India’s cities are encouraging manufacturing to promote growth - a podcast by Asian Development Bank Institute

Urban areas contribute nearly two-thirds of India’s gross domestic product, even though they account for only 31 percent of the country’s population. They are India’s growth engines.

More remarkable is that India leapfrogged the manufacturing revolution and transitioned from agriculture to a service-based economy, with services now contributing 60 percent of GDP.

In 2014, the “Make in India” policy was launched to boost manufacturing.

The issue for local and foreign companies will be to identify comparative advantages of India’s cities, and which local and state governments attract investment and improve competitiveness by encouraging and protecting facilities for making and selling goods.

Government knows that urbanization is important, and policies encourage new towns to grow around information technology, for example, or education or health.

Cluster development models and special economic zones are being discussed to promote manufacturing and industrial townships, which will bring firms together to share specialized infrastructure, labor markets, and services.

Read the transcript
http://bit.ly/2j6m649

Read the working paper
https://www.adb.org/publications/how-identify-specialization-india-cities

About the author
Kala Seetharam Sridhar is a professor at the Centre for Research in Urban Affairs, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India.

Know more about ADBI’s research on
India: http://bit.ly/2kcLIzH
Manufacturing: http://bit.ly/2BnOCoQ

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