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India has the potential to become industrial hub of the world replacing China. This may be hard to believe for most of the people but this can happen. It will require two decades of hard work and positive policy by Indian and western country policy makers who wants to diversify from Chinese manufacturing. Let me give some examples.Jamnagar oil refinery on India’s west coast is one of biggest integrated oil refinery of the world. It was planned to be a sea coast based refinery to reduce logistics cost, has geographical advantage for being close to Persian Gulf which has raw material crude oil and designed to cater for the whole world. So, it has economies of scale which is available only in some western countries with deep pockets or China which has state support for mega projects. A Chinese refinery which takes Gulf crude to China via choke point Strait of Malacca, traversing nearly 8 times sea distance, cannot be as economical as Jamnagar refinery. Jamnagar refinery owner Reliance therefore can easily sell their finished petroleum products in global market competitively without any difficulty, not dependent on Indian domestic market and earns precious foreign exchange.Reliance Jamnagar refinery is India’s ‘only export’ refineryExpansion makes Jamnagar the world's largest oil-refining hubAnother example could be T-Series or Super Cassettes music company. In early 1990’s, I went for a job interview at T-Series office in Noida (Address: A-32 Sector 16 Noida) which was then managed by Gulshan Kumar’s younger brother Krishan Kumar. All job candidates were given brief about the company (websites were not there those days) and that was impressive. T-Series had 4 factories employing thousands of employees and producing more than a lakh (hundred thousand) audio cassettes per day. Due to this economies of scale, cost of audio cassettes was as low as Rs 10-15 which came with preloaded with 10-15 songs. Audio cassettes and tape-reorders were popular in India since early 1980’s as they were cheaper and easy to handle than record players (LP records). Initial Indian audio cassette market was dominated by Sony (Japan) and Tony (Singapore) brands but subsequently Indian brands like HMV (His Master’s Voice), SaReGaMa etc emerged but they were expensive.T-Series’s mass production and low cost not just brought a transformation in audio cassette market in India but they also started exports to countries which has Indian diaspora. T-Series created a music eco-system and gave singing opportunity to newcomer singers (some of them became famous subsequently) to keep the cost down and owner Gulshan Kumar was spending half of company profit on philanthropy. He gave free lunch (Langar) at Mata Vaishno Devi temple near Katra which is still continuing after 3 decades. Recently this company also contributed Rs 11 Crore to Corona virus pandemic support.Super Cassette Industries and Moser Baer created world scale industrial units in NoidaSo, long before Modi created a slogan ‘Make in India’ after becoming PM in 2014, a ‘juice-wala’ from Delhi made this happen. If a ‘juice-wala’ can do this, anybody can do this. Another example of world scale manufacturing is Moser Baer. This Delhi based company came up with two large factories in Greater Noida in 1990’s. By late 1990’s, computer secondary storage floppy disk became obsolete and is being replaced with CD-ROM. This opportunity was grabbed by Moser Baer and it became Asia’s second largest CD-ROM maker. India always imported most computer hardware from China but CD-ROM/DVD was the only device which was manufactured in India on a global scale. Year 2000 to 2010 was best years for Moser Baer and they subsequently started manufacturing solar panels and became a leader in India. Moser Baer company was well connected with politicians (run by Congress politician Kamal Nath’s relative) but never faced major problem during Vajpayee government. In fact, during Vajpayee period (year 2003), India’s solar power deployment was more than that of China and Moser Baer had huge involvement in solar panel production. Unfortunately gap between solar panel manufacturing between India and China increased 50 times and Indian EPC players are using 90% imported solar panels. This clearly means something fundamentally went wrong during UPA government Dr. Maun-Mohan Singh rule of 2004-2014. During this time all manufacturers were encouraged to use cheaper Chinese products to make bigger profit at the cost of local employment.Let me give you one example of this transition from manufacturing to trading. One soft toy manufacturing factory in Greater Noida Toy City area started making Teddy bear soft toys in year 2001. It is not a high-tech product and anybody can make soft toys. The only important thing is large scale production for economy of scale and sufficient market to sell. The factory was big and they captured a big size of Indian soft toy market. Business was good till year 2008. By 2007, the promoter of this factory realized that Indian market is flooded with cheaper imported soft toys from China. China joined WTO (World Trade Organisation) in year 2001 and most countries removed trade barriers as per WTO norms. Most dealers and toy shop owners started demanding cheaper Chinese soft toys. So, more traders became importers from China. They just visit China’s Yivu city wholesale toys and small items market and buy wholesale for Indian market. Thousands of Indian traders became super rich