Make in India, Largely for India

The danger when we discuss "Make in India" is to assume the export-led growth path that China followed. Slow growing industrial countries are much less likely to absorb a significant additional amount of imports in the foreseeable future. Industrial countries themselves are now adopting capital-intensive flexible manufacturing, dispensing with labor but doing what they outsourced, at cheaper cost made possible by the fact that, for example, United States has very cheap energy today. Besides, when India pushes into manufacturing exports, it will have China, which still has some surplus agricultural labor to draw on, to contend with. Export-led growth will not be as easy as it was for the Asian economies that preceded us.