Suraj retweeted
My scorecard for the PLIs based on data in NITI Aayog's report. Apart from electronics, food products, telecom and pharma, all other PLIs have weaknesses. Some more so than others.
For each scheme, I used the amount invested, production output, share of original outlay disbursed to companies and jobs generated as the criteria to judge the PLI schemes. 6 out of 14 schemes are not successful, and the seventh (solar PLI) is still in the gestation period.
NITI Aayog's evaluation of all the PLI schemes so far.
Green - On track
Yellow- Partial impact
Orange - Evidence of impact not sufficient
Light Blue - No data
I would have been much harsher with the evaluation for some of them.
niti.gov.in/sites/default/fi…
$90 billion in exports
Oct 2026 was by a long distance the best month of exports in Indian trade history - over $7 billion more than the previous record in Aug.
The next question is what about the $1 trillion export target ? Let's look at that next.
1/
India’s merchandise exports reached USD 309.06 Billion during April–October 2026–27, registering a growth of 21.96% over the corresponding period of 2025–26.
The continued growth highlights the strength of India’s merchandise exports and their expanding contribution to international trade.
#IndiaTradeUpdate #TradeGrowth #DoC_GoI @PIB_India @RajeshAgrawal94
How about looking just at the current fiscal year ?
Total exports
Q1 Apr-Jun: $237 billion
Q2 Jul-Sep : $244 billion
Oct: $90 billion
Total: $571 billion
This means 5 months for the remaining $429 billion, which is an average $85.8 billion a month.
Impossible. ? Remember, Oct was $90 billion.
6/
That's where the export picture stands today. An average of just under $86 billion a month in total exports, or $4B less than the October peak, will result in exports topping $1 trillion for the fiscal year 2026-27.
Three months ago this looked fanciful. By September it was starting to look interesting. Today, it's starting to look like it could really happen.
7/7
Suraj retweeted
India’s merchandise exports reached USD 309.06 Billion during April–October 2026–27, registering a growth of 21.96% over the corresponding period of 2025–26.
The continued growth highlights the strength of India’s merchandise exports and their expanding contribution to international trade.
#IndiaTradeUpdate #TradeGrowth #DoC_GoI @PIB_India @RajeshAgrawal94
Suraj retweeted
India's engineering exports are now at 122.4 billion $, accounting for nearly 28% of total merchandise exports. Automobiles, industrial machinery, iron & steel products and electrical machinery account for ~70% of engineering goods exports. Diversification of the exported commodities could drive growth higher.
etedge-insights.com/industry…
Suraj retweeted
🚄 The Making of Bharat’s First Bullet Train
📍BEML Factory, Bengaluru
#Bharat_BulletTrain
Suraj retweeted
The World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty & Equity Brief records India’s progress as one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.
The report highlights several significant gains:
✅ 49.6 crore people moved above the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 a day between 2011 and 2023, with the poverty rate declining from 57.7% to 16.1%.
✅ Extreme poverty declined from 27.1% to 2.6% over the same period, measured at $3 a day. Both monetary poverty thresholds use 2021 purchasing power parity.
✅ Employment increased by 13.4 crore people between 2017 and 2023, nearly twice the increase in the working-age population.
✅ Rural women accounted for much of the employment gain, entering paid work and increasing the number of earners in their households.
✅ Both rural and urban households experienced substantial welfare gains, with faster progress in rural India narrowing the rural–urban gap.
✅ Access to electricity reached 99% of the population, according to the report’s 2022 survey data.
The World Bank identifies strong consumption growth, rising employment - especially among women—and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies, as major drivers.
Under the leadership of Hon’ble PM Shri @narendramodi, the Government’s sustained policy efforts are yielding tangible results, strengthening the foundations for inclusive growth and greater economic opportunity. This is the reason why NDA govt wins people’s trust and mandate of our citizens.
We remain committed to building on this progress through productive employment, stronger household incomes and effective delivery of public services, so that aspirations of our people are met.
Suraj retweeted
According to World Bank's latest report, India's extreme poverty has fallen from 27.6% to just under 2.6%.
And for Indians living under Rs. 400 a day (lower middle income), it has come down from 57.7% of the population to 16.1%.
Remarkable achievement by India given the rupee depreciated and the inflationary pressure of a fast growing economy.
This is an excellent argument and would benefit from a timeline picture of how Chinese value add as a fraction of total price grew over time, with the Indian story so far superimposed upon that.
