Twelve years of Make in India: mixed gains for manufacturing

The brief in 6 cards

1. Context1 / 6
   • Make in India was launched on 25 September 2014, aiming to make India a global hub for manufacturing, design and innovation.
   • Twelve years on, an analysis of manufacturing indicators shows an uneven picture.
   • Manufacturing has grown in absolute terms, and some sectors have gained from government incentives.
   • But manufacturing's overall share in economic output, employment and global exports has not risen as much as originally envisaged.
   • The scheme has since evolved into Make in India 2.0, now covering 27 sectors, including 15 manufacturing and 12 services sectors.
2. Key highlights2 / 6

   Share of the economy barely moved: Under the revised national-accounts series, manufacturing's share in India's Gross Value Added (GVA) rose only marginally, from about 14.6% in 2022–23 to 15.6% in 2025–26.

   Exports grew, but world share flattened: India's non-petroleum goods exports rose from about $253.5 billion in 2014–15 to $388.3 billion in 2025–26. Even so, India's share of global merchandise exports has stayed roughly flat since 2014, at around 1.7–1.8%, after starting near 0.8% in the early 2000s.

   Jobs grew slowly: Manufacturing employment rose only modestly, from about 5.1 crore in 2016–17 to 5.3 crore in 2025–26, while its share of total employment stayed broadly similar.

   FDI grew, but unevenly: Foreign direct investment expanded more slowly than India's overall FDI ecosystem, showing that attracting investment alone has not automatically translated into large-scale new manufacturing capacity.

   PLI gains, but concentrated: Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes had attracted about ₹2.40 lakh crore in actual investment by March 2026, generating over ₹22.66 lakh crore in production and sales and more than 14 lakh jobs. But the top five sectors, solar modules, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and components, speciality steel, and large-scale electronics, account for nearly 83% of total PLI investment.

   Capacity utilisation still soft: Manufacturing capacity utilisation has generally stayed below 80%, the level usually associated with firms investing more readily in fresh capacity.

3. Key concepts3 / 6
   1. Gross Value Added (GVA) and its use here

   • GVA measures the value a sector adds to the economy, calculated as output minus the value of inputs used.
   • Manufacturing's "share in GVA" tells us how large the sector is relative to the whole economy, not simply whether the sector itself is growing.
   • A sector can grow in absolute size year after year, and still see its share in GVA stay flat, if the rest of the economy (especially services) grows at a similar or faster pace.
   • Analogy: a runner's own speed can improve, but if every other runner in the race improves at the same pace, their relative position in the race does not change.

   News connection: Manufacturing GVA itself grew at a healthy pace, around 10.88% CAGR between 2022–23 and 2025–26, yet its share of total GVA moved by only one percentage point.

   2. Non-petroleum exports and global export share

   • Non-petroleum exports exclude oil and oil-related products, giving a clearer view of how the rest of India's economy is performing in world markets.
   • A country's share in global exports shows how its export growth compares with the growth of world trade as a whole, not just its own past performance.
   • If India's exports grow, but world trade grows at a similar or faster rate, India's share of the global total does not rise, even though the absolute export figure looks impressive.
   • This is exactly the pattern shown in the source article's chart: exports rose steadily, but the share-of-world-exports line has stayed roughly flat since around 2014.

   News connection: The chart's title, "Export growth has followed the same trajectory before and after Make in India," makes this point directly: the trend did not visibly accelerate after the programme launched.

   3. Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme

   • The PLI scheme offers financial incentives to companies based on their incremental production or sales in specified sectors, rather than paying subsidies upfront.
   • It was designed to boost domestic manufacturing capacity, reduce import dependence, and support export competitiveness in chosen sectors.
   • Fourteen PLI schemes have been rolled out across sectors since 2020–21.
   • Concentration means the benefits are not evenly spread: just five sectors receive most of the total investment attracted under all fourteen schemes combined.

   News connection: PLI has clearly succeeded in select sectors like mobile phones and electronics, but this success has not been broad-based across all of India's manufacturing base.

   4. Jobless or under-employment-generating growth

   • Jobless growth describes a situation where an economy or sector grows in output, but does not create employment at a matching pace.
   • India's manufacturing sector is often discussed in this context, since manufacturing output and exports have grown, while manufacturing's employment share has stayed roughly steady.
   • This matters especially for a labour-abundant economy like India's, where a large working-age population needs sectors that can absorb workers at scale.
   • Services, rather than manufacturing, have continued to account for a large share of new employment.

   News connection: This is a central concern in the article: manufacturing has not generated employment at the scale a country of India's size and demographic profile needs.

4. Way forward4 / 6

   Move from sector-specific to broad-based competitiveness: Shift focus from incentivising a few chosen sectors toward improving overall manufacturing competitiveness.

   Fix the basics of doing business: Invest in reliable infrastructure, a skilled workforce, and competitive logistics, since these affect every manufacturer, not just PLI-covered ones.

   Deepen global value chain integration: Help Indian firms plug into international supply chains more fully, beyond the sectors currently favoured by incentive schemes.

   Strengthen MSME linkages: Connect small and medium manufacturers into the supply chains of larger firms benefiting from schemes like PLI, so gains spread more widely.

   Keep policy stable: Predictable, consistent regulation over time matters as much as any single incentive scheme for firms deciding where to invest.

5. Note5 / 6

   What did grow: sector-level success stories

   Electronics: Production rose nearly sevenfold, from about ₹1.9 lakh crore in 2014–15 to ₹13.11 lakh crore in 2025–26.

   Mobile phones: Production rose about 33 times over the same period, from around ₹18,000 crore to about ₹6.27 lakh crore. India is now the world's second-largest mobile-phone manufacturer by volume.

   Automobiles: Vehicle production reached about 31 million units in 2024–25, roughly a third higher than in 2014–15.

   Pharmaceuticals: The industry recorded an annual turnover of about ₹4.72 lakh crore in 2024–25.

   Why this matters for the broader debate: These are real, substantial gains in specific sectors. The concern raised in the article is not that nothing worked, but that these gains have not lifted manufacturing's overall share of the economy, jobs and exports to the same degree.

6. Note6 / 6

   Reading the two charts

   Chart on exports: Non-petroleum goods exports climbed steadily from about $50.1 billion in 2002–03 to $388.3 billion in 2025–26, crossing the "Make in India launched" marker in 2014–15 without a visible change in trend.

   Chart on export share: India's share of global goods exports rose from about 0.8% in 2002–03 to roughly 1.7% by 2025–26, but this rise happened gradually across the whole period, again without an obvious acceleration after 2014.

   The takeaway both charts share: A rising absolute number can coexist with a flat trend line relative to a benchmark, whether that benchmark is GDP, world trade, or total employment. Each of the article's "patchy performance" findings follows this same underlying pattern.

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