just by importing small items from China.The owner of that soft toy factory realised the game when his products started taking beating in the Indian market. He realised the simple funda – ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. So, he handed over the factory operation to his younger brother and started making multiple trips to China to import soft toys. By importing, he got more variety of toys to sell and he already had a dealer distributor chain to support the sale. In short span of time he became super rich and never had to bother about daily factory operation issues like salary issue, labour strike, power cuts, high electricity bills, bribing local politicians etc. He even planned to sell the factory. Today 90% of toys available in market is of Chinese origin.Indians in China’s Yiwu buying Chinese toysThe recent controversy of importing defective Chinese Covid-19 virus test kit is another example why Indians love import from China. When ICMR approved the virus test kit from two Chinese companies, countries like Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Turkey, Canada already reported faulty kits from China but India still went ahead with China (corruption and helplessness). In many cities like Chennai and Kolkata when reporters asked the delay in availability and quality of Chinese kits ordered, medical team responded that kits are approved by ICMR. Despite this ICMR approval, the Chinese virus testing kits failed as expected and blame game started. Delhi High Court fixed maximum price for each test kit as Rs 400 and other commercial details appeared in media. The importer who won the ICMR tender to supply each test kits at Rs 600 only was paying Rs 245 for import and shipping each kit. This means more than 100% profit from each test kit and total kits are in millions. One person can become millionaire by doing one such transaction!This is the reason for import from China and dump them in India and this is best profitable no risk legal business if we exclude illegal business like smuggling, extortion and prostitution. This is the reason you will find small street vendors in every city selling small Chinese items like locks, scissors, toys, umbrellas etc. on footpaths. One can make bulk purchase of umbrella at Rs 50 in China and sell them in India’s footpath stalls at Rs 100. This is the reason, large number of Indian businessmen visit China multiple times.The toy manufacturer who gave up manufacturing made a list of problems faced by Indian industry to compete with China.- High electricity cost for Industry. Agricultural electricity is either free or subsidized for political reason in most states as farmers are one of the biggest vote-bank. This makes electricity for commercial, industrial units are high as it cross subsidised for agriculture electricity. Also in summer, when electricity demand is high, power cut is maximum in industrial park forcing industries to buy diesel gensets as backup. This makes industry uneconomical.- Logistics cost is high in India. Rail freight has punctuality related uncertainly and most routes are congested beyond capacity. So, rail freight share is declining for last few decades from 85% of total freight in 1951 to 33% in 2015. and costly road freight transport increased from 15% in 1951 to 58% in 2015 proves lack of priority to make freight transport economical. Only DFC (Dedicated Freight Corridor) can partially improve this.- Chinese railway uses standard gauge which helps them run trains to European cities as they also use standard gauge. So, China regularly send train loads of goods to London, Spain etc.- Waterways are cheapest form to transport but not developed in India in 70 years while it is extensively used in China. First waterway inaugurated by Modi & Nitin Gadkari between Haldia/Kolkata and Varanasi with lot of hype on 12 November 2018. Costly cranes from Germany were imported but nothing much is heard about this waterway transit since the first consignment was received. Nitin Gadkari promised waterway development like Delhi-Agra high speed hovercraft service using Yamuna river. He also promised sea plane service and manufacturing. None of these are making any headway.- Indian highways are not at per international standard. Chinese truckers travel three times distance than Indian truckers per day. China made huge investment on world’s biggest bridges, tunnels, subway metro train systems and bullet trains. Bullet train routes crossed 20000 Km in China while in India, first bullet train project is still struggling to go live.- China’s industry is mainly sea coast based which reduced transport cost. Nitin Gadkari planning to construct new SEZ along new expressways may not be as attractive as coast based SEZ.- China gives high incentive to exporters and some of them are not transparent and violates WTO norms. China may use forced labour of people in jail and detention centres (read Uighur camps)- Indian tax laws are clumsy as different states has different rates. Although this has been resolved by uniform GTS rules, GST process is still chaotic and may take years to stabilize.- China keeps its currency artificially low to penetrate export market. USA government for long time blaming China for its low currency value to win trade war.