MAKE IN INDIA REPORT
Place: Chandigarh PHD
Date: 25th September 2014.
INTRODUCTION
PrimeMinister Narendra Modi launched the 'Make in India' campaign on Thursday, ahead of his maiden visit to the US, rolling out the red carpet to investors to catapult India, on the global manufacturing stage. The focus will be on 25 sectors and the respective ministries - heavy industries, telecom, power and others.
All this to develop India or as the prime minister says, to 'First develop India'. The event apart from attracting the Indian corporate bigwigs saw participation from representatives from companies from countries such as US, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Poland, Australia, China, Italy, Germany and France.
The Prime Minister acknowledged that India has not been the friendliest nation to do business in, assured investors that the country is headed for a change.
He made a compelling pitch for India, mentioning that only India offers the 3Ds: Democracy, Demography and Demand. He emphasized digital technology as being an integral part of the change and advocated a 'Look East' and 'Link West' policy in the country. Narendra Modi highlighted some very specific initiatives that will help drive this change. He also mentioned some very specific KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. A few of these are detailed below:
1. An increase in manufacturing sector growth to 12-14% per annum over the medium term.
2. An increase in the share of manufacturing in the country’s Gross Domestic Product from the present 16% to 25% by 2022.
3. Additional 100 million jobs by 2022 in manufacturing sector.
4. Skill development among rural migrants and the urban poor for inclusive growth.
5. An increase in domestic value addition and technological depth in manufacturing.
6. Making the Indian manufacturing sector more competitive and visible on the global stage

PANEL DISCUSSION
The live telecast of the session was followed by a panel discussion. The esteemed panel present for the discussion was:
1. Mr. K.K.Sharma
2. Mr. Rajinder Gupta
3. Ms. Monika Choudhary
4. Mr. Y.S.Malik
5. Ashok Khanna
5. Mr.Yogesh
6. Mr. Dilip Sharma
7. Mr. Ravinder Singh (Punjab)
8. Mr. Rajinder Chauhan (H.P.)
The discussion started with Mr.K.K.Sharma summarizing the speakers’ and the Prime Minister’s “Make in India” initiative program launched in New Delhi. He later emphasized state level challenges faced and ways to resolve them so as to be an integral part of this initiative and make it successful. He focused on striving towards making things simple for existing and potential entrepreneurs. Mr. Sharma asserted that the Chandigarh and Punjab in general has huge potential in terms of industries and world class educational institutes in the vicinity. He mentioned about the potential opportunity to create an Electronics Industry Manufacturing Zone in the Phase 3 area so as to attract manufacturing in the state. He also urged entrepreneurs to leverage the immense opportunities in the real estate (land) available in Chandigarh and expressed full support from the government in clearing the requisite formalities for the same. He also assured about the supply of regular power and water. Mr. Sharma asserted about the environmental protection act. He later on mentioned a recent initiative of doing away with affidavits. He assured to pick up the best practices from other states for improving the clearance system for new projects.
Mr. Y.S.Malik, in his address, asserted that a lot of work needed to be done to bridge the gap between what is declared by the senior level authorities and what actually percolates to the ground level. He mentioned an example of the affidavit abolition and said that it was a non- value adding activity that needs to be minimized. He mentioned the importance of the Digital India campaign as a part of Make In India initiative. He mentioned about the need of interlinking and coordination of all concerned departments. He said that 3 factors, viz., land, finance and power are all becoming expensive and greater subsidizes on these means losing out on the competitive edge globally. He said that sourcing raw material has been a great issue in the clusters in Himachal Pradesh, especially the timely payment to MSME’s. He said about improving the supplier-procurer relationship and mentioned about an initiative of appointing 6-7 retired session judges as arbitrators. He asserted that there are 2 important inputs required for making the Make In India initiative successful- Technology and Skilled manpower. He said that this would be a learning process for all of us.
Mr.Rajender Gupta applauded governments Make in India initiative and expressed confidence about the success of this initiative. He mentioned about 2 issues: 1. Rules, regulations and procedures which deal with setting up industries need to be revisited and 2. A need of a single window with Chief Minister as the chairperson for all clearance work. He also expressed a desire for all clearances being facilitated within 90 days. He then spoke about other initiatives that have come up in Himachal such as skill development center which caters to the development of not only regular individuals but also unemployed and disabled. He spoke about the specific challenges faced by Himachal such as being extreme north. However, he mentioned about the opportunities that exist in the periphery of the state. He mentioned about the schemes for 1st generation entrepreneurs for easy financing at low rate of interest and urged them to come to Himachal Pradesh.
Ms.Monika Choudhary of the FICCI mentioned about the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs as they enter into this domain. She however asserted that women remain equally passionate about the field. She also mentioned about the need of leveraging the potential of Digital India campaign.
Mr.Ashok Khanna later on conducted an open house Q&A session wherein the panel answered specific queries of the audience. Discussion and debates on various topics like finance for entrepreneurs, land prices and constraints took place. Problems with the existing system and affidavits were also mentioned as a part of the open house.
The session ended with Mr.Khanna proposing the vote of thanks on behalf of everyone. He summarized the session mentioning 7 key highlights from the Make In India Program at New Delhi: 1. Presence of major industrialists across India as speakers 2. Labor laws revision 3. The second meaning of FDI, meaning First Develop India 4. Skill development 5. Cost effectiveness of the Mars mission 6. Digital India campaign 7. Ease of doing business
RECOMMENDATIONS
Make in India makes a strong proposal of improving the performance of Indian manufacturing sector by leaps and bound. But as we understand in order to gain the maximum out of this initiative we need to focus on certain areas. So some key recommendations are:
1. A pragmatic bureaucracy empowered to take action with minimum interference
2. Strict laws and stronger implementation through single window grievance hear out cells
3. Removal of hindrance tax system and introduce a single GST model
4. Revision of export subsidies and duties to promote trade
5 Address the need for technology by promoting strong global collaboration through eased norms of FDI and M&A
6. Corruption needs to be dealt at the basic grass root level and stricter punishments need to be devised to address this issue.
7. Geo Political ties with developed nations need to be improved to encourage investment