Here's my attempt using Claude. Both show mass production year 1s - 2008 for China, 2021 for India, and local sourced components. Data is broken out into share of components produced both by foreign and domestic firms located within country (solid lines), and only local firms (dotted lines).
Observations:
1. 5 years in, Indian sourced content as a fraction of factory price is higher than China's in that timeframe.
2. ECMS if implemented properly, will keep that lead in place.
3. The year 2-10 dotted line for China is a straight line extrapolation since there's no data. In reality, it is likely a curve closer to the Indian one.
4. 16 years in, China contributes only over a third of the factory price of an iPhone, counting both domestic and foreign entities manufacturing there. India aims at 30% within a decade.
One thing that China did that India would need to do, is build domestic brands that leverage this expertise and supply chain capability and independently build and sell smart devices and gadgets.
Real wealth building comes from that direction, absorbing the technologies, practices and skills. Apple by itself will never be an entity that does it for India.
In 2009, two economists took an iPhone 3G apart. China’s share of the phone - $6.50, or 3.6%. China was a screwdriver shop, and if Bloomberg Opinion had existed in this form back then, it would have told Beijing to give up on electronics and stick to shoes. China didn’t listen. Today Chinese phones carry 38-40% local value. India is at 18-20%, which is already far ahead of where China started.
Comparing India’s component imports with its phone exports and calling the gap a deficit is plain wrong. Indians buy phones either way. Without local assembly, every one of those phones arrives fully built and the import bill gets bigger. About $18.6B of India-made iPhones were sold in India between FY22 and FY26, and the $2.1B trade gain from mounting chips on boards locally shows the same thing.
Assembly always comes first. No display or battery maker builds a plant in a country where nobody assembles phones. That’s how China used Tesla and Apple as “catfish” to pull its suppliers up to world standards.
The subsidies to build local electronics manufacturing are often called too expensive . But Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China all paid to build their industries, and TSMC was nearly half government money.
Under India’s component scheme (ECMS), 106 projects are approved, worth ₹69,500 cr. Display, camera module and battery cell, three of the five big imported parts in a phone, now have approved Indian plants.
Taking an Indian iPhone apart in 2030 and seeing how much of it is still imported will be the time for a verdict swarajyamag.com/commentary/a…
Suraj retweeted
China ran exactly this play.
Twice.
First, lets do another teardown.
>Do Andy's exercise on iPhone 3G in Shenzhen, 2009
>China's share: $6.50 of a $179 phone.
>3.6%
>India's phones today: 18–20%
Also, this is about catfish effect:
>Beijing let Tesla own its Shanghai plant outright.
>The industry minister called it a catfish.
>Drop one in the pond, the other fish start swimming
>Chinese parts makers had to hit Tesla's standard to sell to it.
>Then they sold the same parts to BYD, Nio, Xpeng
>Today 95%+ of a Shanghai Tesla is Chinese.
>BYD is the world's largest EV maker
>SUCCESS. Industrial capacity built!
Apple did it slower and quieter:
>Its own engineers inside Chinese supplier plants.
>28 million workers trained since 2008
>Those suppliers then built for Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo
>By 2018, a quarter of an iPhone X was Chinese.
Apple is India's catfish.
>The first fish to grow: Tata
>from iPhone casings at Hosur to more iPhone exports than Foxconn.
Another excellent thread from @Kyunghoon_Kim_
Suraj retweeted
Mobile PLI stats as follows:
Government incentive paid: Rs 19,000 Cr.
Direct tax collected: Rs 25,000 Cr.
GST collected: Rs 3,00,000 Cr.
Electronics manufacturing employs 25 Lakh people; mobile manufacturing alone employs 12 Lakh.
Cope harder!!
One in four iPhones is made in India, but imported parts and costly subsidies complicate the success story. @andymukherjee70 takes apart an iPhone to explain why copying China's manufacturing model may not pay off 🎥
Suraj retweeted
Minister Piyush Goyal’s point in Berlin about responsibility for climate change challenges one of many unfair narratives about the Global South - see the figures below
I discussed these narratives in a talk at Brookings last year. (1/2)
Slides: brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…
Turning the climate change cost into a conversation around present day marginal contribution, or worse, the potential for future contribution, is fundamentally illegitimate.
The problem exists because of an accumulated history of contribution that enabled some countries to develop.
This conversations begins with the ownership of responsibility for the primary costs of handling the accumulated problem today.
Excellent response from @PiyushGoyal and the Indian government.