- No industrialist has guts to make world class scale of factory (like Reliance Jamnagar refinery) which gives economy of scale. Most of them make small factories to get MSME benefits.This toy story explains how Chinese import has destroyed Indian industry. The Indian government between 2004 – 2014 never made any attempt to prevent flood of Chinese import. Like Chinese economy, Indian economy also observed high growth between year 2000 and 2010, so the issue of job loss in industrial sector was not highlighted. Chinese economy started slowing from 2010 and Indian economy from 2013 and unemployment became main election issue that led to BJP’s Narendra Madi becoming PM in 2014. Indian government signed FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with 10 ASEAN (South East Asia) countries and South Korea in 2010 that allowed 0% duty on imports from these countries. India’s trade deficit started increasing with these countries after signing FTA. Fearing onslaught of Chinese goods to India, India never signed FTA with China which has become factory for the whole world. But China still managed to exponentially increase its export to India, thanks to Indian businessmen like this bulk toy importer. Chinese company also opened shops in Vietnam, Malaysia etc. to take advantage of India’s FTA with ASEAN countries and dump its products into big markets like India and USA. China’s entry into WTO in year 2001 opened floodgate of Chinese products into India. India’s trade deficit with China increased from US$ 1.5 Billion in 2003 (Vajpayee government) to US$ 38 Billion in year 2014 by end of UPA-II government.China’s growth curve after joining WTOLot of industrialists from Noida area switched profession from industrialist to educationist after 2010. They realised manufacturing is no longer attractive due to flood gate of Chinese import which are cheaper. They started buying plots along highways to open Engineering and Medical collages which appeared more lucrative that manufacturing. Delhi has 7-8 arterial highways. These are Delhi-Panipat, Delhi-Rohtak, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Aligarh, Delhi-Hapur and Delhi-Meerut. By 2014, each of these highways had 50 odd Engineering or Medical collages that came up recently and education standard on these collages may become an issue in years to come.Recently Indian government made some steps to reduce flood gate of Chinese import- Supreme Court banned polluting crackers and allowed only ‘green’ crackers. Some state government also banned imported crackers. This led to elimination of Chinese crackers from Indian market during festive time of Diwali. Earlier Chinese crackers had huge consumption and they elbowed out Indian cracker manufacturers.- Government changed customs law to receive gifts upto Rs 5000 by courier from abroad by enabling KYC and user tracking to prevent frequent misuse of this gift route dumping goods in India, as done by Chinese eCommerce site like AliPay.- Samsung mobile factory in Noida inaugurated by PM Modi and South Korean President is world’s biggest mobile factory and Chinese town Huizhou became ghost city after three decade old Samsung factory shifted to India. Mobile manufacturing plants increased for 2 in 2014 to more than 250 creating huge employment but they are still doing assembly of components.- Safeguard duty on solar products from China and Malaysia was imposed in 2018 for 2 years to encourage domestic manufacturing. But the result was negative as no international solar manufacturers set up factory in India and instead solar project implementations got delayed. 10.8 GW solar generation added in 2018 but only 7.3 GW solar added in 2019.- Upto 200% increase in duty on imported toys implemented recently. Importers from China will protest like leftist media but nobody will die from starvation. This will help setting toy factories and create employment.- India refused to join RCEP in last minute negotiations just because of free trade agreement group which has China will only increase India’s trade deficit with India. China cried foul in the name of globalisation.- Modi government quietly dumped China initiated BCIM (Bangladesh China India Myanmar) Belt and Road corridor fearing large inflow of Chinese goods in India’s northeast region. China is no longer promoting BCIM. Earlier UPA government of Dr. Maun-Mohan Singh welcomed BCIM. China also repeatedly requested India to join CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) as they knew CPEC may not be viable without big Indian market.- India reduced corporate tax to lowest in Asia Pacific in 2019 to encourage corporates to move to India from China as China’s labour cost increasing.- India recently enacted a law to prevent automactic FDI approval on Indian companies from land neighbour countries. This is to prevent Chinese and Hong Kong’s stake purchase in Indian companies like PayTM, Byju’s, Oyo, Swiggy, BigBasket and Makemytrip etc. Politician Rahul Gandhi once said PayTM is ‘pay to Modi’ but actually it is ‘pay to China’. Thanks to demonetization, PayTM’s market value increased many times which benefited Chinese investors.- After Corona virus pandemic Indian government wooing 1000 MNCs to shift their manufacturing from China to India. Some Chief Minister like UP & Gujarat states have started with a plan along with MSME minister Nitin Gadkari. Corona virus pandemic is best opportunity to implement ‘Make in India’ and ‘Industry 4.0’.Recently US Secretary of Sate Mike Pompeo said ‘US is in talks with its “friends”, including India for restructuring the global supply chains. This is the best opportunity for Modi and India.Edit1: Make in India can happen. One of my friend who manufactures consumable items for hospitals like plastic bottles, syringes etc started making PPE kits during this virus pandemic. He explained the PPE scenario in detail. PPE kits were mainly used by doctors in hospital operation theatre and hence requirement was too small. No Indian manufacturer will go for this product manufacturing and PPE was always imported from China.Due to Chinese virus pandemic condition, requirement of PPE kits exploded and even Chinese who has largest production in the world, focused western markets. So, there was no option but to manufacture PPE kits locally. Even PM Modi said in recent CII video message that in three months India became 2nd biggest PPE manufacturer - from zero to 3 lakhs PPE per day!

