From chip plants to research parks, India must invest in an electronics manufacturing base to meet the swelling demand for smartphones, laptops and other gear or risk an import bill larger than for oil, a top adviser to PM Manmohan Singh said. “We have lost all of the electronics manufacturing base, whatever little we had,” said Sam Pitroda. “Electronic hardware could be $400 billion if we’re not careful. It could be more than oil.”
Information technology and services may have powered India to be one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, but manufacturing accounts for just 16 per cent of output, roughly half of the share in China and far behind India’s targeted 25 per cent over the next decade.