How is Coronavirus Pandemic a blessing in disguise for "make in India"???

Image credit: Sabrang India

India seems to be emerging as a sailing ship in the tides of the ongoing pandemic situation worldwide. Meanwhile, India had coronavirus on its doorstep, in the time period when it was facing an economic slowdown.

The arrival of coronavirus did nothing but added fuel to fire and worsened the situation. However, the administration has managed to comfortably treat the coronavirus patients and preventing the massive scale transmission among the folks by imposing a nationwide lockdown.

The lockdown was able to control the speed of virus transmission but also dragged down the Indian economy, as stated in the press briefing by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India a.k.a. RBI, Shaktikant Das. In the same press briefing, he revealed that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) has predicted that the GDP of India will be 1.9%, highest among all the G-20 nations in the world.

Image credit: The Hindu

However, the predicate of the sentence seems promising but India has still a long long way to go. The lockdown has severely affected the unorganised sector and the daily wage workers. 

Meanwhile, to grease up the jammed gears of the Indian economy in the environment of lockdown, the Indian government has freed up some restrictions in the areas which are classified as green zones and have a negligible effect of coronavirus. Those areas will allow some of the essential activities which are listed in the guideline released by the Government of India under an extremely controlled environment as per the precautionary measures are concerned. 

Have a look at a detailed elaboration of the guidelines released by the Government of India in our blog:

Lockdown Guidelines by the Govt. of INDIA: Everything explained here, in detail...

But India must remember, that the pandemic has affected the world and is responsible to erect a common global economic crisis after World War II, even worst than 2008 shutdown.

So just resuming of old activities and businesses would not be sufficient at all, of developing countries like India and after the GDP prediction of IMF, it becomes ambitious for to top the GDP chart of all the G-20 countries which has 90% of all the coronavirus patients. 

And taking this opportunity in the discussion of the economic perspective of, I want to put forward an angle created by the pandemic itself which has gifted an opportunity and created an equation for developing nations of the world, especially India which after all aims to become "factory of the world".

Meanwhile, by taking a look at the context of the situation, let's understand the whole matter. Several developed and advanced countries have emerged as the worst victims and they all are openly blaming, questioning and criticising China [the origin county of the pandemic] for all of this. It's for sure that the situation has held china into the shadows of suspicion, letting several countries, states, territories worldwide filing suits against china and blaming it for their immense loss.

Everyone is angry, some show it to the public while some are concerned more about the consequences if they follow the same path and India falls in the latter category. We are currently witnessing countries like USA, being blunt against China and making allegations every day knowing that they are in a pre-existing trade war with China.

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Some European countries have also joined the berth and are expressing their sorrow to the world but we should know that they are advanced/developed countries, who brutally troll apart China every. However, the developed countries have maintained their distance from falling into the blame game and are focusing more on their response internally.

India made amendments in its foreign investment policy which will prevent the direct nod from administration to the border sharing countries of India (namely Afganistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan) from making any form of investment in India. It comes as a precautionary measure after the administration came across some ghastly acts of several Chinese companies making acquisitions and opportunistic takeovers in several debt-ridden companies worldwide.

This was considered as an indirect answer of the Indian government to China for its deeds, making India a silent attacker. But there are several countries like USA, South Korea, Japan and European countries instructing their companies to move out their manufacturing units from China. Countries like Japan are offering aid [about $2 Billion!] to Japanese companies relocating to Japan from China.

In the meantime, some South Korean companies are ready for relocating and are openly talking with the Indian Government. Talking in detail of the case, iron and steel companies [Hyundai Seel & Posco among them], Startups and some from the hospitality sector are considering India as a viable option. 

And moving to the west, it's same for several European companies after their several counterparts faced forceful acquisitions from Chinese companies which were directly controlled by the government of China. This forceful acquisition seems ethically wrong but it's happening.

Image credit: Twitter

Moving to USA which is entitled as the most powerful nation in the entire world, one of the worst affected in the current pandemic was the first who had gone blunt and kept forward its views by questioning the role of China and the World Health Organisation a.k.a WHO in giving birth to the worst massacre of the human history swallowing hundreds of innocent lives around the world.

USA houses a large pool of champion companies under several sectors and their decision making plays a decisive role in the shifting gears of the world economy. President Donald Trump is showing his hardcore approach to China as well as the WHO and considered both of them the culprits. He too revealed the US government's desire to want their companies to opt-out of China in order to hit them economically.

Talking specifically, Apple is the key player in the mobile phone industry and one of its manufacturing company Wistron corporation which is listed in Taiwan is planning to expand its pre-existing manufacturing base in India. Alongside India, Wistron also eyes on Vietnam & Mexico under a $1 billion expansion plan.

The expansion of Wistron in India will play a crucial role in changing the gears of the Mobile market in India, in fact, India is crowned previously for housing the largest mobile factory in the world owned by Samsung in Noida.

Overall, the world is looking to reduce its dependency on China as per the big fat manufacturing activities are concerned and keen to break the several decades-old stereotypical cycle of the journey of manufacturing goods from financing to the consumers. China since several decades has been a hotspot for the companies worldwide for setting up their manufacturing units at cheap rates of land, tax, duties and skilled & unskilled labour.

Image credit: Anti-Empire

And now taking maximum advantage of the situation of which China is blamed to have created, is turned into a backfire mode and world seems to be getting ready to dethrone it as "factory of the world".

But the question arises that who will be the one who will win this game of thrones and grab the opportunity and become the leading manufacturing hub? well, the answer is anyone from developing countries like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, etc.

And the Indian Government and administration under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the national level and the Chief Ministers of several states are seeming to have been preparing for the upcoming possible "manufacturing boom" in India. As per the revelation from the Indian government which expressed the concern to the states to gear up for wooing every company moving out of China for manufacturing.

Image credit: Reddif

India is a potentially very rich country having a huge chunk of unused land which is can be used in order to reside the manufacturing units. The Indian government has also identified an unbelievably huge land pool of 4,61,589 hectares (which includes 1,15,131 hectares of industrial land) across several states. The fact related to this figure seems totally insane that the identified land is twice as the area of the whole country of Luxembourg which is spread across 2,43,000 hectares in Europe.

The states of Gujarat, Maharastra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh house this unused lands which are identified by the government and under these extreme sufferings of the pandemic the governments of centre and states are together coming aboard to ease up the land acquisition process.

But there's too a section in the Indian society and in the lobbies of the economists who believe that the reliance of India on wooing the foreign companies moving out of China and want to relocate their manufacturing elsewhere would not help much to the Indian economy personally, instead the skilled & unskilled youth of the country should be explored and used to restructure its economy.

Comment below your thoughts on what will be better for India among the two options of inviting the foreign companies to set up manufacturing in India or focusing more on the Indian youth to fetch several desired results...?