India has all the required resources and potential to become an industrial hub for the rest of the world replacing China. This may be hard to believe for many people but this can be turned into the reality to happen. It will require two decades of very hard work and positive policies made by our Govt. Of India policy makers and western country policy makers who want to diversify and shift from Chinese manufacturing.Some examples for thoughts - Jamnagar oil refinery on India’s west coast is one of biggest integrated oil refinery of the world. It was planned to be a sea coast based refinery to reduce logistics cost, has geographical advantage for being close to Persian Gulf which has raw material crude oil and designed to cater for the whole world. So, it has economies of scale which is available only in some western countries with deep pockets or China which has state support for mega projects. A Chinese refinery which takes Gulf crude to China via choke point Strait of Malacca, traversing nearly 8 times sea distance, cannot be as economical as Jamnagar refinery. Jamnagar refinery owner Reliance therefore can easily sell their finished petroleum products in the global market competitively without any difficulty, not dependent on Indian domestic market and earns precious foreign exchange.Another example could be T-Series or Super Cassettes, a music company office in Noida (Address: A-32 Sector 16 Noida) which was then managed by Gulshan Kumar’s younger brother Krishan Kumar. T-Series had 4 factories employing thousands of employees and producing more than lakh (hundred thousand) audio cassettes per day. Due to these economies of scale, the cost of audio cassettes was as low as INR 10-15 which came preloaded with 10-15 songs. Audio cassettes and tape-recorders were popular in India since the early 1980’s as they were cheaper and easy to handle than record players (LP records). Initial Indian audio cassette market was dominated by Sony (Japan) and Tony (Singapore) brands but subsequently Indian brands like HMV (His Master’s Voice), SaReGaMa etc emerged but they were also expensive and short lived in the market.T-Series mass production and low cost not just bought a transformation in the audio cassette market in India but they also started exports to countries which have Indian diaspora. T-Series created a music eco-system and gave singing opportunities to newcomer singers (some of them became famous subsequently) to keep the cost down and owner Gulshan Kumar was spending half of the company profit on philanthropy. He gave free lunch (Langar) at Mata Vaishno Devi temple near Katra which is still continuing after 3 decades. Recently this company also contributed INR 11 Crore to Coronavirus pandemic support.Super Cassette Industries and Moser Baer created world scale industrial units in NoidaSo, long before Modi created a slogan ‘Make in India’ after becoming PM in 2014, a ‘juice-wala’ from Delhi made this happen. If a ‘juice-wala’ can do this, anybody can do this. Another example of world scale manufacturing is Moser Baer. This Delhi based company came up with two large factories in Greater Noida in 1990’s. By the late 1990’s, computer secondary storage floppy disks became obsolete and were being replaced with CD-ROM. This opportunity was grabbed by Moser Baer and it became Asia’s second largest CD-ROM maker. India always imported most computer hardware from China but CD-ROM/DVD was the only device which was manufactured in India on a global scale. Year 2000 to 2010 was the best years for Moser Baer and they subsequently started manufacturing solar panels and became a leader in India. Moser Baer Company was well connected with politicians (run by Congress politician Mr. Kamal Nath’s relative) but never faced major problems during the Vajpayee government. In fact, during the Vajpayee period (year 2003), India’s solar power deployment was more than that of China and Moser Baer had huge involvement in solar panel production. Unfortunately the gap between solar panel manufacturing between India and China increased 50 times and Indian EPC players are using 90% imported solar panels. This clearly means something fundamentally went wrong during UPA government Dr Man Mohan Singh rule of 2004-2014. During this time all manufacturers were encouraged to use cheaper Chinese products to make bigger profit at the cost of local employment. All we know at the end, if you are not honest in business and finance deals, what will happen to your business in future, it will become a story for everyone like in the case of Moser Baer.Let me give you one another example of this transition from manufacturing to trading. One soft toy manufacturing factory in the Greater Noida Toy City area started making Teddy bear soft toys in the year of 2001. It was not a high-tech product and anybody can make