Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday alleged that 10 years of the Narendra Modi government's Make in India "stunt" has put a break on India's manufacturing and said that glitzy ads cannot sugarcoat its "colossal failures."
Kharge said contrary to the BJP's high decibel propaganda, India's manufacturing sector has become de-industralised.
"10 years of Modi Govt's Make in India Stunt has put Break in India's Manufacturing! 10 years ago, PM Narendra Modi crafted the slogan of 'Make in India' and claimed to build Aatmnirbhar Bharat. Contrary to BJP's high decibel propaganda, India's manufacturing sector has got de-industralised due to Modi government's FLOP policy initiatives," he said in a social media post.
Kharge listed five "stark facts" which he claimed made India miss the bus on manufacturing. "The average growth rate of the manufacturing sector between 2014-15 and 2023-24 is just 3.1% (BJP-NDA) whereas between 2004-05 and 2013-14, the average growth rate was 7.85% (Congress-UPA). The number of employees in factories grew at 6.2% annually during the Congress-UPA regime. This growth fell spectacularly to just 2.8% under the Modi government," the Congress chief said.
Between 2011-12 and 2022, India's manufacturing sector saw minimal growth in employment, increasing from 6 crore to merely 6.3 crore workers, he said.
"This modest addition of 3 lakh jobs annually is insufficient, considering 1.5 crore youth enter the workforce every year," he said.
Kharge said according to NSO, the share of employment in manufacturing accounted for 12.6 per cent of all workers in 2011-12. This declined to 10.9 per cent in 2020-21, before recovering 11.6 per cent in 2021-22, he said.
Kharge said the share of manufacturing in India's GDP has hit "an all time low" of 12.83 per cent in 2023, which under the UPA in 2013 was 15.25 per cent.
He claimed that most Production-Linked Incentive, or PLI, schemes have garnered "lukewarm and tepid" response from the industry and experts have criticised the schemes for their poor design, lack of clarity and no real value addition.
