I have no patience for the fashionable claim that Indian electronics manufacturing is merely screwdriver assembly and therefore worthless. Assembly is manufacturing. It creates jobs, supplier demand, process knowledge, export capability and a platform from which deeper value can grow. Countries do not usually wake up one morning designing advanced chips without first learning to produce at scale.
I have equally little patience for government presentations that treat the phrase “made in India” as proof that most economic and technological value is already domestic. A phone assembled in India may still depend on imported displays, camera modules, memory, chipsets, machinery, design and intellectual property. The label describes an important stage. It does not settle the argument.
The official MeitY description of the large-scale electronics PLI openly acknowledges constraints including infrastructure, supply chains and limited design capability. Its list of approved companies shows the mixture of global manufacturers and domestic firms. That is a serious industrial foundation. Now policy must become more discriminating about what it buys.
Assembly was the correct first rung
Critics underestimate the coordination required to manufacture millions of reliable devices. Components must arrive on time, lines must meet yield targets, workers need training and products must pass global quality systems. Export customers do not accept patriotic excuses for defects.
India’s large domestic market offered leverage, while production-linked incentives reduced the cost disadvantage relative to established Asian hubs. Global companies diversified supply chains, Indian contract manufacturers expanded and states competed for plants. These are tangible achievements of the current government’s policy, not slogans invented by an advertising agency.
The benefits extend beyond the factory gate. Packaging, logistics, tooling, maintenance, testing and industrial services grow around large plants. Workers acquire experience that can migrate across firms. Once clusters reach sufficient density, suppliers have a reason to localise.
Congress-era industrial policy often combined grand ambition with a regulatory environment suspicious of scale. The BJP government has been more comfortable using incentives, infrastructure and market access to attract large production. It deserves credit for understanding that global supply chains respond to execution, not speeches about self-reliance.
Incentives must purchase additional capability
Production-linked subsidies cannot become permanent rewards for output that companies would produce anyway. Every new round should demand more domestic value, research spending, supplier development and worker training. Targets must be measurable and audited without creating a licence raj.
The government should publish company-level outcomes after protecting genuinely confidential data: eligible sales, incentives paid, direct employment, domestic procurement and export performance. Aggregated victory numbers prevent taxpayers from judging which parts of the scheme deliver value.
Component localisation requires different economics from final assembly. Displays, batteries, camera modules, printed circuit boards and enclosures each need scale, technology partners and reliable utilities. A generic incentive may favour the easiest activity. Policy should identify bottlenecks and support competitive ecosystems rather than one politically attractive plant.
Capital support should also be linked to environmental performance. Electronics manufacturing consumes water, chemicals and energy. India should not repeat an old industrial bargain in which local communities absorb pollution while national presentations count exports. Waste treatment and transparent monitoring are part of competitiveness.
Chinese brands dominate because they solve Indian problems
It is comforting to explain Chinese smartphone dominance as predatory pricing or excessive marketing. Those factors matter, but they are incomplete. Brands such as Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Realme and their competitors built dense distribution, fast product cycles, localised features, broad service networks and attractive financing.
They understood that an Indian buyer at ₹15,000 examines battery life, display size, camera presentation and resale with ruthless care. They placed models across narrow price bands and supplied retailers beyond metros. Nationality did not make those operational choices; management did.
Indian brands lost ground partly because they relied heavily on imported reference designs and struggled to match the speed and scale of Chinese competitors. Reviving them cannot mean sheltering weak products behind patriotism. Consumers should not be asked to pay more for an inferior phone as a civic duty.
Policy can help Indian firms obtain patient capital, design expertise, testing facilities and access to procurement. Success must still be earned in the market. An Indian logo on an imported design is not a deeper achievement than a foreign logo on a highly localised production line.
Design is where value and power accumulate
The next objective should be Indian ownership of product decisions. That means industrial design, radio engineering, camera tuning, software support, security architecture and intellectual property. A device is not merely its bill of materials; it is a stack of choices.
Universities need stronger links with manufacturers. Electronics curricula often lag production reality, while firms complain that graduates require extensive retraining. Shared labs, paid apprenticeships and faculty-industry projects can narrow the gap. Training should prepare technicians as well as engineers.
Government procurement can provide an early market for secure Indian-designed equipment, but standards must remain demanding. Guaranteed orders without performance accountability create complacent vendors. Procurement should reward repairability, security updates, energy efficiency and transparent supply chains.
India also needs more patient funding for hardware start-ups. Software can iterate cheaply; hardware consumes capital before product-market fit is obvious. Public funds should co-invest through professionally managed vehicles rather than ministries selecting fashionable founders.
Repair and circularity belong in industrial policy
A mature electronics ecosystem includes what happens after sale. Parts, repair manuals, refurbishment and recycling can create skilled employment while reducing import demand and waste. Manufacturers often prefer sealed devices and restricted parts because replacement sells more units. Public policy should favour longer product life.
Right-to-repair rules must be designed carefully so safety and cybersecurity are not compromised, but the basic principle is sound: owners should have reasonable access to batteries, displays and qualified independent service. Long software support should become standard at multiple price points.
Electronic waste contains recoverable materials and hazardous substances. Informal recycling provides livelihoods but exposes workers to serious risk. India should build formal collection systems that include, train and protect existing workers instead of simply criminalising them.
Extended producer responsibility must be measured by genuine recovery, not certificates moving around a compliance market. Digital tracking can help, but physical audits remain necessary.
Success should make our standards harder
Make in India electronics has advanced beyond the stage where sceptics can dismiss it as a logo. Large-scale phone production and exports are real. That success should give the government confidence to ask more from every rupee of support.
I want incentives that decline as ecosystems mature, competition between states based on infrastructure rather than opaque concessions, and published evaluations that admit underperformance. Industrial policy is not discredited when one project fails; it is discredited when failure is hidden to protect a narrative.
The government must also resist equating one multinational’s sourcing decision with national technological sovereignty. Global firms will move production according to cost, resilience and geopolitics. India should welcome them while building capabilities that remain if corporate strategy changes.
Our goal should not be autarky. No modern phone is nationally self-contained. The goal is strategic depth: enough design, component capacity, skilled labour and supplier diversity that India captures more value and cannot be casually excluded from essential technology.
I give the Modi government credit for moving electronics manufacturing from aspiration to industrial scale. My criticism is that yesterday’s breakthrough can become tomorrow’s complacency. Assembly was a necessary first destination. If policy keeps announcing arrival there, Chinese brands will continue owning the customer, foreign firms will own the design and India will own the shift schedule. We should want—and can now credibly pursue—much more.
