India’s electronics debate is trapped between triumphalism and sneering. One camp points to expanding phone production and exports as proof that the country has already become a manufacturing power. The other dismisses every locally assembled device as imported parts in an Indian box. Both positions are intellectually lazy. Assembly is a necessary industrial capability: it creates jobs, logistics networks, quality systems and reasons for suppliers to locate nearby. It is not the same as controlling high-value components, production equipment, design or intellectual property. The government’s Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme acknowledges that gap explicitly. Its official notification targets display and camera subassemblies, printed circuit boards, passive components, enclosures, lithium-ion cells for digital applications and capital equipment. That is the hard part, and therefore the part worth watching closely.
Assembly was not fake progress
I have little patience for critics who describe assembly as mere screwdriver work. Industrial ecosystems do not teleport into completeness. Countries usually climb through stages, learning process discipline and accumulating suppliers before capturing more value. India needed scale, and phone assembly helped create it. The correct criticism is not that assembly began; it is that policy must now prevent the assembly stage from becoming a comfortable plateau sustained indefinitely by tariffs and incentives. Protection can create breathing room, but breathing room is not a business model. Companies must improve productivity, quality and local sourcing while competing globally.
MeitY’s 2025-26 annual report says component-scheme applications and approvals have begun translating into projected investment, production and employment. Those figures are useful indicators, not completed achievements. “Projected” is the most overworked word in Indian industrial policy. A signed proposal can shrink, arrive late or import more than expected. The ministry should publish plant-level progress, commercial-production dates, domestic value added and incentive disbursement after verification. Transparency would strengthen the scheme by rewarding serious investors and exposing announcement merchants.
Why Chinese brands still dominate the shelf
Chinese smartphone brands succeeded in India because they built an unusually effective combination of aggressive pricing, rapid product cycles, distribution, localised marketing and supply-chain leverage. Reducing that story to predatory pricing or Indian consumer disloyalty misses the operational achievement. A buyer comparing two phones does not conduct a geopolitical seminar at the counter; she asks about camera quality, battery life, service and price. Chinese brands repeatedly filled those requirements in the mass market. National manufacturing policy cannot demand that consumers pay a patriotism surcharge for a worse product.
Nor does local assembly automatically turn a foreign brand into an Indian technology company. Ownership, design, software control, component sourcing and profit flows remain different questions. The goal should not be to drive successful foreign firms away. It should be to embed them in a deeper Indian supplier network while enabling domestic firms to develop products and capabilities of their own. Competition disciplines everybody. A protected local champion that produces mediocre devices at high prices would be a policy failure dressed in the flag.
Components require patient competence
A component ecosystem is harder than final assembly because tolerances are demanding, yields determine profitability and customers require consistency across enormous volumes. Suppliers need materials knowledge, tooling, testing, clean production environments and engineers experienced in solving process problems. Incentives can offset early disadvantages, but they cannot manufacture competence by notification. Firms need reliable electricity, efficient customs, predictable taxes, industrial land, ports and technicians. A delayed input or inconsistent batch can remove a supplier from a global programme regardless of how impressive its inauguration was.
Capital equipment is especially important. If factories depend entirely on imported machinery, maintenance expertise and production recipes, domestic value remains vulnerable. India does not need to build every machine immediately; no serious supply chain is nationally self-contained. It does need strategic depth in tooling, repair, automation and process engineering. Universities and industrial institutes should work with manufacturers on these unglamorous needs. Semiconductor headlines attract attention, but a skilled toolmaker who reduces downtime may create more immediate competitiveness than another ceremonial memorandum.
Incentives need an exit examination
Every subsidy creates two risks: firms may optimise for the incentive rather than the market, and governments may redefine targets to preserve a success narrative. The component scheme’s differentiated turnover and capital-expenditure support is sensible because segments face different constraints. But disbursement should follow verified production and value addition, with clawbacks for material non-compliance. Benefits must also avoid becoming permanent compensation for inefficiency. The exit test is whether factories remain competitive after support declines.
Employment quality deserves attention alongside job counts. Electronics plants can create large numbers of formal positions, including opportunities for women, but retention, wages, transport, safety and advancement matter. A workforce permanently confined to low-skill assembly is not the transformation policy promises. Companies receiving public support should report training and supervisory progression. India’s demographic advantage becomes industrial capability only when workers accumulate skills that transfer across firms and technologies.
Measure depth, not nationalism
I want Make in India electronics to succeed because dependence concentrated in any one foreign supply chain is a strategic and economic vulnerability. Success, however, will not be proven by stamping a country-of-origin label on a finished phone. It will be proven when Indian factories reliably produce competitive components, local engineers improve processes, suppliers export independently and domestic firms design products that consumers choose without moral pressure. That evolution will take longer than a news cycle.
The government has identified the correct next bottleneck. Now it must administer patiently, disclose honestly and resist declaring victory at the approval stage. Chinese brands will continue to dominate important segments as long as they offer the strongest price-product equation. The answer is not resentment. It is capability. India’s assembly boom opened the factory door; components, tooling and design determine whether the country moves deeper inside or remains near the packing line.
