BT India@100: ‘Indian industry should forget about protectionism; time to beat China at its game,’ says Amitabh Kant

BT India@100: The Indian industry should forget about protectionism, and in turn ensure that the products manufactured here are of high quality and great value, said former G20 Sherpa and former CEO of NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant. He said it is now time to take on China and beat it at its own game.

Kant, speaking at the Business Today India@100 in the session titled ‘The Future of Make in India’, said: “It is not about protectionism, the Indian industry should forget about protectionism. They should focus on being competitive, they should focus on quality, they should focus on value, and they should focus on exports. You will never be able to export without quality and great value. You should now really benchmark your production against Chinese production.” He gave the examples of Tata and Mahindra to elucidate his point.

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“We should now get into battery manufacturing, clean technology, technology of the future and really beat the Chinese at its game now. The Chinese economy will slow down, I have no doubt about that. It is the moment to accelerate the pace of growth in India,” he said.

Kant emphasised that the world as we knew it while growing up is now over. “It is a very different world now, the post World War II era has come to an end, the era of multilateralism, the era of United Nations, World Trade Organisation has come to an end, the relative era of peace has come to an end. There’s conflict now in Europe, West Asia. Conflict is at the centre stage. The world that had grown on global value and supply chains has been replaced by protectionism, muscular industrial policies, retaliation in terms of policies. Tariffs have got weaponised. Even  so, we are living in the age that will see the greatest rise of productivity that the world has ever seen, and that is thanks to artificial intelligence. We must use that opportunity.”

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He also said that India has done very well by striking multiple trade deals, but it is also a learning now for the industry that if they don’t get competitive, then products from these foreign markets will flood India. “It is an opportunity for India to flood these 55 markets, otherwise you lose the Indian market also.”

Watch the full conversation here: