Factory floored

The Indian economy has always been oddly anomalous. Its growth story, so remarkable over the past two decades, has not been led by manufacturing, as is, and has been, the case almost everywhere else. No, here growth is led by the service sector, while manufacturing has stuttered along, showing decent growth numbers, but adding little to employment. While in other countries on the path to development, the proportion of the workforce in manufacturing has gone to well above 30 per cent, in India, it is stuck at 15-16 per cent. For formal manufacturing, the number is even lower. Yet factory jobs are essential to social change, to urbanisation, to satisfying increasing aspirations. Thus the most important challenge to the Indian economy is, in fact, to revitalise manufacturing.

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