AI is creating an urgent need to reinvent jobs. Stop celebrating “Make in India” when it really means “Assemble for the world.”
Encouraging large-scale foreign contract manufacturing is being sold as strategy, but in reality it is a policy mistake. India ends up doing low-margin assembly, bearing pollution, land conflicts and endless subsidies, while global brands keep design, IP, patents, branding and the real profits. That is not development — it is permanent subcontracting. What adds insult to injury is that our largest and most credible industrialists are queuing up to be vendors for such contract manufacturing.
Five years ago I visited Dixon in noida. It was a humiliation. Thousands of educated Indians were working like robots. The sole incentive was to save on taxes. There was no human dignity in those jobs. I saw graduate engineers acting like daily wagers. Surely we can provide more respectable jobs to our educated youngsters.
Contract manufacturers have no loyalty to India. The moment another country becomes cheaper or offers more incentives of subsidies, they leave, after India has already paid for roads, power, land and incentives. Meanwhile, Indian firms remain stuck as minor suppliers with no global brands, no deep technology and no real industrial muscle.
We are quietly turning India into a factory floor rather than an industrial power. China too made this mistake but it was in a different age. And they had time to correct their mistakes. We don’t have that time. Wrong public policy will be a national calamity.
If India wants genuine manufacturing strength, it must prioritize Indian champions, insist on real technology transfer, and build capability in design, R&D and intellectual property — not just cheap assembly lines.
Cheap factories create jobs. Strong domestic industry builds a nation.
