India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh has given a strong message to encourage domestic manufacturing base in electronics and telecommunications, saying that this strategy will mitigate burden of growing imports for the sector. He was speaking on the sidelines of a telecom event in New Delhi.
The timing couldn’t be more astute, as two of the big IT names from India are shutting down their PC manufacturing stakes in India, namely HCL and Wipro. Both the organizations, considered as stalwarts in pushing the brand India on global IT turf. Both have their own quite well entrenched PC manufacturing in India.
Why and how did this happen is an open secret today. Most of the IT experts say that India lacks proper encouragement on the manufacturing front. Even though it is one of the biggest users of technology equipment including PCs and laptops, the country is still fading away on the manufacturing side.
On the other hand, there is a huge need for a country like India to develop and encourage its own manufacturing ecosystem, much like how a country like China has done. As a nation with self reliant IT and telecom manufacturing would not only bring about more prosperity to its local population, but it will also create a solid foundation upon which many more services and ancillary industries can be started and thrived. Car manufacturing is a great such example in India’s manufacturing sector today.
However, India lacks on the policy front where most of the local IT leaders feel that manufacturing policies do not encourage them towards setting up their bases here. Can this change in the near future? this is a big question today.
