Make in India
Also: Make in India initiative, Make in India campaign
Background and evolution
The initiative was launched shortly after a period of slow industrial growth, high inflation and policy uncertainty in the early 2010s. It was meant to signal a decisive shift towards investment-friendly policy and to rebrand India internationally, and its global campaigns, investor summits and online portal were central to that effort.
India's development path has been unusual: it moved from agriculture directly into services, especially IT and finance, without building a large manufacturing base as East Asian economies did. Manufacturing's share of GDP has hovered around 15–17% for decades. This matters because factory jobs can absorb large numbers of workers with modest skills, raise productivity and earn export income. With a young and growing workforce, India needed a strategy to expand industry.
Make in India was launched as a branding and policy campaign to change this. It combined investor outreach, liberalisation of foreign investment rules, simplification of regulations and infrastructure plans such as industrial corridors. This page assesses Make in India as an overall industrial strategy and asks why the headline targets were not met, while the specific incentive design of production-linked schemes is covered on the PLI page.
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Last reviewed: 23 October 2026 · Original UPSCPrep.in content.