In 2016, amid global calls to revive domestic manufacturing, I had argued that government pushes  - from Make in India to Make America Great Again -  would not spark an employment-led industrial revolution, but rather catalyze automation-led manufacturing transformations. Nine years later, India’s own manufacturing trajectory confirms this prediction with surgical clarity. Despite record-breaking capital inflows, thriving exports, and the China+1 strategy playing to India’s advantage, job creation in manufacturing has been lackluster. The gap between factory output and factory employment is no longer just a trend - it is now a defining feature of India’s industrial rise. The False Promise of Mass Job Creation At the core of India’s manufacturing push lies the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, launched with grand ambitions of creating 6 million direct jobs and adding US$500 billion in output by FY27. Yet, by June 2024, only 584,000 direct jobs had materialized—jus...

When I read this recent Livemint piece on how China has methodically diluted the power foreign oil suppliers once held over it, I couldn’t help but tumble down a rabbit hole: How is India doing on the same front? What I found is worth sharing — so here’s a snapshot of how India is working, on multiple fronts, to make sure its oil bill — and the geopolitical pressure that comes with it — keeps shrinking. India’s energy playbook over the past 15 years reads like a multi-track sprint: put millions of EVs on the road, carpet the countryside with solar panels and wind turbines, squeeze more ethanol into every litre of petrol, revive an ambitious nuclear program, and coax crude from deep-sea rocks that once looked unreachable. The goal is bluntly strategic—trim a crude-import bill that still meets 85% of oil demand and deny potential suppliers the pressure point that New Delhi has worried about since the 1970s oil shocks. A Quiet EV Boom Accelerates Annual electric vehicle (EV) sales in...