soft toys. The only important thing is large scale production for economy of scale and sufficient market to sell. The factory was big and they captured a big size of Indian soft toy market. Business was good till 2008. By 2007, the promoter of this factory realized that Indian market is flooded with cheaper imported soft toys from China. China joined the WTO (World Trade Organisation) in 2001 and most countries removed trade barriers as per WTO norms. Most dealers and toy shop owners started demanding cheaper Chinese soft toys. So, more traders became importers from China. They just visit China’s Yiwu city wholesale toys and small items market and buy wholesale for Indian market. Thousands of Indian traders became super rich just by importing small items from China.The owner of that soft toy factory realised the game when his products started taking beating in the Indian market. He realised the simple marketing game rule – ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. So, he handed over the factory operation to his younger brother and started making multiple trips to China to import soft toys. By importing, he got more variety of toys to sell and he already had a dealer distributor chain to support the sale. In a short span of time he became super rich and never had to bother about daily factory operation issues like salary issue, labour strike, power cuts, high electricity bills, bribing local politicians etc. He even planned to sell the factory. Today 90% of toys available in the market are of Chinese origin.The recent controversy of importing defective Chinese Covid-19 virus test kits is another example why Indians love import from China. When ICMR approved the virus test kit from two Chinese companies, countries like Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Turkey, Canada already reported faulty kits from China but India still went ahead with China (corruption and helplessness). In many cities like Chennai and Kolkata when reporters asked about the delay in availability and quality of Chinese kits ordered, the medical team responded that kits are approved by ICMR. Despite this ICMR approval, the Chinese virus testing kits failed as expected and blame game started. Delhi High Court fixed the maximum price for each test kit as INR 400 and other commercial details appeared in the media. The importer who won the ICMR tender to supply each test kits at INR 600 only was paying INR 245 for import and shipping each kit. This means more than 100% profit from each test kit and total kits are in millions. One person can become a millionaire by doing one such transaction!This is the reason for import from China and dump them in India and this is best profitable no risk legal business if we exclude illegal business like smuggling, extortion and prostitution. This is the reason you will find small street vendors in every city selling small Chinese items like locks, scissors, toys, umbrellas etc. on footpaths. One can make bulk purchases of umbrella at INR 50 in China and sell them in India’s footpath stalls at INR 100. This is the reason, large number of Indian businessmen visit China multiple times.Below are the few points for consideration given by many toy manufacturers who gave up manufacturing and made a list of problems faced by Indian industry to compete with China?# High electricity cost for Industry. Agricultural electricity is either free or subsidized for political reasons in most states as farmers are one of the biggest vote-banks. This makes electricity for commercial, industrial units high as it cross subsidised for agriculture electricity. Also in summer, when electricity demand is high, power cuts are quite common in industrial parks forcing industries to buy diesel or their gensets as backup. This makes our industries manufacturing uneconomical.# Logistics cost is high in India. Rail freight has punctuality related uncertainty and most routes are congested beyond capacity. So, rail freight share is declining for the last few decades from 85% of total freight in 1951 to 33% in 2015 and costly road freight transport increased from 15% in 1951 to 58% in 2015 proves lack of priority to make freight transport economical. Only DFC (Dedicated Freight Corridor) can partially improve and help on this.# Chinese railway uses standard gauge which helps them run trains to European cities as they also use standard gauge. So, China regularly sends train loads of goods to London, Spain, Italy etc.# Waterways are the cheapest form to transport but not developed in India in the last 70 years while it is extensively used in China. First waterway inaugurated by Mr. Modi & Mr. Nitin Gadkari between Haldia / Kolkata and Varanasi with a lot of hype on 12 November 2018. Costly cranes from Germany were imported but nothing much is heard about this waterway transit since the first consignment was received. Mr. Nitin Gadkari promised waterway development like Delhi-Agra high speed hovercraft service using Yamuna River. He also promised seaplane service and manufacturing. None of these are making any headway, it seems at present.# Indian highways are not as per international standards. Chinese truckers travel three times the distance than Indian truckers per day. China made huge investments on the world’s biggest bridges, tunnels, subway metro train systems and bullet trains. Bullet train routes crossed 20000 Km in China while in India, the first bullet train project is still struggling to go live from the drawing board.# China’s industry is mainly sea coast based which reduces transport cost. Mr. Nitin Gadkari planning to construct new SEZ along new expressways may not be as attractive as coastal based (Sagarmala Project) SEZ.# China gives high incentive to exporters and some of them are not transparent and violates WTO norms. China may use forced labour of people in jail and detention centres (read Uighur camps). Govt. of India has to find some mechanism to provide some financial assistance / incentives to the exporter’s community to boost exports from India.# Indian tax laws Direct and Indirect are clumsy and difficult to follow with many processes and at times they are not followed correctly in many states. Although this has been resolved by uniform GTS rules, the GST process is still chaotic and may take years to stabilize. Since GST implementation in July 2017 more than 400 amendments / notifications / circulars have been issued.# China keeps its currency artificially low to penetrate the export market. The USA government for a long time is blaming China for its low currency value to win trade war with focus to capture international trade.# No industrialist has the guts to make a world class scale of factory (like Reliance Jamnagar refinery) which gives economy of scale, rather our big industrial houses are making investments in Bangladesh, Vietnam & Thailand etc. Majority of them with financial limitations make small factories to get MSME and other benefits.This toy story explains how Chinese import has destroyed Indian industry.The Indian Government between the periods 2004–2014 never made any attempt to prevent the flood of Chinese import. Like Chinese economy, Indian economy also observed high growth between 2000 and 2010, so the issue of job loss in the industrial sector was not highlighted. Chinese economy started slowing from 2010 and Indian economy from 2013 and unemployment became main election issue that led to BJP’s Mr. Narendra Modi became PM in 2014. Indian government signed an FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with 10 ASEAN (South East Asia) countries and South Korea in 2010 that allowed 0% duty on imports from these countries. India’s trade deficit started increasing with these countries after signing the FTA. Fearing an onslaught of Chinese goods to India, India never signed an FTA with China which has become a factory for the whole world. But China still managed to exponentially increase its export to India, thanks to Indian businessmen like this bulk toy importer. Chinese companies also opened shops in Vietnam, Malaysia etc. to take advantage of India’s FTA with ASEAN countries and dump its products into big markets like India and USA. China’s entry into WTO in 2001 opened the floodgate of Chinese products into India. India’s trade deficit with China increased from US$ 1.5 Billion in 2003 (Vajpayee government) to US$ 38 Billion in 2014 by the end of UPA-II government.Lot of industrialists from the Noida area switched their profession from industrialist to educationist after 2010. They realised manufacturing is no longer attractive due to the flood gate of Chinese imports which are cheaper. They started buying plots along highways to open Engineering and Medical colleges which appeared more lucrative than manufacturing. Delhi has 7-8 arterial highways. These are Delhi-Panipat, Delhi-Rohtak, Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Aligarh, Delhi-Hapur and Delhi-Meerut. By 2014, each of these highways had 50 odd Engineering or Medical collages that came up recently and education standards on these colleges may become an issue in years to come.Recently Indian government made some steps to reduce flood gate of Chinese import# Supreme Court banned polluting crackers and allowed only ‘green’ crackers. Some state governments also banned imported crackers. This led to elimination of Chinese crackers from Indian market during the festive time of Diwali. Earlier Chinese crackers had huge consumption and they elbowed out Indian cracker manufacturers.# Government changed customs law to receive gifts up to INR 5000 by courier from abroad by enabling KYC and user tracking to prevent frequent misuse of this gift route dumping goods in India, as done by Chinese e Commerce sites like Ali-Pay.# Samsung mobile phone factory in Noida was inaugurated by PM Modi and South Korean President is the world’s biggest mobile factory and Chinese town Huizhou became a ghost city after a three decade old Samsung factory shifted to India. Mobile manufacturing plants increased for 2 in 2014 to more than 250 creating huge employment but they are still at the stage of doing assembly of components.# Safeguard duty on solar products from China and Malaysia was imposed in 2018 for 2 years to encourage domestic manufacturing. But the result for this was negative as no renowned international solar manufacturers set up their factory in India and instead solar project implementations got delayed. 10.8 GW solar generation added in 2018 but only 7.3 GW solar added in 2019.# Up to 200% increase in duty on imported toys implemented recently. Importers from China will protest like leftist media but nobody will die from starvation. This will help setting up toy factories and create employment in India, if we implement and follow with the right intentions.# India refused to join RCEP in last minute negotiations just because of a free trade agreement group which has China will only increase India’s trade deficit with India. China cried foul in the name of globalisation.