It also carries risks: firms may optimise for subsidy thresholds, imports may hide beneath gross production values, and footloose assembly can move when incentives fade.
The remedy is not to abandon the policy. It is to make it more demanding. Tie later-stage support to verified value addition, supplier development, research spending, workforce training and long-term asset creation. Publish evaluations, including disappointments. Clawbacks should apply when commitments are not met, through clear rules rather than retrospective improvisation.
Government procurement can help domestic products gain scale, but standards must remain rigorous. Buying inferior equipment for patriotic reasons merely transfers the cost to public users and teaches firms to lobby rather than improve. Preference should reward credible local value and performance, with transparent testing.
India will continue to work with Chinese-linked supply chains even while diversifying from strategic dependence. That is reality, not defeat. Electronics manufacturing is densely international. The sensible goal is to control more critical capability, create alternatives and become difficult to exclude—not to imagine every screw, chip and machine can be national by decree.
I am optimistic because India has already crossed the stage at which electronics manufacturing was mostly aspiration. I am impatient because gross output can become a comfortable plateau. The country can assemble millions of phones and still send much of the profit, know-how and component value elsewhere. The next policy era should be judged by what Indian factories learn to make, what Indian engineers learn to design and what Indian suppliers can sell without a subsidy. Volume opened the door. Depth will determine whether we own the room.
