New Delhi: The Rs 251 smartphone Freedom 251 is a bad advertisement for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Make in India programme. Make in India is a very high profile initiative which wants to make India a world class manufacturing hub of everything – starting from mobile phones to aircraft.
The Make in India website says, "The Make in India program was launched by Prime Minister Modi in September 2014 as part of a wider set of nation-building initiatives. Devised to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub, Make in India was a timely response to a critical situation: by 2013, the much-hyped emerging markets bubble had burst, and India’s growth rate had fallen to its lowest level in a decade. The promise of the BRICS nations had faded, and India was tagged as one of the so-called ‘Fragile Five’. Global investors debated whether the world’s largest democracy was a risk or an opportunity. India’s 1.2 billion citizens questioned whether India was too big to succeed or too big to fail. India was on the brink of severe economic failure."
Very ambitious plan indeed. India often claims that it does not want to be another China, which is known as low cost factory of the world. India does not want to produce cheap, low cost and low quality products under Make in India. It wants to be like Germany, France, United Kingdom, Japan and USA, the manufacturers of world class iconic products.
The Rs 251 phone which has taken the technology world by storm is not going to help the cause. While there are both fans and sceptics of the Freedom 251, the lingering question is how Ringing Bells will manage to sell a feature rich smartphone at such a low price.
Undeniably what makes a nation a true economic powerhouse in the long run is the quality of its manufacturing and service sectors. By producing cheap, low quality things in large scale no country can become a world class manufacturer overnight. These hotchpotch inventions can make some news, get some eyeballs and also generate some income and jobs for a while. In the long run, they ruin the image of a nation and its capability to produce the best in the world.
Cheap products may have put China on top of world economy in the last two decades. But, Chinese manufacturing sector does not have the credibility and consumer confidence, the products of Western nations or Japan have. Chinese economy is slowing down because of its cheap products.
India should follow the model of Western nations and Japan. Certainly not that of our immediate neighbour China. The populist launches like the Rs 251 mobile phone defeat the very purpose of a big initiative like Make in India.
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