# Modi government quietly dumped China initiated BCIM (Bangladesh China India Myanmar) Belt and Road corridor fearing large inflow of Chinese goods in India’s northeast region. China is no longer promoting BCIM. Earlier UPA government of Dr. Man Mohan Singh welcomed BCIM. China has repeatedly requested India to join CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) as they knew CPEC may not be viable without a big Indian market.# India reduced corporate tax to lowest in Asia Pacific in 2019 to encourage corporates to move to India from China as China’s labour cost increases.# India recently enacted a law to prevent automatic FDI approval on Indian companies from land neighbouring countries. This is to prevent Chinese and Hong Kong’s stake purchase in Indian companies like PayTM, Byju’s, Oyo, Swiggy, BigBasket and Makemytrip etc. Politician Mr. Rahul Gandhi once said PayTM is ‘pay to Modi’ but actually it is ‘pay to China’. Thanks to demonetization in India, PayTM’s market value increased many times which benefited Chinese investors.# After deadly COVID 19 (Coronavirus pandemic) Indian government wooed 1000 MNCs to shift their manufacturing from China to India. Some Chief Ministers like UP & Gujarat states have started with a plan along with MSME minister Mr. Nitin Gadkari. Coronavirus pandemic is the best opportunity to implement ‘Make in India’ and help our ‘Industry’ to scale new heights.Recently US Secretary of Sates Mr. Mike Pompeo said ‘US is in talks with its “friends”, including India for restructuring the global supply chains. This is the best opportunity for Modi and India.Make in India can happen. One of known who manufactures consumable items for hospitals like plastic bottles, syringes etc. started making PPE kits during this virus pandemic. He explained the PPE scenario in detail. PPE kits were mainly used by doctors in hospital operation theatre and hence the requirement was too small. No Indian manufacturer will go for this product manufacturing and PPE was always imported from China.Due to Chinese virus pandemic condition, the requirement of PPE kits exploded and even Chinese who have the largest production in the world, focused western markets. So, there was no option but to manufacture PPE kits locally. Even PM Modi said in a recent CII video message that in three months India became 2nd biggest PPE manufacturer - from zero to 3 lakhs PPE per day!The honest answer would be REFORM to our system and working culture.India needs to be more pragmatic than ideological. By saying pragmatic, I mean no matter it's black cat or white cat, he who catches rats is a good cat (words from Chinese reform pioneer Deng Xiaoping).Western democracy isn't the panacea to everything. I don’t deny its good part, but you can't directly transplant one successful system in some countries into other countries. It has to be localized. With multiple political parties operating in the country, then how to make longer developing plans, consistent policies and how to deal with political confrontations are the major issues for politicians to consider. However, in reality, this merely happens. Let's take the Obama administration and the Trump administration for example, Obama passed Paris Agreement while Trump withdrew from it. Obama negotiated TPP while Trump abolished it on the very first day after he reigned the office (BTW, good for China). Politicians are just interested in their own political achievement and their own terms of the office. So, that's why lots of policies only survive for four or five years or ten years the most. Honestly, those phenomena do not hold good for a country like India.So, if India really wants to be stronger, you guys need to be more pragmatic and try to avoid the things mentioned above.Important Detailed suggestions:1.Education. All we know PM Modi advocates “made in India” “skill India”. But without qualified workers, how can we achieve that? People always talk about demographic dividend; however, without required education & skills, a massive population only becomes a burden rather than a demographic dividend for the country.2.Industrialization. India is famous in the world at large for her service sector. But without industrialization, how can we create more jobs for our youths and growing population and promote our GDP growth?3.Land Reform. India never had land reforms since ages, which means feudalism still existed in remote areas of the country. Massive land owners wouldn't sell their land to factories, then how to start industrialization without land? Farmers stilled locked tightly in their tiny villages, then how to increase industrial workers force?4.Public Transportation. Land owners and interested groups won't give up their land to roads, highways, railways for the development of the economy.5.Religion. This is too complicated and way more sensitive. It is better and advisable not to utter a single word about it.6.Tax reform. Tax Rates to be brought down for both Direct and Indirect. Process should be made simple to be followed easily and be made for fixed duration.7.Stronger Central Government. Local governments merely have a national view. Only with a strong central government, can you arrange resources properly in the country. That would be good for industrialization.8.Common Unite Language. India is a country of many religions and has several languages. From a cultural diversity view, it's good. From an economic growth and communication view, it's bad or put it another way, without a commonly used language (at least more than one billion people), you hardly can unite people, and it's bad for India’s industrialization activities too.9.A Humble Mind. Please try your best to learn something from other countries instead of brag.10.Better Global Environment. This is good for industrialization and international trade. So India needs to treat her neighbours always well (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).This is a bitter task for India, particularly, consistent policy changes, lacking in land reforms and religion.India is not a global manufacturing hub like China because of the following reasons:Policymakers: Yes, India could not become a global manufacturing hub because of the policymakers. For the last 20 years, businesses, traders, entrepreneurs continued to pay a massive amount of tax to the exchequer. At the same time, these hard-working people continued to request the successive elected governments to make manufacturing friendly policies in the country along with developing the necessary manufacturing technical infrastructure in the country. However, successive governments continued to make policies that helped them to win the elections. And manufacturing is a long and hard path. It takes a good 8–10 years to show results in the manufacturing sector. And no government could make investments in the manufacturing sector at the cost of winning elections. Therefore, unless and until this focus on winning elections shifts to making good productive policies for the country, India will continue to lag behind in the manufacturing sector. Investment in the manufacturing technical infrastructure is the need of the hour. Manufacturing technical infrastructure is different from the physical infrastructure of roads, electricity, ports, railways, etc.Gullible People: Yes, the Indian public has also not put any kind of pressure on the policymakers to make good policies for the growth of the country. Let’s take an example. Whenever there is an India-China standoff, the public starts blaming the traders, businesses, entrepreneurs who source goods or parts from China to make finished goods in India. However, what will this shouting achieve? Instead, the public should come together and ask the policymakers to answer some tough questions. Tough questions like, ‘why haven’t we framed manufacturing friendly policies in the country?’ or ‘why haven’t we developed the necessary manufacturing infrastructure in the country?’ If the public asks these sets of questions, then, inevitably, things can move in the right direction.Why doesn’t India become a world factory like China even though India has a similar number of people and a cheap labour force available like China?China had a head start over India when it came to opening up its economy in the mid-1970s compared to India in the early 1990s. This was a significant advantage since a great deal of the manufacturing industries was already set up in China from foreign investors and it would not have made practical and economic sense to shift to India.The answer however is not as simple as that though. One must understand that India was primarily an agrarian economy and simply did not possess the infrastructure compared to China to build the necessary industries. However, the point made in another answer below regarding shipping routes is only partially correct as India possessed a vastly superior navy (until the late 90s) as well equally good shipping routes via the Indian ocean. It is however it's north western frontier surrounded by Pakistan and Afghanistan that made it harder to export goods via the land to say European countries.Also it must be noted that India was and always will be a knowledge driven economy. While China has vast reserves of precious metals and ores, India does not which makes creating a manufacturing industry much more difficult. India's growth has largely happened in the computer age (1990 to current) with its vast swathes of engineers and scientists. This will remain as India will only grow stronger. However the greatest impediment to India's desire to become a manufacturing hub would be its diversity. India is a highly chaotic democracy. If you want to set up an industry in China you may only need to bribe the government officials, if you need land the government of China will happily displace its citizens if it benefits the country as a whole. One cannot do that in India not because there is no corruption but rather because one does not know who to bribe, the Bureaucrat / Politicians?, or the person who will help you get the land?, or the security guard who will make sure you are not robbed?, and there is the media who will hound you to make sure that there is no injustice done to the farmers that owned the land before industrialists came looking to set up a factory!India's strength has never been in manufacturing (there are exceptions: automobile, nuclear, aerospace) hence it should not try to be China or Germany. Its strengths lie in knowledge, software and the ability to execute these on a precise level on a global scale much like its CEOs of multinational companies. (Mr. Sundar Pichai and the world of Indian CEOs – BBC News) India should develop its infrastructure and create an environment for foreign investment and aspire to be the global backbone of all soft technology! In short India can be Google with little sincere efforts. We can bring Apple, Boeing, Toyota, Nissan and Mercedes Benz and many more FDIs) to make mobiles and other high tech products.